Broadsheet

Image: The handcart, equipped with a sail. Photo by Kris De Decker.

The human-powered handcart is the oldest of vehicles, and it will likely be the last one around in the future. Of all vehicles, it’s the cheapest and least complex to build and use. It offers a large advantage over carrying a load on your back or dragging it over the ground - the even older concept of the sled. On the other hand, the handcart is cheaper and easier to use than the animal-powered cart. Oxen and donkeys eat more than humans, and they have their own will, which can work against the driver.

Like any other wheeled vehicle, the handcart requires roads to drive on. This infrastructure has not always been available anywhere or at any time in history. For example, in medieval Europe, porters and pack animals were more common than handcarts because of poor roads. ¹ In the West, the handcart only reached its heyday during the first decades of the Industrial Revolution, when it connected fast-growing cities to train stations and harbors. In China, on the other hand, the handcart was the backbone of the transport network for millennia. ²

Of all vehicles, the handcart is the cheapest and least complex to build and use.

There are still many human-powered carts in modern society: strollers, grocery carts, roller suitcases, and various utility and folding carts. However, these modern carts are to their predecessors what modern birds are to dinosaurs. They are small, often with very small wheels, and we use them for very short distances, usually inside buildings. In contrast, old-fashioned handcarts were often large and had big wheels, and they were pushed or pulled on roads and over longer distances. Many crafts and professions had their own type of handcart.

Image: Low-tech Magazine's handcart. Photo by Kris De Decker.

Why I need a handcart

People still use large handcarts in so-called “developing countries”. However, they can be just as useful again in the large cities of the industrialized world, as I can testify after using one for a couple of months. Last autumn, I received an internship application from Kozimo, who studies at the Design Academy Eindhoven. In his application, Kozimo sent a video of a large handcart he made, which he was driving on the streets of Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

I have always dreamt of a handcart. I have never owned a car, and the only times I miss one are when I have to move stuff, something which has become increasingly common lately. Consequently, I proposed to Kozimo to build a handcart for me.

Now, I can no longer imagine living without it. I have used the vehicle to move houses and offices, pick up materials and objects I bought online, new or second-hand, and transport workshop and event materials (bike generators, solar panels, solar ovens, books, sound systems). I have done the same for friends. During these trips, I often took home materials, furniture, or objects that I found for free on the streets of Barcelona.

Image: Kozimo and Kris De Decker with Low-tech Magazine's handcart, halfway through a 30 km trip along the coast of Spain. Photo by Linda Osusky.

Unlike a van or a car, my handcart doesn’t need gasoline, electricity, or batteries, making it entirely independent from energy infrastructures. Neither do I need to pay taxes and insurance. The handcart is a very democratic vehicle. It allows anyone to carry a load wherever they want, while older, less affordable cars and vans are no longer allowed to enter city centers due to the installation of Low Emission Zones.

A handcart doesn’t need gasoline, electricity, or batteries, making it entirely independent from energy infrastructures.

It would make a lot of sense to offer vehicles like this at community centers, where they are available for all neighbors to use when needed. Few people would need a handcart each day, and communal use would solve the parking problem. Although our handcart can also be parked vertically, it won’t fit in most apartments.

Description of the handcart

This article will not explain in detail how to build a handcart. We want to do that another time with a simpler handcart model, because the vehicle we present in this article is not one that most people can make themselves. You need good woodworking and metalworking skills, and in fact, two people made the handcart.

Kozimo designed and built the whole structure from wood, while Guilhem Senges - visual artist and one of my neighbors - designed and made several essential reinforcements from metal; the wheels, the brakes, and the handlebars are all connected to the wood structure with custom-made iron parts.

Image: The underside of the handcart. Photo by Kris De Decker.

Images: The front and back of the handcart. Photos by Kris De Decker.

Image: The lights are mounted in coconuts. Photo by Kris De Decker.

Load weight and volume

Low-tech Magazine’s handcart is 250 cm long and 100 cm wide, while the platform itself measures 210 by 85 cm. Assuming a load height of 50 cm, the cargo volume is roughly 1.55 m3 (37 cubic feet or 1050 liters). That’s two to four times the typical trunk space in a European car. We have transported cargo that is wider or longer than the cart: a large heated table measuring 140x140cm, and several loads of wooden beams, each three meters long.

The load weight is limited by the wheels, which come from a wheelchair. They can support up to 150 kg. ³ The cart itself weighs 32 kg, so the practical maximum cargo weight is about 120 kg. The loading platform consists of slats with gaps between them, making it easy to secure various types of cargo.

Images: The handcart with various cargoes. Upper left: a 6m2 wooden floor and a chest. Upper right: 3-meter-long wood beams. Below: A heated table ready for transport.

It drives itself!

Over the past few months, we’ve learned that people have many misconceptions about handcarts. For example, you may think that pushing a handcart takes a lot of effort, perhaps based on your experience pushing supermarket carts through parking lots or pulling heavy suitcases through city centers (which is how I moved stuff before I had a handcart).

However, using the handcart can be so effortless - even when it’s heavily loaded - that it feels like you are not pushing at all. Once in motion, you can often guide it with one hand, and it sometimes feels like the cart is pulling you forward. It’s no exaggeration to say that pushing the handcart with a 100 kg load is more comfortable than walking while carrying a 10 kg heavy backpack.

Using the handcart can be so effortless - even when it’s heavily loaded - that it feels like you are not pushing at all.

There are several reasons for this light operation, rooted in physics. Each vehicle has to overcome three forces: rolling resistance, air resistance, and gravity. Air resistance is negligible at walking speed, meaning that a handcart user on flat terrain mainly needs to overcome rolling resistance. That’s the friction between wheels and road surface, a factor that’s largely independent of speed.

In contrast, air resistance increases with the square of speed. A cyclist, going at 15-20 km/h, already spends more effort overcoming air resistance than overcoming rolling resistance, which is the same in both cases because both vehicles have similar wheels. In short, the handcart’s low speed minimizes air resistance, while its narrow wheels minimize rolling resistance.

Image: Driving the handcart. Photo by Linda Osusky.

Second, accelerating a vehicle requires more energy than maintaining a constant speed. You only need to sustain momentum, not build it. Our handcart is pushed by a person walking, so the effort to accelerate lasts no longer than one or two seconds. In contrast, a cyclist takes much longer to reach cruise speed, and because of the higher air resistance, it takes more effort to sustain that speed. If the handcart is heavily loaded, it also gains significant kinetic energy, even at low speed. That explains why it sometimes feels like the cart is pulling you forward - because it actually is.

Finally, our wheels are much larger than those used on modern pushcarts. That makes for comfortable driving on asphalt and sidewalks, which are not as smooth as airport or supermarket floors. Large wheels increase air resistance, but because of our low speed, that doesn’t matter.

Handcarts and gravity

However, an effortless ride requires two conditions: flat terrain and a well-balanced load. Both involve the third force any vehicle must overcome: gravity.

Balancing the handcart: distributing the load

A two-wheeled cart becomes heavy and difficult to use when too much weight is placed on the front or back. Consequently, you need to load the vehicle so that the weight is equal on both sides of the wheels. That’s easy to check: the cart should remain in a horizontal position for several seconds without you touching it. If there’s just one piece of cargo, place it above the center of the wheels. If there are more things to carry, the total weight should be divided equally over the two sides. Finetuning the balance often involves moving a backpack from the front to the back of the cart, or vice versa.

