Southern Launch

NRFC has also loaned $150 million to Adelaide-based manufacturer Asdam, which makes components for everything from submarines to F-35 Joint Strike fighter jets.

taken a $50 million equity stake in Sydney firm Advanced Navigation, which makes so-called positioning, navigation and timing solutions for the mining, defence, aerospace, automotive and marine sectors, an RFC says, including autonomous systems, and a $10 million stake in aerospace engineering company Southern Launch.

Enabling capability investments with military applications, meanwhile, include $20 million equity in quantum technology startup Dirac, $60 million in two tranches for quantum chip maker Silicon Quantum Computing, and a $10 million loan to Emerson, a, quote, global leader in robotics and spatial computing that uses pioneering physical AI solutions to map hazardous and GPS-denied environments, end quote, which was spun out, privatised, from Commonwealth Science Agency CSIRO in 2018.

And in resource value adding, destined to feed the US war machine, there is a $110 million loan to the Donald Rare Earth and Mineral Sands Project, a joint venture between Australia's Astron Limited and US company Energy Fuels, which has also attracted $70 million from government lender Export Finance Australia, and $50 million for Gina Reinhart's lithium miner, Liontown Resources.

You've made some other big announcements pretty recently as well in the space sector.

Gilmore Space, Southern Launch.

More recently, the space startup called HEO, $10 million in equity.

What do you like about HEO?

The reason we don't is because right now, Australia is a great landing partner.

We land at Southern Launch and they have a huge range.

And so instead of.

Sharpening the pencil on landing accuracy at the moment, we sharpen the pencil in other areas of the business.