Defence Minister Judith Collins. Photo: RNZ/Calvin Samuel
The government is interested in how New Zealand might compete in supplying international markets with high-tech military systems.
New documents released under the Official Information Act show the Defence Minister Judith Collins told a defence industry event in May that "delivering defence equipment needs to be done faster. We also need to be smarter".
One way being looked at was to give "selected advanced technology firms access to NZDF test ranges and military use cases to prototype and experiment", her speech notes said.
"The centre-of-gravity could lie in the areas where New Zealand can genuinely compete, such as space, autonomous systems, and sensors, which are also areas that have dual-use applications and, by association, large international markets."
Dual-use is tech with both civilian and military or spying capabilities.
Collins also said New Zealand had no intention to buy autonomous killer drones.
The papers show the Defence Force has been in Australia looking at counter-drone systems and has had talks about an operating system used in hundreds of autonomous sentry towers on the US-Mexico border.
Previously, Judith Collins, when asked if lethal drones might be deployed against enemy soldiers, did not rule it out and said it was the nature of warfare that sometimes people were injured or killed.
However, in notes for the industry speech, the minister said while surveillance and reconnaissance drones were part of the defence capability plan, "so-called 'killer drones' (lethal autonomous weapons systems)" were not: "There is no intention for New Zealand to purchase this capability."
Other documents show the Defence Force went to an airshow in Australia in March focused on the sort of counter-drone systems that Budget 2025 said were a priority to buy in the next four years.
A briefing said Anduril was a big player in counter-drones, and that NZDF had discussed the US firm's operating system called Lattice, an artificial-intelligence system that can detect and distinguish between animals, humans and vehicles, from 3-15km away.
The NZDF's main partner militaries in the US, Australia and UK are all increasingly using Anduril systems; New Zealand's strategy depends on staying interoperable with those forces.
Donald Trump hired Anduril in 2019 to roll out over 300 border security towers that now cover about a third of the US southern border.
The Australian Air Force has a deal with Anduril Australia to deliver counter drone services, and the UK has been buying advanced attack drones from Anduril to send to Ukraine.
Another Anduril platform, called Menace, integrates Lattice with software from Palantir, another US high-tech firm that has pivoted to do much more defence work, to "increase operator lethality and survivability".
Anduril, which calls its systems an "arsenal of democracy", was reported by Reuters as linking up with Palantir, ChatGPT creator OpenAI and Elon Musk's SpaceX, among others, to provide a "new generation of defence contractors".
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