You need to load the vehicle so that the weight is equal on both sides of the wheels.

A two-wheeled cart also needs additional support to keep it horizontal when parked, for instance, when loading or unloading cargo. Otherwise, the cart may suddenly flip to the other side. Our handcart carries four support beams, two on each side. When the cart is moving, they are in a horizontal position. When the cart is parked, we remove one or more beams and place them in a vertical position. Each beam can be set to a different length, allowing us to stabilize the cart on uneven terrain. We tighten the beams with screws.

Image: The handcart is parked with four supporting legs. Photo by Kris De Decker.

Image: Detail of the supporting beam holder. Photo by Kris De Decker.

Many people have asked us why we didn’t build a four-wheeled cart that wouldn’t need to be balanced. However, four wheels would double the rolling resistance and thus the effort required to push the cart. Furthermore, a four-wheeled cart is less maneuverable and more difficult to drive on uneven terrain. You also need to get two extra wheels, and you need to build a steering mechanism. Throughout history, the two-wheeled handcart (or one-wheeled handcart in the case of China) was much more common than the four-wheeled cart. ¹

Going uphill: you need help

An effortless ride also requires more or less flat terrain, which is what you get here in many parts of Barcelona. If you go up a steep slope, you suddenly feel the weight of the cart and its cargo. Climbing with a heavily loaded cart can be as strenuous as running up stairs or cycling at top speed. People tell us we should put an electric motor on the cart, and that’s perfectly possible.

However, we found a simpler solution: if necessary, we ask for help from another person. Our handlebars are wide enough for two or even three people to push together, which makes going uphill a lot easier. Adding an electric motor and a battery would significantly increase the vehicle’s weight, and it only makes sense if you regularly have to climb hills.

Going downhill: brakes

Going downhill, you have to counter gravity forces to prevent the handcart from hurling down a slope, which would be very dangerous. Rather than pushing the cart, you’ll have to pull it back instead. Here, cyclists have all the advantage, as they can use gravity to its full benefit during a descent.

We made going downhill a lot easier by adding bicycle brakes. In combination with the large wheels, the brakes also allow the handcart to be taken down sidewalk curbs or even stairs without damaging it. They double as a hand brake as well, by tightening two lashing straps around them. That allows leaving the cart unattended on a slope or in high winds.

Image: The brakes. Photo by Kris De Decker.

Handcarts go on the sidewalk

Many people assume that handcarts go on the road, with the cars, or on the cycling path. That’s not the case: you use it on the sidewalk. Legally, handcart users are in a similar position to other pedestrians pushing a smaller handcart, such as a stroller. The only difference is that, when they are forced onto the road because there’s no sidewalk or it’s blocked, handcart users should walk on the right side of the road, while other pedestrians should walk on the left. For now, the police have stopped us only once, and they were just curious.

Legally, handcart users are in a similar position to other pedestrians pushing a smaller handcart, such as a stroller.

We could find no traffic laws that limit the size of a handcart, at least not in the handful of countries we researched, including Spain. However, in practice, there are clear limits. If your vehicle is wider than the space between traffic bollards that keep cars out of pedestrian streets, all pedestrian zones will become inaccessible to you. You should also take into account other obstacles on the sidewalk, such as building scaffolding. Consequently, it’s rarely practical to build a handcart more than one meter wide.

Barcelona has very wide sidewalks in most of the city. We rarely have to share the road with cars or cyclists. Of course, that’s not the case in every city, and then the use of a handcart becomes less attractive. Using a handcart on the road or cyclepath is rather dangerous because other vehicles are much faster.

Image: Pushing the handcart through a narrow walkway. Photo by Kris De Decker.

Respecting other pedestrians

Driving a large handcart on the sidewalk demands your full attention. You don’t want to hit any infrastructure, and you surely don’t want to hit someone’s legs. You need to drive it with respect for other pedestrians and their pets (some dogs start barking at the vehicle). In general, the handcart is very safe to use because it travels at a very low speed. That makes accidents less likely in the first place and less impactful if they do happen. You also have a very good overview of your vehicle, much better than for a car or a bicycle. As long as you keep your eyes on the handcart, you are unlikely to hit anything or anyone.

However, our handcart is so silent that people don’t hear it coming. We added a bicycle bell to warn people, but we hope to find a better tune in the future: every vehicle needs its own type of sound. We also need a bell for oncoming pedestrians who are watching their phones while walking and expect others to make space. With the handcart, we cannot always make that space. Our handcart has front and rear lights as well, wired to a USB power bank mounted underneath the platform. Lights are very helpful on sidewalks, both day and night, as they make the vehicle more visible. Furthermore, lights are essential if you need to move onto the road after dark.

Images: Kris De Decker drives the handcart through Barcelona. Photos by Guillaume Lion.

Even in Barcelona, sidewalks can get crowded, and a busy sidewalk will slow down the vehicle considerably. With little chance to overtake someone, we tend to get stuck behind the slowest walkers.

A handcart is not a difficult vehicle to drive, but nowadays people in industrialized societies have no experience with it. Apart from driving it attentively, you also need to be careful when rounding blind corners (take the turn as wide as possible) and when you leave a garage or any other type of exit (pull rather than push the cart). By the time you see oncoming traffic, you already have 2 meters of your handcart on the road or around the corner.

Why not a bike trailer?

Almost everyone who sees the handcart for the first time asks the same question: how do you attach it to a bicycle? You don’t. You push it while walking. When we say that, there follows a silence. Pushing a handcart seems like one step too far back, even for people committed to living more sustainably. Why would you push a handcart if you could just as well use a much faster bike trailer, or a cargo bike?

In fact, there are several practical reasons to opt for a handcart rather than a bike trailer, and we have already mentioned many of them. First, a handcart lets you go anywhere a pedestrian can, while cyclists often need to get off their bikes and push them - just like a handcart. A handcart is also more agile. For example, although the cart is 2.5 meters long, it takes just two seconds and little space to turn it around and walk in the opposite direction from where you came from.

Why would you push a handcart if you could just as well use a much faster bike trailer, or a cargo bike?

A handcart can be built larger than a bike trailer as well. Although it’s perfectly possible to build a bike trailer the size of our handcart, its higher speed would pose much greater risk of accidents and damage, both to the cart and to other road users. As a bike trailer, it would also need to be made sturdier, and it would need a more elaborate mechanism to operate the brakes.

All this does not mean that bike trailers are a bad idea. We have used the handcart mainly for trips between 5 and 10 km, which comes down to one to two hours of walking. For longer distances, the bike trailer has the obvious advantage of speed. If you need to cover 40 km, you would need to travel eight hours with a handcart, compared to just two hours with a bike trailer.

Image: Guilhem Senges, who built the vehicle's metal parts, pushes the handcart to a welding job a few streets up in the neighborhood.

The merits of slow travel

However, when people ask us why we don’t use it as a bike trailer, we can also answer differently: why the rush? Deciding to travel with the slowest vehicle possible is subversive because it questions values we take for granted in the modern world, such as speed and utility.

To many people, walking a handcart seems like a waste of time, but our experience is exactly the opposite. Every trip is an adventure, and we always look forward to using it again. It’s a pleasure to drive the vehicle, more like steering a boat than driving a land vehicle. It’s easy to chat with other pedestrians, who tend to be very curious about our vehicle. Consequently, the trip takes even longer.

