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March 5, 2026
Iran's drone and missile onslaught against the US and its Middle East allies has sparked fresh calls for the Australian Defence Force to be urgently equipped to counter the modern battlefield threats.
Air defence systems are destroying the majority of the incoming Iranian munitions, but there are fears the scale of the attacks and diminishing supplies of high-cost interceptors could soon leave defending countries exposed. Australia would be in a dramatically worse position if the nation found itself in a similar conflict, experts warned, amid a lack of missile interception and counterdrone capabilities.
Retired Major General Mick Ryan an authority on drone warfare who has closely observed the war in Ukraine said the Iran conflict should be yet another wakeup call for the government as it prepared to update its defence strategy and investment plan ahead of the May budget.
"This is a government that's been asleep at the wheel when it comes to learning from overseas conflicts," he said. "It took them three years of the Ukraine war to even commission any kind of lessons-learned process."
Former defence official Michael Shoebridge said Australia had nothing like Israel's layered Iron Dome air defences, or the Patriot and THAAD missile interception systems being used by the Gulf states. "We are at the back of the bus when it comes to dealing with the consequences of drone warfare and even missile defence, despite us pretending we have a high-technology, leading-edge military," he said. "Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to matter how much more dangerous our world gets. The plan doesn't change."
The Albanese government slashed planned spending on missile interception systems two years ago in the last iteration of the national defence strategy, leaving Top End bases and deployed troops exposed. The ADF also has only limited numbers of armed combat drones, while its bases and expensive vehicles are largely undefended against uncrewed weapons systems, despite their ubiquity in recent conflicts.
Opposition defence spokesman James Paterson said the government needed to urgently prepare the ADF to respond to the 21st-century threats.
"We shouldn't need any more lessons after Ukraine, but the Iran conflict reminds us yet again that we are living in an age of missiles and drones," Senator Paterson said. "And yet four years into the Albanese government, our offensive and defensive drone and missile capabilities are lacking. Labor has an opportunity to fix this in the budget in May with serious, upfront investment in integrated air and missile defence for our major cities and northern bases, as well as offensive asymmetric capabilities that cause our potential adversaries to think twice."
He said Australian companies were already providing such capabilities to international buyers, but not to their own government, "because of a glacial procurement culture and lack of funding".
"For Australia's sake I hope (Defence Minister) Richard Marles and (Defence Industry Minister) Pat Conroy can finally persuade the expenditure review committee to take this vulnerability seriously," he said.
Mr Marles' office said the government was investing $10bn in drone and counter-drone systems, and Australian industry was producing some of the world's leading drone capabilities for use in Ukraine. The warnings over the ADF's preparedness come after Ukraine's ambassador in Canberra offered to teach Australian personnel "how to do modern warfare", arguing Australian personnel "don't know how to fight" in the age of killer drones. The economic challenges of drone warfare have been starkly illustrated by the latest fighting in the Middle East, with defenders shooting down Iran's $49,000 Shahed drones with ground-based interceptors worth $1.4m or more.
Analysts have warned there is a risk that supplies of interceptors being used by US allies could run out before Iran expends its missile and drone stocks.
General Ryan said the "golden thread" of drone warfare in recent years had been to make the cost of defending against drones cheaper than using them. He said Ukraine had cracked the code, shooting down about 70 per cent of Russia's Iranian-designed Shahed drones with interceptors worth about 10 per cent of the cost of the incoming munitions. "This is flipping the cost imposition strategy, where now the defender against drones can impose cost on those who use the kind of drones that are useful in medium and long-term strike," General Ryan said. "When you're using medium and long-range strike and reconnaissance drones, an interceptor that costs $3000 to $5000 is kind of the holy grail of what we've been seeking."
He said the ADF's lack of offensive drone capabilities was also a major concern, pointing to Ukraine's success in neutralising Russia's Black Sea fleet with cheap autonomous speedboats.
"Imagine if we had half a dozen boat builders up the East Coast building these things, pumping them out at 500 a year? Chinese task forces would really have to think differently about doing circle work around Australia with these things out there," he said