If a global war is coming, this is how NZ needs to prepare
Tuesday, 12 May 2026
Dr Del Carlini is a strategic theorist and writer in geopolitics, military strategy and security from Wellington.
OPINION: I agree with the direction and conclusions of the recent opinion article by Eric Crampton in The Post, regarding a need for significantly greater urgency for New Zealand’s military preparedness and speed of procurement.
However, those ideas need to go further.
The premise I operate from is that a third global war is coming.
Paradoxically, we are fortunate the war in Ukraine has gone on for four years and presents us with a vivid picture of what is required. Ukraine has weathered storm after storm, and adapted and innovated to now be in a position, for this moment anyway, to have wrested the military initiative from Russia. There are key lessons for us about how they have done that.
The first is constant adaptation and innovation. That involves almost weekly improvements of air, land, sea and undersea drone and counter-drone technology.
The Ukrainians have also developed a data driven procurement system that determines what weapons systems are procured based on real time information from the battlefield about which are being most effective. To achieve that, bureaucratic processes have had to become almost as agile as the frontline forces.
Another important lesson emanating from Ukraine is how they have focused on becoming strategically autonomous and internally resilient.
In the first two years of the war, the Ukrainians were restricted by the United States, French, British and German governments that had supplied weapons but retained a veto over what they could be used for. That tied the hands of Ukraine forces when they needed to be agile and decisive as the conflict evolved.
Ukraine’s response, carefully built over months and years, has been to produce what it needs locally. Over 80% of Ukraine’s weapons are now produced within Ukraine. The government of Ukraine no longer has outside governments telling it it cannot attack Russian ports or refineries, which it is now doing to great effect.
A third lesson is that drone warfare and missiles now dominate. All prior assumptions about warfare need to be interrogated.
In 2025 Ukraine produced 6.5 million drones. Small, armed, tracked unmanned vehicles clear trenches and woodland. Marine drones sink sophisticated Russian warships, clear sea mines, shoot down helicopters, and swarm Russian defences. Undersea drones are inexpensive predators waiting unseen to attack surface ships and track submarines.
Swarms of 300 AI coordinated aerial drones move across Russian-held territory destroying forces and defences. It will only be a matter of time before drone swarms become 3000 or 300,000 strong.
If we consider the New Zealand context with those three lessons in mind, one can quickly see the Government’s Defence Capability Plan, produced in 2025, is archaic at best.
Replacing helicopters with other helicopters for use in drone-dominated battlespaces is beyond highly questionable. Within the past fortnight, two drones, little bigger than a dinner plate, flew 150 kilometres inside Russia to destroy two Russian military helicopters.
Likewise, it is irresponsible to cut down options to adapt by spending a significant part of the defence budget on expensive single items like a new frigate at a time when Ukraine’s war shows a surface ship in a modern shooting war will likely be on the bottom of the ocean within days. That has been the experience in Ukraine and Iran.
The Ukraine war has shown a country can defend itself and push back aggressors with cheaper weapons produced locally in vast numbers. The days of frigates, manned helicopters and traditional logistics based around transport aircraft are over.
New Zealand needs to be building the means to manufacture cheaper weapons by the million. One frigate could patrol our waters but 1000 drones could do that much more effectively and cheaply. Being an agricultural and maritime country means that home-grown innovation in drones and robots would be available to our peace-time industries as well.
Our defence budget needs to be focused on building industries within New Zealand that have the capability to produce what we need when we need it. We don’t want to be buying drones from other countries. That creates no resilience for our country at a time when we need to be working out how to defend ourselves.
New Zealand needs to be producing drones by the million and the best way to do that is to create a joint venture with Ukraine as many other countries have done. Think what level of defence we could have if $1 billion of our defence budget was invested in Ukraine’s drone industry with the proviso that New Zealand Defence Force people are involved and trained in how Ukraine does it, and that joint-venture industries supply Ukraine and countries in the Middle East and Europe from manufacturing in New Zealand.
A second pillar of defence spending should be the production of TNT and propellants. Every grenade, missile, drone, bomb and artillery shell produced throughout the world uses TNT or some variation of it. If New Zealand dedicated $1b of its defence budget to quickly develop an explosives industry it could pay for its defence needs through overseas sales while at the same time having explosives and propellants on tap as needed. There is a huge demand now which will only grow as conflict expands.
A third component of defence spending needs to be in mobile missile systems in tandem with Australia. Long and intermediate-range missiles focused on the Tasman Sea, capable of being fired from both New Zealand and Australia, would give our two countries control over that waterway.
There is no reason why New Zealand could not produce home-grown missile systems, just as Ukraine has. It requires leadership from Government to shift to decision-making with national security and resilience as its top priority.
What we need are mechanisms to move to a pre-war footing, with powers to reconfigure government agencies into forms that can move with agility and speed.