To many people, walking a handcart seems like a waste of time, but our experience is exactly the opposite.

Driving a handcart feels entirely different from using any other mode of transport. When people are walking, they usually cannot carry much with them, either in terms of weight or volume. In contrast, the handcart allows you to walk with a lot of stuff close at hand: drinks, food, a sound system, books, extra clothes. Furthermore, you have a large platform, which allows you to rest and invite others to do the same. It becomes a vehicle for wandering and roaming, and for connecting to other people.

Image: It's a pleasure to drive the vehicle, more like steering a boat than driving a land vehicle. Model: Rocío Sánchez. Photo by Kris De Decker.

Image: The handcart with rain protection. Photo by Kris De Decker.

Handcart Accessories

Once the handcart proved its utility as a cargo vehicle, Kozimo began designing and building additional structures to expand its uses. These objects make use of the slatted platform or the support beam design. Unfortunately, Kozimo’s internship ended before we could test all these extensions, but the little experience we gained by now shows that the handcart can be much more than just a cargo vehicle.

Passenger seat

The first, and perhaps most powerful addition, is a foldable seat. While our handcart can be - and usually is - operated by only one person, it’s ideally handled by two people, especially for longer voyages. Thanks to the seat, one person can push the cart while the other one rests in the vehicle.

As long as the road is flat, the extra weight of the passenger does not significantly increase the effort to push the cart. Consequently, two people can travel faster or farther in a single day. When climbing hills or bridges, the passenger gets off the seat. If necessary, he or she also helps to push the cart.

One person can push the cart while the other one rests in the vehicle, increasing the distance that two people can travel in a day.

An extra pair of eyes on the road is also handy. The seat can be put in two positions, so that both the passenger and the driver are either looking in the same direction or facing each other, which makes it easier to talk and allows the passenger to serve as the rear-view mirror.

We used the seat on a 30 km day trip along the coast of Catalunya, Spain, moving stuff from my old place to my new place. For one person, this would have been an exhausting trip. However, there were several people on the way there, and two people on the way back. The fact that we could rest from time to time - without stopping - made a great difference, especially on the way back. An extra person also proved useful when unexpected obstacles arose. For example, there was a bridge under repair, which forced us to carry the cart down the rocks, over the beach, and up the rocks again.

Image: A foldable seat on the slatted platform. Photo by Kris De Decker.

Image: Kozimo drives the handcart along the coast. Linda Osusky is filming while resting in the seat. Photo by Kris De Decker.

Images: Carrying the handcart over the rocks. Photos by Linda Osusky.

Digital nomad office

As a second addition, we combined the seat with a work table that doubles as a solar power plant, resulting in a digital nomad office. The table fits onto the sides of the handcart and slides back and forth. The solar panel can be in a horizontal position or at various tilted angles. It can charge a laptop or any other device requiring up to 100 watts of power.

If you’re two people traveling, one person can work at the table while the other drives. If you’re alone, you can wheel the vehicle to the nearest park or beach, set up the four support legs, and work all day. In 2016, I took my home office off the grid with solar panels on the window sills. ⁴ Ten years later, both the office and the solar panels have become mobile.

Images: Digital nomad office. Photos by Kris De Decker.

Image: Digital nomad office. Photo by Kris De Decker.

Renewable power plant

Although we built only one solar panel support structure, the handcart platform is large enough to support a total of four 100-watt solar panels. That would provide us with 400 watts of solar power for a concert or emergency power, for example. The handcart can also transport the two bike generators Low-tech Magazine has in Barcelona. ⁵Consequently, the cart enables us to quickly provide power within a radius of several kilometers, at any time of the day. The handcart could also be wheeled into a sunny spot during the day, charging a battery bank to power a household during the night and in bad weather.

Mobile home

If you want to get back home the same day, the handcart’s range is roughly 40-80 km (8-16 hours of walking, back and forth). However, at least in my case, nobody obliges me to come back home the same day. I could use the handcart for longer voyages, especially since it offers me a place to sleep.

The four supporting legs that make loading and unloading the cart more practical can also be used to turn the vehicle into a bed. After Kozimo went back to the Netherlands, I bought a foldable mattress that fits neatly on the platform. During a trip, I can store the other cargo under the cart at night. Alternatively, I could push a passenger who’s lying in the bed, turning the vehicle into an adult version of a baby stroller.

Images: A foldable sleeping mattress on the handcart. Photos by Kris De Decker.

Image: A mosquito net covers the handcart with a sleeping mattress. Photo by Kris De Decker.

Kozimo also made four supporting legs that are almost two meters long. I can use them to erect a tent around the bed, and cover the structure with modern tent materials, wool blankets, or a mosquito net. The large poles can also dry laundry. Furthermore, I could use the supporting legs in various combinations to convert the cart into a podium, expo stand, market stand, or a cinema or presentation screen.

The seat, table, solar panel, sleeping mattress, and longer poles can all be carried on the handcart simultaneously, leaving ample space for other luggage. That means that I could potentially work, live, and travel in the vehicle, turning it into a nomadic home. It fits somewhere between the tiny house on wheels, the tipi, and the homeless shack. Rents got very expensive in Barcelona, so I may as well give it a try.

Image: The handcart is packed for a longer trip. Photo by Kris De Decker.

Sailing and roller skating the handcart

Finally, Kozimo made a small sail for the handcart to help pull a heavy load in a good wind; the vehicle is sometimes used along the coast. Of course, we got the inspiration from the use of sails on the historical Chinese wheelbarrow. For a longer trip, the sail fits on the cart, so I could use it whenever the opportunity arises.

Images: The handcart with a 1m2 sail. Model: Iris De Decker. Photos by Kris De Decker.

We could increase the speed of the handcart by using a larger sail, and combining it with roller blades, inline skates, or a skateboard. In that case, the cart would pull the driver in good winds. It’s also possible to push the cart while using roller blades, inline skates, or an electric unicycle, without a sail. For now, we did a first small test on flat terrain using inline skates, with very good results. If you would take enough cargo, the kinetic energy of a skate-powered handcart would regularly pull you forward even without a sail.

The higher speeds of these configurations obviously introduce more risk and, most likely, trouble with the police. Higher speeds require ample space, free of pedestrians. That almost always pushes the handcart on the road, between the cars, as most cycle paths are not wide enough. However, it shows that sustainable vehicles could take many different forms if only we would give them the space to flourish. There are more than enough roads suitable for sailing and roller-skating handcarts; we need to empty them of cars and vans.

Images: Julia Steketee drives the handcart on online skates. Photos by Kris De Decker.

Handcart design and construction: Kozimo, Guilhem Senges.
Photos: Kris De Decker, Linda Osusky, Guillaume Lion.
Special thanks to: AkashaHub Barcelona, Carmen Tanaka, Gaston Quispe Castros, Linda Osusky, Guillaume Lion, Rocío Sánchez, Iris De Decker, Lili-Roos Noeyens, Julia Steketee, Tim Rudolph, Guilherme Maglio, Selcen Küçüküstel.
Marie Verdeil and Roel Roscam Abbing contributed to the selection of images.

