Executive summary
- The Australian Government’s Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) enterprise is among its most strategically pivotal undertakings. Sovereign advanced munitions manufacturing will not be achieved without transformation of Australia’s defence industrial base.
- Despite the accelerated rate of announcements, including expanded strategic partnerships with industry and appreciable formal steps towards joint production with the United States, inertia persists around recruiting, training and retaining the skilled workforce. The Australian Government has deferred responsibility to industry.
- A failure to comprehensively commit to the locations of key manufacturing worksites and communicate the scale of requirements to industry has limited the capacity of non-government actors to undertake workforce preparations.
- Rapidly mobilising an industrial munitions manufacturing workforce capable of complementing, rather than competing with, adjacent workforce preparations being made for the AUKUS enterprise requires greater top-down demand signals, greater awareness from state and local stakeholders and purposeful differentiation from other defence projects.
Recommendations
- The Australian Government should specify workforce requirements and encourage private investment by clarifying the scale and geographic distribution of future GWEO work.
- The future Defence Delivery Agency should task senior officials with making workforce capacity estimations, monitoring progress across industry and training providers and integrating GWEO preparations with broader cross-government efforts to expand the manufacturing workforce.
- Accelerating decisions on GWEO’s geographic footprint should be an immediate priority, even if this precedes formalising additional contracting decisions. Decisions on GWEO’s geographic diffusion should be made with consideration of the limited mobility of Australia’s technical workforce.
- National outreach should occur to increase state governments’ and training providers’ buy-in into an enterprise that has been industry-led to date.
- State governments across Australia’s east coast should improve their literacy on GWEO issues and integrate the enterprise’s bespoke requirements into state-level manufacturing and education plans.
- The industry-government nexus should be strengthened by secondments and integrated project teams to overcome mutual distrust.
- GWEO workforce preparations should be purposefully planned alongside, and subsequently differentiated from, other Australian defence projects.
- AUKUS-specific programs being trialled in South Australia and Western Australia could include programming on upskilling requirements for GWEO to avoid wasteful duplication.
- Streamlining the process to reskill workers from adjacent sectors into GWEO work through micro-credentialing should be a near-term objective for industry and vocational training providers.
- Building future local talent should be a priority area for investment, including scaling master degrees and PhD programs of higher complexity. This would minimise the sector’s future reliance on international partners’ workforces.
- GWEO’s qualities that are distinct from AUKUS work — namely, its small scale, east coast concentration and lesser security classification and skills requirements — should be central to industry’s recruitment messaging to prospective workers.
Introduction
The Australian Government is pursuing a generational modernisation of Australia’s sovereign defence capability. From the AUKUS partnership on nuclear-powered submarines to the expansion of the surface combatant fleet, the successful realisation of a host of these ambitions depends upon the strength of Australia’s defence industry.1 Australia’s latest national security documents rightly acknowledge that a “skilled, professional and diverse workforce” is a critical enabler of national security objectives, residing “at the heart” of industrial capability.2
Often overlooked by commentators but front of mind for strategists and officials, the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) enterprise stands out among Australia’s most significant current defence industrial efforts. Growing Australia’s arsenal of guided weapons and explosive ordnance may be more integral to Australia’s future security than any other single initiative.3 Through an investment of A$26-$36 billion over the next 10 years, the Australian Department of Defence intends to acquire long-range strike systems through a combination of purchases and manufacture of guided weapons and munitions in Australia.4 In some areas, the Australian Government and its industry partners are already moving in lockstep.
More than a year since the release of the 2024 plan, industrial workforce planning for GWEO remains neglected by officials, to the detriment of future enterprise outcomes.
However, 18 months since the release of the 2024 plan, industrial workforce planning for GWEO remains neglected by officials, to the detriment of future enterprise outcomes. The Australian Government expects industry to act, while industry representatives note they lack sufficient demand signals to guide their investment decisions.5 Coordination across the ecosystem of industry, state governments and training providers is occurring on an incremental and ad hoc basis. State governments generally lack awareness of GWEO and, to varying degrees, have struggled to connect with industrial stakeholders and advocate for opportunities for their workers at the national level. Without concerted forethought and prioritisation, the GWEO enterprise will struggle to grow its technical workforce within the short timeframes required to deliver sovereign defence capability. Recent promises that Australia will “[build] at a scale way beyond what we need” to rise to the needs of the United States and other global partners will be left undelivered.6
This brief synthesises available information about the requirements of GWEO manufacturing and evaluates handbrakes on workforce preparation by the array of relevant federal and state stakeholders. It focuses particularly on the challenges of staffing concurrent major sovereign defence projects across Australia, with the behemoth AUKUS shipbuilding effort dominating bureaucratic attention and defence resources now and into the future. Ahead of the establishment of the Defence Delivery Agency in July 2026, this brief offers a starting point for an integrated workforce plan that reconciles GWEO efforts with other targeted manufacturing workforce initiatives already underway. Success will only be achievable if there is a step-change in the Australian Government’s approach. Current trends of deferred responsibility, ambiguous demand signals, and ad hoc incremental ecosystem coordination should be addressed.
