As I sit down at my desk to write this editorial the ADM team is not long back from the Indo Pacific Maritime Exposition, held in Sydney’s International Convention Centre in early November.
Before I begin with the main points of my conversation, I’d like to thank all of you who found the time to engage with us – either on our stand or out in the wider exhibition halls. It was good to have the conversations we did and to meet friends new and old.
However, as we note in our comprehensive round up of the event, which begins on page 24 of this issue, the most recent iteration lacked the excitement of previous shows, with no major announcements made.
It was nevertheless a good show for the number of local small to medium enterprises which announced they had joined the global supply chains of several of the large primes. While there is still some way to go for local industry to build on these successes and money needs to start flowing from Defence soon, it is encouraging to hope that – in the maritime space at least – the floodgates are beginning to crack open.
Which neatly brings me to the main point of the column for this month. As always, the December–January issue contains our annual Top 40 Defence Primes and Top 20 SMEs survey and thank you to all of those companies who responded. Your participation helps to build a snapshot of the health of the defence industry over the past year.
So, how did industry fare in 2025? Is BAE Systems yet again in the number one position? How many companies did – and didn’t – respond to the survey?
Well, for the full details, I’m afraid you’ll have to turn to Kylie and Ewen’s review on page 38, followed of course by the Top 40 and Top 20 listings themselves over the ensuing pages. But I’d like to highlight a few major points here.
Despite the hype we read in press releases, the annual turnover for the entire defence industry this year fell by more than five percent compared with the previous year. Furthermore, the comments we made last year about the widening gulf between the recorded revenues of the largest companies when compared with the smallest has continued this year. The deepening of this ‘twin-track’ industry is further evidence of Defence’s preference for the US Foreign Military Sales (FMS) process, where local vendors are often locked out of sustainment opportunities contracted by the US Government.
I hope that next year’s figures will look better, as local industry competes for opportunities with those primes heavily engaged in the maritime sector, building Hunter-class and Mogami-class frigates, Medium and Heavy Landing Craft and the infrastructure required to support them.
Lastly, I’d like to reflect on the year past as we bravely look to 2026 and beyond. Those who predicted political turmoil in Washington were sadly not disappointed. Moreover, as I write this, Australia and the United Kingdom still haven’t seen the results of the Trump administration’s review into AUKUS. There have been encouraging words of course, to the effect of “she’ll be right”, but there’s nothing concrete to date.
I hope that we can retain confidence in the support of our closest ally, given the strategic situation that the world continues to face – something that of course isn’t being helped by the ongoing turmoil.
There’s no way off this roller coaster, so all we can do is hang on tightly and wait for the ride to end.
With that cheery thought, I’d like to wish all our readers a happy and healthy 2026 and I hope to see many of you at ADM’s 2026 Congress, which will be held in the Hyatt Hotel in Canberra on 18 February. It promises to be an interesting series of discussions with key figures from across Defence and industry, held in what are very interesting times.