Bulliet, Richard W. The wheel: inventions and reinventions. Columbia University Press, 2016. ↩︎ ↩︎
How to downsize a transport network: The Chinese wheelbarrow, Kris De Decker, Low-tech Magazine, 2011. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/how-to-downsize-a-transport-network-the-chinese-wheelbarrow/ ↩︎
You could build a handcart with stronger wheels, either heavy-duty wheelchair wheels (available up to 350 kg) or cargo-bike wheels. However, stronger wheels are likely wider, which increases rolling resistance. It would also become more difficult to push these heavier loads up a steep incline. ↩︎
How to get your apartment off-the-grid, Kris De Decker, Low-tech Magazine, 2016. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/05/how-to-get-your-apartment-off-the-grid/ ↩︎
How to build a practical household bike generator, Kris De Decker & Marie Verdeil, Low-tech Magazine, 2022. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2022/03/how-to-build-a-practical-household-bike-generator/ ↩︎

This post has benefited from generous contributions from Austin Vernon, Malcolm Davis, Sam D’Amico, and others who do not necessarily endorse the conclusions of this piece. I will follow Australian spelling conventions in this piece.

I’ve written a few pieces over the years about Australian energy and economic policy, and now I’m dipping my toes into defence. The usual disclaimers apply; this post represents my opinions only. I’m a dual US/Australia citizen, resident in Los Angeles, where I founded and run Terraform Industries, a solar synthetic fuel tech startup. I write this as someone who is familiar with the 2023 Defence Strategic Review, the 2024 and 2026 National Defence Strategies, and the 2024 and 2026 Integrated Investment Programs (IIP). While each successive document diagnoses the strategic environment with increasing accuracy it allocates capital against a threat model that no longer exists.

Australia spends nearly AUD $60B/year (US $40B/year) on defence, about 2% of GDP. The 2026 National Defence Strategy commits to raising this to 3% by 2033 and allocates $425B over the coming decade, but increased expenditure won’t buy increased security if it’s spent on weapons that are no longer determinative.

To avoid burying the lead, it is my contention that Australia should be able to achieve far more bang for its buck running competitive, lean, mean domestic weapons development programs focused on the newly demonstrated and increasingly determinative drones-of-various-kinds platforms. This is in stark contrast to the existing practice of spending >90% of acquisitions funding on foreign weapons platforms and much of the remainder on outrageously expensive failed development programs, such as the Hunter class anti-submarine frigate. This ship, which will spend eight years under construction until first launch in 2032, was based on a British design and will end up costing over $7b, per hull!

Let’s contrast this to the US, hardly a paragon of lean defense spending. $7b would buy you a Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carrier – including the planes. It would buy you the complete ground up development costs of nuclear attack submarines, with enough left over to pilot ballistic missile submarines and develop the original trident missile. It would buy you the complete ground up development of Falcon 9 and Starlink. That’s just for a single Hunter-class hull – Australia is currently planning to build six!

Why maintain a defence force at all?

The primary purpose is to maintain Australia’s capacity for peaceful self determination indefinitely into the future. That is, absolute national sovereignty requires Australia to maintain the ability to secure its territory, deter hostile aggression, and control its destiny.

Without putting too fine a point on it, the purpose of the Australian Defence Force is to ensure that the calamity that befell Ukraine can never occur to Australia. While focused on Australia, this analysis could also be translated with minimal changes to other middle powers.

Australia is rich (US$69,360 GDP per capita), populous (28m + 1m diaspora), educated, peaceful, democratic, liberal, and financially stable. It has enormous territory and unmatched natural resources. It has much that foreign powers covet through either open or covert warfare.

Australia’s current GDP exceeds that of every WW2 belligerent in 1940, even the US. It exceeds the combined economic power of all the Axis powers. And yet somehow, in 1940, in a world before computers, reliable diesel engines, modern healthcare, all the WW2 powers were able to churn out planes, tanks, ships, submarines, and munitions. The US produced nearly 300,000 planes. Even countries with terrible climates that are still poverty stricken in 2026, like Russia, were able to produce 160,000 aircraft back in the early 1940s.

In contrast, wealthy, modern Australia was able to assemble 73 F-18 fighters from mostly imported components between 1984 and 1990, and nothing for the last 36 years.

This is a festering problem that is now inviting catastrophe.

What the strategy documents say

The Albanese government’s position on Australian defence rests on three documents released in three consecutive biennial cycles.

The 2023 Defence Strategic Review (Smith / Houston) concluded that the ADF is “not fully fit for purpose” and that the historical ten-year warning window before major conflict no longer applies. It accepted 105 of 108 classified recommendations and identified six priorities: AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines, long-range strike and domestic munitions manufacture, northern base hardening, workforce retention, rapid translation of disruptive technology into ADF capability, and deepening Indo-Pacific partnerships.

The 2024 National Defence Strategy introduced two doctrinal inventions that now anchor Australian defence planning: National Defence (a whole-of-nation concept spanning maritime, land, air, space, cyber) and the Strategy of Denial (the cornerstone of Defence planning, intended to deter adversaries from projecting power through Australia’s northern approaches). Deterrence was elevated to Australia’s primary strategic defence objective, above the previously co-equal “shape” and “respond.” The accompanying IIP committed $330B through 2033/34.

The 2026 National Defence Strategy, released last week on 16 April 2026, builds on rather than departs from the 2024 framework. It raises the fiscal envelope to $425B over the decade, adds $14B over the forward estimates, and benchmarks defence spending at 3% of GDP by 2033. It lists seven IIP priorities: enhanced undersea warfare via nuclear-powered submarines, accelerated lethal maritime capabilities, expanded long-range strike, integrated air and missile defence (IAMD), expanded autonomous and uncrewed systems, counter-UAS for critical infrastructure, and resilient multi-orbit satellite communications. It claims lessons from Ukraine and the Middle East have been absorbed, and it emphasizes self-reliance, industrial resilience, and civil preparedness.

This is, on the face of it, a reasonable set of documents. The strategic diagnosis is correct. The Strategy of Denial is the right doctrine for a middle power: deterrence-by-punishment and deterrence-by-retaliation are beyond Australia’s resources, as Retired Major General Mick Ryan has noted. The rhetorical emphasis on sovereign industrial base, Ukraine lessons, and autonomous systems reads well.

The problem is the capability acquisition list that actually gets funded.

Why the strategy will fail in execution

The unifying defect of the current program is a mismatch between the rhetorical doctrine (denial, mass, self-reliance, Ukraine lessons) and the capital allocation (foreign-sourced exquisite platforms, long lead times, workforce-intensive crewed systems, single-digit hull counts).

Four critiques from inside the Australian strategic-policy establishment make this point from different angles, and I quote them here to establish that this diagnosis is not idiosyncratic:

The Lowy Institute (2026) describes NDS 26 as “modest spending, welcome reforms” — a continuation of NDS 24 rather than a departure. It notes that Australian defence policy is developed within a narrow Canberra circle largely insulated from external scrutiny, and that Minister Marles’s dismissal of think-tank and retired-officer input at the National Press Club reflects a structural problem, not a tactical misstep.
Meanwhile, the same author (retired Major General, CSIS fellow Mick Ryan) remarks on his Substack that AUKUS Pillar 1 plus conventional ADF modernization cannot both be funded at current spending — one will squeeze the other. He also documents that military star-rank officers grew 33% over the past decade while enlisted ranks shrank 1%, which is difficult to reconcile with the claim of a more effective, faster-moving force.
Sam Roggeveen argues that increased spending may be necessary but buys us little if it only increases co-dependency on US operational capability, undermining the premise of improving self reliance!
Asia Pacific Defence Reporter summarized the ADF press release, but comments immediately identified the weaknesses with respect to environmental shifts since 2024 that the new document does not absorb: weakening US alliance commitments, reduced US Asia deployments, two theaters of successful low-cost mass drone warfare, and chronically underfunded British defence investment. Despite all of this, AUKUS Pillar 1 remains the centerpiece of Australian acquisition.

