So, Minister Pat Conroy has released the Australian government’s “new” 2026 Defence Industry Development Strategy, after giving us the highly unsuccessful 2024 version.

Unfortunately, the 2026 strategy is a rehash of the 2024 approach, which Mr Conroy has never acknowledged was a failure.

For those thinking that actual Australian domestic industry – including a large number of highly innovative small and medium enterprises supplying capability to the ADF – might be important given lessons from Ukraine and the obvious problems traditional suppliers like the US and UK are having meeting their own needs, you will be disappointed.

Mr Conroy has continued lack of doubt about big foreign primes’ capacity to meet our every need at a time of crisis – when they will, unfortunately but necessarily, meet the needs of their home governments’ militaries first. His confidence remains unshaken as we watch the US delaying and turning off contracted supplies to partners because of its own priority demands.

It’s as if we are still living in 2006 with a reliable America and a capable UK instead of in 2026.

The core problem with the 2024 industry strategy was that it had an empty definition of Australia’s ‘sovereign defence industrial base’ – and the 2026 version bluntly says “the definitions of defence industry and our sovereign defence industrial base remain unchanged”.  

So, any company with an Australian Business Number that is capable of supplying products or services to the Australian Defence organisation is apparently part of Australia’s ‘sovereign defence industry’.  Yes, really. That has the obvious effect of labelling Lockheed Martin, BAE, Northrop and others as Aussie outfits. But it perversely also includes Chinese businesses, including those working closely with the PLA and supplying other Chinese agencies. Welcome Huawei and Hikvision. And now, welcome BYD.

So, the 2026 industry policy is stillborn on arrival and will not grow Australian sovereign capacity to support our military.

Instead, Pat Conroy is determined to double down on Australia’s growing dependency on US & UK defence companies & call this ‘sovereign’.

The strategy is also determined to only learn lessons from Ukraine that reinforce existing Defence bureaucratic practices & instincts that favour the big foreign primes when it comes to procurement.

It says the lesson of Ukraine is its ‘access to the international industrial base’. No. The main Ukrainian success factor has been its large number of small innovative domestic companies that get contracts to supply the Ukrainian military- which are truly sovereign industry, not branch offices of foreign companies.

They draw on international suppliers for components but they drive battlefield innovation and success. This is a starkly different model to the one in Mr Conroy’s disappointing rewarmed meal.

Unfortunately, there is no policy imagination in Defence that is capable of doing more than just perpetuating existing policy settings that are now at least a decade out of date in the world of 2026. Actual Australian defence companies will see no future for themselves in this strategy, except as part of big offshore primes’ clunky supply chains.

To give an example, as he launched the 2026 document, Minister Conroy announced what he called a ‘Major Milestone in support of Australian Defence industry and jobs’.  Sounds exciting.

Contain your excitement, though. this wasn’t anything remotely in the realm of the $5.4 billion spent on AUKUS just in 2025-26.  No, it was $22 million going to 60 Australian companies – an average of $367,000 each – ie maybe the salaries and related benefits of two employees for a year (maybe).  But the gruel is so thin for actual Australian companies in the strategy that this is labelled a major milestone….

Australian defence companies are left hoping to win tiny grants instead of supply contracts, with their future being selling to everyone but Australia’s military or folding in to be a sub contractor of a big foreign prime.

No wonder Mr Conroy didn’t want to release this ‘new’ industry strategy in front of a hall of defence industry people at the Defence and Industry Conference yesterday but booked the friendlier National Press Club venue instead.

After 4 years in the portfolio, Mr Conroy is a walking definition of institutional capture. That’s only a problem for those concerned about having an Australian military that has understood and adapted to the way wars are fought, supplied and won in 2026.