Arms industry

Now, Danelle, I think the best thing that the government can do for Danelle is get out of the way.

If you talk to a lot of people at Danelle and a lot of people in the defense industry, there's two big problems at Danelle.

Firstly, a terrible board.

If you look at the board of Danelle, you don't see anyone with industry experience.

And that's all good and well when you can do it.

But if you've repeatedly demonstrated an inability to do anything and to finish any project on time, and you have heaps of corruption and wasteful irregular expenditure and missed timelines, if you keep doing the same thing over and over again and you expect a different result, that is the literal definition of insanity.

And I think that if we want the defense industry and the defense force to have things turn around and to be capable again, Firstly, the government needs to provide funding.

The government needs to support a realistic plan, but they also just need to get out of the way.

And that really hits home during the COVID era when America realized they've outsourced too much of their industrial products to Asia, and they need to do something to change it.

And they enact some policies, the IRA, the CHIPS Act, the Office of Strategic Capital in the Defense Industry, that really hit Europe badly because they tell the Europeans that they're gonna, uh, bring home a lot of their industry, and this gets very controversial about the, the blowing up of the pipeline.

Um-

So I need to pause because I'm not sure everyone will understand this.

So there's no, you know, there's no surprises.

And we would keep it only people who have direct knowledge of this topic as a result of working for the U.S. government in some capacity, whether that's military, intelligence community, defense contractors.

And so the bar would be there.

They wouldn't have to worry about being intercut with some, you know, dude from the History Channel.

into the complexity and nuance of it, Rubio, when you're talking to him, says, you know, there's the government and there's the government.

There's people who have had the job for 30 years.

um you know they're they're bureaucrats uh that that don't feel they've seen guys like me come and go and they don't they don't feel the you know that i have the need to know there's presidents there's other people that have been told they don't have the need to know it's literally the definition not to add conspiracy onto conspiracy but it's literally the definition of a deep state it's like look there are people there are career technocrats bureaucrats who are just making these decisions so people are like well if the government knows why doesn't the government tell us yeah and legacy program which starts uh as a cia uh air force uh defense contractors but this and the department of energy well i got that c and i'm coming but smartly they do the department of energy why because they have all the atomic secret war act things so they can keep it secret and they can keep this so there's the government and the government so you've got these four four agencies What does the legacy program do? What was it designed to do? Tell me the beginning of it, because it was the start of the CIA.

So a number of the interview subjects in my doc reveal that A program referred to as the Legacy Program has gatekept this information for basically 80 years.

But by letting those, this was Bill Knudsen's whole point, letting those who know how to make know how to make better is the way in which you produce victory, whether you're talking about in World War II or whether, John, I think whether we're talking about how we're going about restoring our defense industrial base today, which has taken a series of very hard knocks, certainly since the end of the Cold War.

when we've seen the American defense industry shrink away in terms of either numbers of companies that are actively involved, in terms of the number of workers, in terms of their contribution to our GDP, and just generally their relationship with the biggest and most innovative parts of our economy that exist today, like, for example, AI, like, for example, semiconductors.

Like, for example, quantum technology, that where we see the high tech revolution that drives the rest of the American economy, our defense industries have been largely lagging behind.

And part of that reason is that we've given so much more.

production.

Welcome to Defence Connect Spotlight, connecting you with the leading defence industry experts from Australia and abroad.

Well, g'day everybody.

Steve Cooper at Defence Connect.

I hope you are well.

We are counting down the days to land forces.

It is now a matter of weeks away and I'm looking forward to being on the floor with you there in Perth to have a chat around everything happening and what's transforming the Australian Army's capabilities as we move into this new era of great power competition.

And it's been a big year for Defence.

This is a Momentum Media production.

Welcome to the Defence Connect podcast, Australia's leading voice in national security and defence industry intelligence, direct from the nation's top policy and business experts.

Welcome back to the Defence Connect podcast.

You've got news editor Robert Doherty.

And we're here, a special GUIO edition podcast with Dan Christie, Chief Technology Officer and CEO of Australian Missile Corporation.

He's previously served 12 years with the Australian Defence Force in the Army and then Air Force.

We also have Pierre Machando, Vice President of Value Engagement, Industry Consultant at Dassault Systems.

Pierre is a former advisor in France's National Defense and Security Department, reporting to the Prime Minister, former Colonel and Mirage 2000C fighter pilot, and he's in Australia attending the Digital Engineering Synopsium to 2026.

And look, we have a Minister of the Pacific.

He shares the role as also Defence Industry, so it's connected there.

Just chatting there, Marcus, got me thinking, you know, our sort of current or recent or historic cohort of future leaders going through ADF or Duntroon or any sort of more sophisticated postgrad education through War College, et cetera, how much bearing is given to sort of the history of Australia in areas like the Pacific in relation to upskilling and advancing the capabilities of our officers to potentially navigate this in the future? Is it a big thing?

Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's always there.