The argument I make below starts from these observations and pushes further.

The electric stack has inverted the offense/defence cost curve

The core technical fact that Australian defence planning has not absorbed is what Packy McCormick and Sam D’Amico call the Electric Slide: the five foundational technologies of the electric stack — motors, batteries, power electronics, sensors, and edge compute — have each decosted by roughly 100× over the past 30 years. The guidance electronics that in 1990 required a government munitions program now ship as the cheapest component in a disposable toy.

The practical result, demonstrated across Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh, the Red Sea, the cartel conflicts in northern Mexico, and now the Persian Gulf, is a cost-exchange regime in which a $500–$5,000 drone can plausibly destroy a $1M–$100M asset. Ukraine produced more than 2 million drones in 2024, and doubled that in 2025. Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which in 2021 was significantly larger than the Royal Australian Navy, has been reduced by approximately 45% by an adversary with no navy at all. The dominant ships were destroyed by autonomous surface vessels and anti-ship missiles at a cost-exchange ratio on the order of 1:1000. Houthi operations have forced US carrier strike groups into standoff. Cartel drones routinely contest Mexican state control in Michoacán and Sinaloa.

This is not a speculative threat. It is the observed empirical base rate of every live conflict since 2020. The chart below shows just how cheaply an adversary can now asymmetrically convert exquisite war fighting systems into scrap metal.

Australia’s existing force, and the force envisioned by IIP 26, is built to engage a different set of adversaries under a different set of cost-exchange assumptions. If a legacy system is operated as part of an integrated force with robust Integrated Air and Missile Defence, directed-energy weapons, resilient Command and Control, counter-UAS coverage, and updated tactics, it may retain some utility, albeit at enormous expense. The question is whether Australia has any of those enablers at scale, and whether NDS 26 funds them at the rate the threat demands. The honest answer to both is no.

Domain-by-domain

(With apologies for acronym soup, I have done by best to link/summarize/rationalize!)

LAND

System	IOC	Units	Unit cost (A$)	Vulnerability assessment
M1A1 Abrams MBT (tank)	2007	59 (most transferred to Ukraine and subsequently destroyed)	~$15M	HIGH. Cold War tank optimized for maneuver warfare. Top-attack loitering munitions (Lancet-class), FPV drones with shaped charges, ATGM-armed UAS all lethal. Trophy APS not yet fitted. Weight precludes most regional deployment.
AS21 Redback IFV (tank)	2025–27	129 planned	~$27M	MOD-HIGH. New Hanwha platform. Better protected than M113AS4 but at 42t still vulnerable to top-attack precision munitions. Active protection to be fitted.
Boxer CRV 8×8 (tank)	2025–26	211	~$12M	MOD-HIGH. Lance turret 30mm provides some counter-UAS capability. No integrated APS.
M113AS4 APC (tank)	2007 (upgrade)	~340	~$3M upgrade	HIGH. 1960s aluminium hull. No counter-UAS capability. Replacement overdue.
Bushmaster PMV (armored truck)	2005	~1,100	~$1.5M	MOD. Low unit cost makes individual losses tolerable.
Hawkei PMV-L (armored truck)	2018	~1,100	~$2M	MOD. Similar profile to Bushmaster.
AS9 Huntsman SPH (K9) (howitzer)	2026	30	~$25M	HIGH. SPHs are the priority target for counter-battery UAS. Only 30 units — loss of a handful is operationally significant.
M777A2 155mm Towed (howitzer)	2010	54	~$5M	HIGH. Static when firing, slow to displace. Ukraine has proven this type extremely vulnerable.
M142 HIMARS (rocket launcher)	2025	42 (+48 ordered)	~$8M	MOD. Dispersible, shoot-and-scoot. GMLRS/ATACMS/PrSM is the real capability. First domestic GMLRS test-fired at Woomera (April 2026).
NASAMS (LAND 19 Ph 7B) (surface to air missile)	2025–27	TBD	TBD	LOW (defensive). But: NASAMS is a short-range system based on AMRAAM. Does not close the IAMD gap. NDS 26 revived the MRGBAD program to layer above NASAMS — an implicit admission that the 20+ year Ground Based Air Defense (GBAD) gap has not been closed.
MRGBAD (medium-range GBAD)	TBD	TBD	TBD	New in NDS 26. Represents the first funded commitment to medium-range air and missile defence in two decades. Essential but late.
ARH Tiger Attack Helo	2004	22	~$55M	HIGH. Being replaced by Apache. Sustainment availability has been <40%.
AH-64E Apache (helicopter)	2025–26	29	~$80M	MOD-HIGH. Class faces existential questions post-Ukraine. Standoff missile capability helps.
CH-47F Chinook	2015	14	~$60M	HIGH in contested airspace. Essential for logistics, no self-defence vs precision munitions.
UH-60M Black Hawk	2025–27	40 ordered	~$40M	MOD-HIGH. Replacing Taipan. Same class vulnerability as all utility helicopters.

AIR

System	IOC	Units	Unit cost (A$)	Vulnerability assessment
F-35A Lightning II	2018	72	~$110M	LOW-MOD. 5th-gen. Primary vulnerability is basing — small number of northern airfields are targetable and have no IAMD. ALIS/ODIN creates US dependency. AIM-260 JATM (air to air missile) acquisition now confirmed per IIP 26. LRASM (anti ship missile) to be integrated.
F/A-18F Super Hornet	2010	24	~$90M	MOD. 4.5-gen, not survivable vs modern IADS. Useful for standoff strike with JASSM-ER and LRASM (now operational). HACM (Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile) development under US partnership. Block III upgrade in progress.
EA-18G Growler	2017	12	~$100M	LOW-MOD. Only non-US Growler operator. Extremely high value.
E-7A Wedgetail (radar plane)	2009	6	~$350M	MOD. Vulnerable to long-range AAMs (PL-15 class). Only 6 airframes. The future of this platform lies in MUM/T battle management for autonomous systems, not as a standalone AEW.
P-8A Poseidon (sub hunter)	2017	14	~$250M	MOD. Not survivable in contested airspace. ASW capability essential.
C-17A Globemaster III	2006	8	~$330M	HIGH if forward-deployed. Irreplaceable — 8 airframes, no planned replacement.
C-130J Hercules	2006	12 (+ 8 on order per IIP 26)	~$130M	HIGH if forward-deployed. IIP 26 expands fleet to 20.
C-27J Spartan	2015	10	~$60M	MOD-HIGH. Useful for dispersed archipelagic ops.
KC-30A MRTT (tanker plane)	2011	7	~$300M	MOD. Essential force multiplier. Only 7.
MQ-4C Triton	2024–25	4 (+3 planned)	~$200M	HIGH. Large, slow, non-maneuvering. Not survivable in contested airspace.
MQ-28A Ghost Bat	2024 (IOT&E)	~6 test articles	~$30–40M	MOD. Points in the right direction, but at current unit cost not attritable by drone-war standards. Unit cost must fall 10–30× and production rate rise by orders of magnitude before Ghost Bat matters at the force level. As a learning lab and a template for evolved CCAs, more valuable.

