From 15-minute drones to instant kill chains: What does NZ's future army look like?

Analysis: What does NZ's army of the future look like?

A new report shows a potential combination of electronics and warfare in ways only dreamed about a decade ago.

The NZDF's new 50-page 'Future Fighting Concept' report - like its 2017 cousin called 'Future Land Operating Concept 2035' - dealt in the Army General Staff's forecasts.

The former indulged in some pretty vague imaginings, while the latter deals with the emerging reality of weapons tech inflicting terrible damage in Ukraine and changing terribly fast in tests around the Pacific.

In 2017, the drones example was how Russia put 13 fixed-wing drones and one type of quadcopter over Donbas, following its annexation of Crimea.

One drone linked to a rocket launcher "in particular... could deliver fire-missions within 15 minutes of the drone identifying a target".

Now, militaries have what the Pentagon calls the 'kill chain' down to seconds and the drones themselves can be the rockets, bearing down on Kyiv at up to 1000km/h.

The 2017 report mentioned drones a handful of times, although it foresaw counter-drone systems would become vital.

Nine years ago, AI was not even a thing. In July 2026, artificial intelligence drove Human-Machine Integration as Australian and New Zealand troops tested ground drones in the Mojave desert.

This week, the United States delivered more than a billion dollars of drones to its Central Command that covers the Middle East - 1300 kamikazes, more than 100 unmanned surface and underwater drones, and more than 24,000 counter-drones.

The speed of turning military dreams into reality is still hitting bureaucratic bottlenecks, thinktank studies overseas show.

However, it looks laser-fast compared with international efforts to rein in increasingly autonomous lethal weapons. A few weeks ago, for instance, 128 countries at the UN agreed on a text "defining" lethal autonomous weapon systems.

That is a record number - NZ was among them - but this was described as "a first step" towards talks on a possible international treaty to regulate them

In 2017, the electronics to enable machines to talk to humans and each other, and across different militaries, and doing this by lasers between satellites, were the stuff of computer modelling.

Last month, they were tested in the toughest environment - the sea, where the physics of brine are difficult to surmount - in exercise Keen Sword.

It linked sensors to shooters - a Japanese underwater drone linked to an Australian 'Rock Lobster' surface drone, using US communications systems. New Zealand took part, a little, off the bench.

Keen Sword tapped into what a US commander called "a massive framework of integration on the US side that we have very rapidly rolled out to our partners during these recent exercises and persistently now".

The NZDF is also part of a so-called Coalition Information Environment project, so militaries can see a battlefield the same way.

The Future Fighting Concept focuses on the army, sayingz; "The NZ Army must prioritise investment in advanced capabilities that enhance agility, lethality, and responsiveness.

"Key focus areas include AI, Machine Teaming, Predictive Analysis, Distributed Decision-making, Network-Centric Warfare, Automation and Rapid Targeting, Cyber and Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations."

Dominance in this last - electronagnetics - would be decisive, it said. However, NZDF has denied expanding into electromagnetic spectrum operations at a satellite-monitoring hub set up by the US in Auckland, although other US hubs are expanding this way.

Where do people fit in among all these capitalised electronics?

"One of the primary changes introduced by modern technologies is the increased speed of decision-making, lethality and precision in military operations," said the new report.

"The concept of 'human-in-the-loop' systems, where operators retain ultimate control over critical decisions, is being complemented by increasingly autonomous systems capable of understanding complex operations independently.

"High automation will accelerate human-in-the-loop targeting through autonomous systems that identify, classify and engage threats."

The future is about being more lethal and joining hands to do it.

"Our next-generation weapons systems will utilise NATO and ABCANZ partner forces systems."

ABCANZ is a five-nation army interoperability agency of the US, UK, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand armies.

The report gets to ethics.

"Human-machine integration raises ethical concerns in warfare about accountability, and the moral implications of delegating life-or-death decisions to machines, marking a significant shift in the philosophical understanding of warfare.

"'This also prompts a re-evaluation of international norms and regulatory frameworks governing warfare... [and] the need for comprehensive dialogue among nations regarding the ethical and legal implications of deploying such technologies."

The report also briefly mentions the politics of this.

"A future-focused NZ Army must train MDO [for multiple domains], and promote a change in policy to government for the rapid acquisition of new and rapidly evolving technology platforms."

Rapid acquisition reflects the underlying theme of the need for speed.

There is also the need for money. On the election campaign trail, Labour raised the question of how New Zealand would pay to futureproof the military.

It said, if elected, it would take another look at that.

The path ahead is at least partially underwritten by a Pentagon budget line showing $60m spent on its main project for integrating allies (called C5) in past years and another $110m for that out to 2031.

It is also underwritten politically by the White House, that says: "The United States will leverage S&T [science and tech] capabilities of international allies and partners as a force multiplier to advance national security objectives and outcompete adversaries.

"The Trump Administration is expanding cooperation in... areas including AI, nuclear energy, quantum, advanced communications, PNT [positioning, navigation, timing], and space."

The NZ army's future concept of weapons of war is not the only one. Armies around the world are thinking about this too.

The big difference between now and a decade ago is that AI is being prompted to think about this too.