Following Australia’s example, New Zealand intends to increase weapons production and military services for the United States and other partners. Outlining this intent is Wellington’s new Defence Industry Strategy. Published in October 2025, this document articulates the government’s approach to implementing its highly derivative Defence Capability Plan published last April.
According to officials, the strategy presents a ‘significant area of opportunity’ for New Zealand businesses to provide ‘technology, components, and specialist expertise’ to ‘multi-national Defence suppliers and their New Zealand and Australian-based subsidiaries’.
The New Zealand document identifies only two multinational suppliers presenting such business opportunities: Babcock International and Rheinmetall. However, the source it closely resembles—Australia’s 2024 Defence Industry Development Strategy—lists Austal, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Thales Group as examples of ‘prime’ weapons manufacturers through which ‘Australian-based businesses’ can become ‘embed[ded]…into supply chains of our trusted international partners’.
To achieve its aim, Wellington will require prime suppliers to subcontract New Zealand businesses in accordance with new government procurement rules mandating agencies to ‘seek economic benefits to New Zealand’. Other approaches will include the so-called Technology Accelerator, which appears to be based on Australia’s Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator, to provide initial funding of up to NZ$300 million to advanced technology companies ‘where there is a strong military use case’. In addition, the government will promote New Zealand businesses by ‘showcasing Kiwi innovations to international partners’.
New Zealand’s new military industry strategy aligns with Washington’s ambition to bolster the US ‘industrial resilience’ with allies and partners in the Asia-Pacific region as part of its provocative China-containment policy. The US National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2026 requires the secretaries of defense (also called the secretary of war) and state to ‘establish and maintain’ the Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience (PIPIR) with a key objective ‘to enable the production and supply of the material necessary for equipping the Armed Forces of the United States and the military forces of allied and partner countries’. Countries considered for the PIPIR include ‘Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, India, the Philippines, and New Zealand’. New Zealand, according to the Defence Industry Strategy, ‘will continue to support’ the partnership partly to ‘make exporting easier’.
Indicating the extent to which New Zealand’s capacity to export to larger military partners influenced Wellington’s formulation of its military industry strategy, one of the two criteria for selecting priorities for development denotes capabilities that are ‘in demand with partner defence forces’. Currently, these priorities comprise space capabilities, uncrewed systems (such as drones) and counter systems, and sustainment (for example, maintenance and logistics).
First, demonstrating New Zealand’s development of space capabilities is the government’s investment in Auckland-based space-flight systems company Zenno Astronautics. The company’s flagship product is ‘the world’s most powerful magnetic actuator’, which uses ‘superconducting electromagnetics to control a spacecraft’s attitude (orientation/pointing) without using chemical fuel’. To support the development of this technology, wholly government-owned New Zealand Growth Capital Partners recently invested in Zenno Astronautics through its Aspire Seed Fund, which provides up to approximately NZ$800,000 to early-stage technology companies alongside additional funding from private investors.
Leveraging the potential military applications of this product, last August the Ministry of Defence hosted a delegation from major US ally South Korea’s largest weapons manufacturers and its Defence Acquisition Program Administration, which acquires weapons for the country’s armed forces. The event, states the Defence Industry Strategy, provided an opportunity for Zenno Astronautics and aerospace company Rocket Lab ‘to highlight space as a potential area for future cooperation between New Zealand and Korea’. Confirming that the technology’s potential military use appeals to countries beyond this bilateral relationship, when asked in a Radio New Zealand interview if ‘military might be interested in this sort of stuff’, Zenno Astronautics co-founder and chief product officer Sebastian Wieczorek said, ‘there is a lot of interest from all around the world, yes’.
Second, illustrating New Zealand’s development of uncrewed systems, last August, retailer KiwiQuads and training and consultancy company Fenix provided the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) with ‘drones that could be 3D printed and assembled on site’, according to an NZDF release. Drawing on reporting from the US proxy war in Ukraine, indicating that drones accounted for some 70 per cent of battlefield casualties, the course strengthened the military’s use of ‘local technology’ in ‘the rapidly expanding field of drone warfare’.
Benefits of the 3D-printed drones included that the aircraft were ‘low-cost, easy to build and offered an additional effect to ISR’ (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) as ‘they could deliver an offensive strike on a target’. Production of drone components, states the June 2025 PIPIR factsheet, ‘directly contribute[s] to global supply chain resilience for a vital set of systems for U.S. operations’.
Finally, to develop its sustainment services, New Zealand intends to ‘do more’ to obtain Washington’s approval to maintain and repair US-produced weapons. Exemplifying this service is the extension of repair capability to Australia for Raytheon’s AN/APY-10 multifunction radar system aboard Boeing P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft—work previously restricted to the continental United States. This ‘regional sustainment hub’, according to the PIPIR factsheet, will reduce ‘time and distance for transport repair…while simultaneously enhancing operational flexibility and allied interoperability in the region’.
Indicating the potential for New Zealand to provide sustainment services to allies of the United States is Wellington’s choice of Strategic Maritime Partner for maintenance, repair and overhaul work on the NZDF’s entire Navy fleet, Babcock International. While engaging 580 subcontractors in New Zealand to provide these services, the UK-headquartered company conducts sustainment work for the militaries of Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom—including the Royal Navy’s nuclear submarine fleet.
In contrast to Australia’s and New Zealand’s hawkish support for US efforts to assert military dominance over China, influential establishment voices recently urged officials to exercise limited restraint. Pentagon-funded Rand Corporation’s October 2025 report on Stabilizing the U.S.-China Rivalry advocated for both states to accept that ‘some degree of modus vivendi must necessarily be part of the relationship’. Possibly indicating Washington’s intolerance of this viewpoint, Rand withdrew the report ‘for further review’.
In making the argument for a more peaceful coexistence between China and the United States, the report’s authors sought to prevent ‘rivalry’ between the two nuclear powers from ‘descending into extreme and dangerous levels of tension’. Australia and New Zealand, by placing their military industries in the service of the United States, are helping to make that prospect a reality.