SEA

System	IOC	Units	Unit cost (A$)	Vulnerability assessment
Hobart-class DDG (guided missile destroyer)	2017	3	~$3B	MOD. Aegis + SM-2/SM-6/ESSM. Tomahawk recently added. Only 3 hulls. Vulnerable to saturation AShBM/AShCM and USVs.
Anzac-class FFH (helicopter frigate)	1996	7	~$800M (original)	HIGH. 1990s design. Being replaced by SEA 3000 Advanced Mogami-class frigates (11 planned, 10,000 nm range, 32-cell VLS).
Hunter-class FFG	~2031 (est.)	6 planned (down from 9)	~$7–8B per hull (not an aircraft carrier!!)	Cost blowouts and delays, 32 VLS cells per hull. Entire program yields 192 VLS cells — one US Arleigh Burke Flight III carries 96. ASW-focused. A $45B+ program delivering two destroyers’ worth of missile cells.
SEA 3000 Mogami-class	2029–30	11 planned	~$1.5B	New in IIP 26. 32-cell VLS, 10,000 nm range. Japanese design, first 3 Japanese built. Doubles surface combatant fleet over the decade at $52–65B.
Arafura-class OPV (offshore patrol)	2024	6 (of 12)	~$500M	HIGH. OPV, lightly armed — some hulls entering service without main armament fitted. Constabulary only.
Canberra-class LHD (baby carrier)	2014	2	~$1.5B	HIGH. 27,000t amphib, minimal self-defence. Must be heavily escorted.
HMAS Choules (LSD)	2011	1	~$150M acquired	HIGH. Landing ship, dock. Old, slow, poorly armed.
Collins-class SSK (attack submarine)	1996	6	~$1.2B original	LOW-MOD. Quiet on battery. Historically poor availability. The most survivable major ADF platform if maintained and crewed.
SSN-AUKUS (future)	~2040s	8 planned	~$30–40B per (!)	Not operational for 15+ years. Program cost consumes a huge share of envelope.
Virginia-class SSN (interim) (nuclear attack sub)	~2033	3 planned	~$5–6B purchase	If delivered on schedule, the most capable platform in ADF inventory. Crewing and basing challenges.
Ghost Shark XL-AUV (robot submarine)	2024 (prototype)	TBD	~$40–100M	LOW. Anduril autonomous. Potentially game-changing. Scale is the question.

SPACE / CYBER

System	IOC	Units	Cost (A$)	Vulnerability assessment
JP 9102 (MILSATCOM)	~2027	Multi-orbit	~$3–4B	Redefined in NDS 26 as multi-orbit for resilience. Number of satellites and timeline unspecified.
DEF 799 (Space Surveillance)	—	—	—	Effectively disappeared from public reporting over the last two years. Likely quietly cancelled or downscaled. No sovereign space-based ISR.
DARC (Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability)	Partial	—	Joint AU/US/UK program	Trilateral SSA capability out to GEO. Australia is a partner, not sole operator — co-dependent rather than fully sovereign.
Jindalee OTH Radar (JORN)	2003	3 sites	~$2.5B total	HIGH. Ground-based, fixed, targetable — but geographically remote. Irreplaceable sovereign capability.
REDSPICE (ASD Cyber)	2022	—	~$10B / 10yr	Offensive and defensive cyber. Doubles ASD capability. Arguably the best value-for-money investment in the ADF: asymmetric, scalable, sovereign.

In short, almost none of Australia’s current or near future weapon systems are useful against any adversary capable of obtaining the specific kinds of missile or drone warfare systems that are routinely fielded by such poorly funded outfits as second tier Mexican cartels, investigative journalists, Hamas, and Houthi rebels, as we have seen time and time again in Ukraine, Iran, and other places.

This may seem unbelievable. So unbelievable that, for example, you can measure Russia’s state of denial in their loss of more than 2600 tanks to drone attacks in the last four years. Australia doesn’t have 2600 spare tanks to learn this lesson. We live in the future, and highly capable attack drones are significantly less difficult to build than, say, a motorcycle.

The structural problem, restated

Australia’s capability posture is built around high-unit-cost, low-count, foreign-sourced exquisite platforms — a force structure appropriate to a world where precision strike was a US/USSR duopoly and tactical mass was a minor consideration. That world is gone. In the world NDS 26 claims to operate in — the post-Ukraine, post-Red Sea, post-Nagorno-Karabakh world — tactical mass is everything, and the cost-exchange regime rewards the side that can produce cheap guided munitions in volume.

Australia produces essentially none of these domestically. Approximately 90% of Australian defence acquisition spending flows offshore, primarily to the US. The 2024 NDS identified this as a problem and committed to sovereign industrial resilience; the 2026 NDS reiterates the commitment and adds some additional funding. Neither document commits to domestic manufacturing at the scale or tempo the threat model requires.

Despite spending $60b/year, foreseeable advances in drone weapons have rendered not only Australia’s legacy defence systems but almost all of its current generation of acquisitions obsolete.

On land we have vehicles, tanks, artillery, attack helicopters, all of which are extremely expensive cannon fodder for drones or guided rockets. As we have seen in Ukraine, when a $1000 drone can take out a $1m tank or $100m aircraft, the asset light combatant has a sharp advantage.

On sea, we are planning to spend AUD$70b (1.5x the entire Manhattan Project!) on six Hunter Class Frigates that are far too few to defend our maritime borders and just as vulnerable to explosive jet skis as Russia’s black sea fleet, halved in four years by a conventionally far weaker adversary who doesn’t even have a navy, and who extracted casualties with a 1:1000 cost exchange ratio. Australia is rich but not that rich.

The only systems which are not floating boxes of explosives and sailors visible from space are the submarines, consisting of the rapidly aging Collins fleet and the AUKUS submarines that are as expensive and foreign as they are far off.

In air, Australia has about 100 foreign-built fighters. Which airforce are they built to engage? Australia doesn’t have a regional peer adversary who is going to slug it out fighter to fighter. 100 F-18s and F-35s could hardly stand up to Chinese air power and represent high value targets (particularly when on the ground) to irregular insurgent/proxy/asymmetrical combatants, against which they have struggled to engage in similar conflicts elsewhere. Israel has plenty of jets but they were not particularly useful in stopping rocket attacks from Gaza.

In all cases, this is hardware built for fighting yesterday’s wars. The electric stack has de-costed by a factor of 100-1000, putting sharply asymmetrical threats directly into the fight. In WW2, the Allies were ultimately able to achieve crushing air superiority and then destruction of enemy energy and transport infrastructure via the saturation Combined Bombing Offensive. Eighty years later, wars are once again decided by materiel production capacity, only adversaries can easily field 100 times as many aircraft and operate them with software rather than trained pilots.

Despite spending nearly AUD$60b/year, Australia is functionally undefended and undefendable. The unstated premise of this conversation is whether Australia’s military is powerful enough to deter, that is, to compel the resolution of disputes through diplomatic channels, with strong military powers like China. But this isn’t how most wars are fought anymore.

Instead, adversarial powers prefer to act with a winking deniability between networks of proxies, committing a litany of sub-threshold hybrid outrages that are calibrated to fall short of an open declaration of war while doing everything possible to degrade their opponents.

Grey-zone threats the strategy underweights

The documents acknowledge “hybrid threats” but the IIP does not allocate against them at scale. The actual vectors being used against Australia and similar middle powers today include:

Submarine cable cuts and seabed infrastructure sabotage, as seen in the Baltic and around Taiwan.
Industrial espionage and IP theft, documented extensively across Australian universities and critical-tech companies.
Cyber operations against critical infrastructure (Optus, Medibank, DP World) with state attribution in several cases.
Covert police operations and diaspora surveillance, documented against the Chinese overseas security apparatus.
Deliberate information operations across social platforms, especially during elections and referendums.
Deliberate introduction of biological disease vectors and operation of domestic clandestine laboratories with foreign links and funding.
Predatory dumping of both legitimate and contraband products to degrade domestic industry and social cohesion.
Mysterious degradation of critical infrastructure.

A further strategic problem: any adversary can use Australia’s much smaller, closer neighbours, or enormous swaths of uninhabited sovereign territory, or even existing infrastructure, as covert staging grounds. In a world where adversaries now routinely preposition containers of offensive drones within a mile of their target, how are Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, parts of Indonesia, and the broader Pacific arc, let alone the 99% of Australia with no significant human presence, meant to counter this threat? A few shipping containers of Shaheds or lightly modified commercial drones, released by a non-state proxy, would be sufficient to regionally neutralize Australian military power, with no warning, no formal declaration of war. This is not speculative. Hezbollah has conducted Shahed operations against Israel from Iraq and Yemen. Houthi operations have targeted commercial shipping and US naval assets at 1000+ km standoff. Wagner / Africa Corps conducts similar operations across the Sahel. The base rate of proxy-staged drone warfare is not hypothetical, rather, it is the modal form of contemporary conflict.

In 1943, Australian commandos were able to infiltrate Japan-occupied Singapore in a disguised fishing boat, sinking or damaging six ships. This sort of raid could only be done once, at enormous risk and limited impact. Today, a similar raid could be executed by a competent high school robotics team with autonomous boats, or deployed at literally 1000x the scale and 1000x less cost by a well-resourced military.

What the 2026 IIP does not buy, and must

In the following, I advocate strongly for domestic production capacity. This does not mean autarky. It means possessing enough of the stack that either the remaining supply chains are highly fungible, or Australia has enough aggregate industrial power to earn a seat at the table when supply is constrained.

(I drafted this post before the latest conflict in Iran. Then, I worried that Australia lacking bargaining power in a resource constrained environment would be hard to motivate. Now, with Australian agriculture on the verge of diesel starvation, it is only too obvious.)

None of what follows is technically difficult relative to Australian economic and technological capacity. The Soviet Union delivered most of it in the 1950s, at a fraction of Australia’s current real GDP per capita. Each program below could be operated for under AUD $1B/year — well within the existing defence envelope.

Indeed, programs fail more often from over funding causing indigestion than underfunding. Committing to tight budgets and schedules is the key to success.

Must-have domestic capability

Orbital launch capability. SpaceX developed Falcon 1 in five years for under $100M. Rocket Lab repeated the feat with Electron a decade later. Gilmour Space Technology in Queensland is developing the Eris vehicle — the first Australian-developed orbital-class rocket — and represents the nascent beginning of sovereign launch. It is privately funded, chronically under-supported by the government, and has not yet reached orbit. Compare Rocket Lab’s trajectory, which benefited from early NZ government partnership and US customer access. Without sovereign launch, Australia lives under a sky controlled by others.

Domestic comsat, spysat, radar sat, and GNSS capability. SpaceX ships some of the most advanced satellites ever built, for less than $1M per unit. The US, China, India, Russia, Europe, and Japan each operate sovereign GNSS constellations. Planet Labs, a private company, operates hundreds of imaging satellites and offers sub-metre resolution. Umbra operates a SAR constellation resolving better than 1 m in any weather. The ADF buys or requests access to intelligence that any civilian with a credit card can purchase — and has no sovereign path to independent ISR because DEF 799 has effectively disappeared from the public IIP over the last two years. JP 9102 has been redefined to multi-orbit per NDS 26, but the number of satellites and timeline remain unspecified. Through DARC, Australia is a partner in deep-space SSA — genuinely useful, but co-dependent with the US and UK, not sovereign.

One million drones per month manufacturing capacity, with local supply chains and/or stockpiles sufficient for more than a year of sustained conflict. Ukraine produced over 2 million drones in 2024 and 4 million in 2025 — a wartime economy, certainly, but Ukraine’s pre-war GDP was a quarter of Australia’s. Australia has a strong drone innovation community (the current world drone speed record is held by an Australian hobbyist) but no production base worth the name.

Drones require motors, structures, batteries, power electronics, and controllers. Most of these parts can be mass-produced with startup capital in the ~$1B range per category. Standing up semiconductor fab capacity for controllers, MEMS sensors, and CMOS cameras at drone-adequate nodes would cost approximately $5B. The first step is supplier relationships and stockpiling; the second is a land-and-expand domestic fab strategy with enough strategic ambiguity about actual capacity that defence saturation or blockade are unacceptably risky for an adversary. Either Australia has the ability to produce its own industrial controllers, or it ends up — as Russia has — cannibalising white goods for guided-munition chips. Fabricating 1980s-era 8086-class processors is not technically difficult; those nodes are adequate for the vast majority of drone applications. But… Australia bulldozed its only functional fab in 2021 to extend the Sydney Metro.

Austin Vernon has described the necessary fleet architecture in his drone airforce essay. The point is that the key components are the same across drone types, which means that a single industrial base serves the entire mission set.

Missile defence. Israel, the US, and other allies have operationalised layered missile defence systems. What were infeasible science projects in the 1960s and unreliable demonstrators in the 1990s are now mature enough to shift deterrence calculus — not to guarantee leak-proof defence, which is physically difficult against a capable adversary, but to raise the cost of strike sufficiently to change the adversary’s planning. A system that intercepts more than 50–70% of incoming threats is a strategic asset; it does not need to be perfect to deter. Australia’s NDS 26 MRGBAD acquisition is the first real step in two decades, but it is a purchased point-defence capability, not a sovereign system. Building a domestic layered IAMD would cost a fraction of AUKUS and deliver deterrent value on a much shorter timescale.

There are multiple rocket hobbyists on YouTube currently building rockets that, with some extra-legal tweaks, would be capable of missile defence. AI coding agents are more than capable of writing the entire software stack in an afternoon. Australia does not need to spend billions of dollars and wait decades to purchase this capability from foreign nations.

Energy independence.

Australia has oil and tight shale but has allowed domestic refining capacity to collapse. Two refineries are not enough. This is re-discovered every few years, including the current gulf crisis.
Australia invented the modern solar module and then actively exported the technology to China. It is now time to play an active role in the production of the materials and technology that power the electric stack. Building GW-scale solar and inviting the world to smelt their aluminium and other metals in Australia is a path to both wealth and strategic weight.

Submarines.

Surface naval assets are increasingly vulnerable against any adversary. Conventional wisdom maintains that surface ships can still function inside an integrated force given sufficient organic integrated air/missile defence (IAMD), electronic warfare (EW), counter unmanned aerial system (C-UAS), and coalition coverage but it is not the empirical pattern of recent conflicts. The Black Sea Fleet, operating inside its own anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) bubble with the full range of Russian EW and air cover, was reduced 45% by an adversary without a navy. The Moskva and Sevastopol strikes were the headline cases; the attritional campaign against patrol craft, intelligence ships, and the Kerch Bridge was continuous. Surface ships can be made more survivable. They cannot currently be made cheap enough for an attrition regime.
Submarines retain genuine utility. They are used for anti-shipping, anti-submarine, special-forces insertion, strategic chokepoint interdiction, electronic intelligence, and missile launch. Crewed submarines perform all these missions, but autonomous submarines can perform many of them, and the technology is trending there — Australia’s Ghost Shark program is a leading example.
Submarines require air-independent propulsion. The Collins class has demonstrated that Australia can operate large long-range diesel-electric submarines for decades, though transit speed and time on station are so limited that coverage of Australia’s top four strategic chokepoints would require a fleet of over one hundred submarines of this type.
The US Navy developed the first nuclear submarine powerplant in 1173 days for approximately $2.5B in current dollars, including two hulls and the adjacent unsuccessful sodium-cooled reactor work, as well as all the start-up costs associated with building the first ever nuclear power reactors, such as developing a supply chain for hafnium and vanadium from scratch. Seven decades of design heritage and modern computational tools later, Australia is being told that buying foreign-designed and mostly foreign-built nuclear submarine powerplants will cost $30–40B over 15+ years. Why do the error bars on this purchase exceed by a large factor the real world cost and time for long dead pioneers to do it for the first time ever? Brazil is developing sovereign nuclear submarine technology. A domestic Australian submarine powerplant effort, capped at $1B and four years, is technically feasible. Whether it is politically feasible is a separate question.

Must-have domestic participation

AI sovereignty. The near future will run on CCP AI or US AI. Choose wisely.

Australia must retain the ability to make material contributions to US frontier AI, and therefore to derive special benefits from it.
Australia does not need to run a nationalized frontier model or replicate TSMC. It does need to contribute enough of the stack to stay in the conversation.
Australian expats are well-represented at every frontier AI company. A “Federation Fellowship” structured to repatriate senior talent on favourable terms could help, but would need significant follow through.
Australia is geographically ideal for large solar-powered AI datacenters, but would need legal reform to bring Australian fair-use and training-data rules into alignment with US practice.

Nuclear weapons. This is the most politically fraught recommendation in this document, and I want to state it precisely.

The technical argument: producing a nuclear weapon is not especially hard given baseline industrial capacity. The 1964 Nth Country Experiment showed that three physics PhDs with no classified access produced a workable weapon design in 2.5 years.

The strategic argument: the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine relinquished its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security “guarantees”, has become the canonical example of why middle powers without independent deterrents are structurally vulnerable. Having a nuclear deterrent guarantees a baseline of absolute national sovereignty that no alliance commitment can replicate.

The political and industrial argument: Australia has a tiny civil nuclear industry, no enrichment or separation capability, no testing infrastructure, and — at present — no political coalition willing to sustain the investment. That said, North Korea is hardly an economic powerhouse and was able to build plutonium weapons despite determined interference by its adversaries. The NPT and various regional agreements would need to be renegotiated, exited, or ignored.

The point of listing nuclear weapons here is to identify an asymmetry: the technical and industrial obstacles are self-imposed and reversible on a sub-decade timescale given political will. The political constraint is the binding one. If Australian political will to sustain sovereign security catches up to the realities of the post-unipolar era, the nuclear question will be on the table, and the preparation — civil nuclear industry, enrichment-adjacent capability, professional workforce — should begin now regardless.

Having a nuclear deterrent guarantees absolute national sovereignty. After WW1 and WW2, England and France did not hesitate for an instant to ensure they could never again suffer outrages from the industrial might of Germany and later, the Soviets. It is better to have it and not need it than to think “she’ll be right mate” and bequeath eternal slavery and damnation to your descendents.

Conclusion

None of the capabilities above are hard to build relative to Australian economic and technological capacity. The Soviet Union did them in the 1950s. Each program could be operated for under AUD $1B/year — a rounding error inside the existing defence budget, and less than a tenth of what AUKUS Pillar 1 is projected to consume annually by the late 2030s.

Unlike the current acquisition pattern, which sends most capital offshore in exchange for indefinite dependence on foreign industrial complexes for maintenance and support, a domestic weapons-platform development policy accumulates research and production expertise within Australia, where its value appreciates over time, including in the civilian economy. Expat Australians work at every frontier technology company on earth. Australian hobbyists hold world records in the relevant disciplines. The constraint has never been talent, capital, or technology.

The 2023 Defence Strategic Review diagnosed the threat environment accurately. The 2024 and 2026 National Defence Strategies identified the right doctrine — National Defence, Strategy of Denial, self-reliance, industrial resilience. The 2026 Integrated Investment Program commits $425B against these priorities and in doing so reaffirms a platform-centric acquisition model that the post-Ukraine evidence base does not support.

Australia is not undefendable in principle, but it is undefendable against the threat model the documents themselves describe, using the capabilities the documents themselves fund.

The Strategy of Denial is the right strategy. The question is whether the capability program actually delivers denial against a cost-exchange ratio of 1:1000 in favour of the adversary.

The answer to that question, visible in the IIP line items, is obviously not. That has to change.

Australia’s future national sovereignty could topple at any moment, not through conventional conquest but through the slow attrition of deterrent credibility that invites exactly the kind of sub-threshold coercion the Strategy of Denial is evidently unable to prevent.

If Australia fails to aggressively correct course toward domestic defence tech production immediately — not the next biennial National Defence Strategy cycle, right now — the last vestiges of its existence as an independent political entity will soon vanish entirely.

Comments

Comments

Related Stories

Downloads

April 22, 2026

References & Resources

You may also be interested in:

Discover More from NASA Earth Science

Subscribe to Earth Observatory Newsletters

Earth Observatory Image of the Day

Earth Science Data

Text

Responsive images

Tables

Comments

Why I need a handcart

Description of the handcart

Load weight and volume

It drives itself!

Handcarts and gravity

Balancing the handcart: distributing the load

Going uphill: you need help

Going downhill: brakes

Handcarts go on the sidewalk

Respecting other pedestrians

Why not a bike trailer?

The merits of slow travel

Handcart Accessories

Passenger seat

Digital nomad office

Renewable power plant

Mobile home

Sailing and roller skating the handcart

Comments

Not a Trick

Not a Guarantee

Comments

Related Stories

Comments

Related Stories

Update: they've reversed it already

Update 2: it may still affect 2% of signups?

gpt-image-1

Nano Banana 2 and Pro

gpt-image-2

Takeaways

Update: asking models to solve this is risky

An Abject Failure to Reduce Emissions from Driving

Betraying Portland’s Legacy of Environmental Leadership

Downloads

July 30, 2023

References & Resources

You may also be interested in:

Discover More from NASA Earth Science

Subscribe to Earth Observatory Newsletters

Earth Observatory Image of the Day

Earth Science Data

Comments

Time Value of Money

Discount Rate Isn’t Constant

Time Value Arbitrage

Epilog: Finance Matters

[ed: Updated Mortality Curve]

Comments

Related Stories

If you want to support my work, please take out a premium subscription (just $6 per month).

The Top 10 Articles from The Honest Broker (2021-2026)

1. The State of the Culture 2024 (February 18, 2024)

2. Why Tech Bros Are Watching Videos at 3X Speed (March 6, 2026)

3. What Can We Learn from Barnes and Noble’s Surprising Turnaround? (December 28, 2022)

4. What’s Happening to Students? (March 21, 2025)