Australia’s advanced manufacturing agenda
In an era of economic protectionism and global supply chain disruption, developing domestic manufacturing capability has become a paramount objective of many national governments. Manufacturing jobs are placed at a premium by policymakers, not only due to the value of their output but also because they typically provide high-paying and secure employment to vocationally trained workers.7 For Australia’s part, its manufacturing sector, broadly defined, is projected to grow from 881,000 workers in 2023 to 1.02 million by 2033.8
Across almost every area of national security activity, Australia is seeking to procure or manufacture asymmetric defence capabilities. Developing sovereign capacity to assemble and produce advanced missile capabilities will reduce Australia’s dependence on its partners, offer resilience against future global supply disruptions and aid in implementing Australia’s National Defence Strategy. Fortunately, rapid uplift of the Australian workforce for missile manufacturing is possible, and indeed a simpler task than it will be for the other major sovereign defence projects currently underway.
Fortunately, rapid uplift of the Australian workforce for missile manufacturing is possible, and indeed a simpler task than it will be for the other major sovereign defence projects currently underway.
The Australian Government’s signature of a Joint Statement of Intent towards co-production with the US Government and with Lockheed Martin US and the opening of a new joint office in October 2025 provided a critical demonstration of continued momentum for this enterprise.9 Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy has confirmed Australia’s ambition to construct capability in excess of national demand by orders of magnitude, “with the intention of supporting both the United States and the global backlog.”10 These announcements increase the stakes of success for Australia’s GWEO enterprise not only locally but also for the stockpiles of a host of international partners.
The Australian Government’s October 2024 Australian Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Plan (the GWEO plan) provided a diverse set of priority missiles capabilities that Australian industry will endeavour to manufacture.11 However, the 2024 plan was silent on national preparations to recruit, train and retain the workers set to produce these capabilities. While it committed to realising a skilled missile manufacturing workforce within six years, it made no estimations about the required composition, geographic distribution or qualifications of that workforce. Detailed required workforce capacity estimates are yet to be publicly released. This is not altogether surprising. Major projects are routinely conceived by strategists who defer decisions on implementation to future practitioners. The Defence Department’s focus has remained on preparing the public service and ADF workforce for the adoption of new military hardware.
The industrial workforce challenge
The industrial workforce must be expanded to satisfy ambitions beyond the Australian Government’s foremost near-term priority of assembling and manufacturing Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS) in the coming months. Chief of Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance within the Australian Department of Defence, Air Marshal Leon Phillips, has emphasised the need for “engineers, scientists, logistics personnel and others who will help uplift our industrial base” in the first instance.12 A 2024 University of Sydney study estimated that 6,691 additional people will need to join the Tier 1 workforce — meaning those employed directly by the prime defence contractors on GWEO work. This projection grows to 8,076 when accounting for all technical workforce requirements across the supply chain.13 University-educated workers will compose only a small fraction of that total. Instead, the greatest demand will be for vocationally trained technicians in electronics, manufacturing and fabrication.14 On current timelines, the University of Sydney’s study estimates that it would take 15 years for this workforce to emerge.
The difficulties of staffing the GWEO enterprise should not be exaggerated. Following recent years of growth, Australia’s defence industry is increasingly capable and expanding. After periods of disruption, its labour force grew by more than 5,800 workers in 2024, employing almost 70,000 people nationally.15 This represents a 9% increase in the workforce in 2023-2024, compared with a 6% increase the year before.16 The GWEO worksites that have been determined thus far draw from proximity to large population centres. This includes the work underway at long-standing munitions manufacturing facilities in Newcastle, Orchard Hills and Mulwala in New South Wales (NSW) and Benalla in Victoria.17 New South Wales and Victoria presently rank among the highest in direct defence sector employment nationally; NSW contributes 22,700 defence sector employees and Victoria contributes 14,900.18
The GWEO enterprise also has the benefit of a ‘clean sheet of paper’ where project planning is concerned, allowing for the optimisation of location decisions and design of its production lines to reduce work requirements. These factors provide grounds for confidence in the potential to recruit and train an Australian local labour force to support GWEO projects. Crucially, the demands of GWEO workers will be fewer, less technical and less classified compared to AUKUS shipbuilding and maintenance activities.19 Though other challenges facing GWEO implementation — beyond the scope of this brief — remain significant, from a strict eligibility perspective most industry representatives feel confident about the capacity to recruit and train talent from the available labour force.
Table 1. Defence industry workforce by state (2023-2024)20
Still, the slow pace of industrial workforce planning to date is disconnected from the six (now four) year timeframe set for sustained manufacturing by the GWEO plan.21 Several enduring challenges impede the recruitment and training of the specialist technicians required for the GWEO enterprise. Three of the most significant are (1) the structural and demographic challenges inhibiting the expansion of Australia’s defence manufacturing sector; (2) the cross-cutting demands of simultaneous defence projects; and (3) the lack of readily available expertise in Australia.
1. Australian defence manufacturing labour shortages
Recruitment into defence industry faces numerous structural challenges endemic to the Australian economy. Unemployment, though now rising, has hovered near historic lows for an extended period.22 A 2024 analysis by Jobs and Skills Australia found that technical and trade occupations — including construction, automative and engineering trades workers — account for the most acute shortages, with 50% of all roles in the sector in national shortage.23 Although Australia’s defence industry is growing, it remains small compared to global powers.24 Labour supply to the sector is strained; job vacancies and employee turnover are on the rise, with wages continuing to grow sharply.25 Australia is not currently filling shortfalls at pace through natural increase and migrants are underutilised, due to employers’ preference for local experience.26
Over recent decades, the Australian Government has gained experience collaborating with universities, vocational education providers and industry to build skills across Australia’s defence industry workforce.27 But further challenges endure. The February 2024 Defence Industry Development Strategy made note of “the scarcity of STEM skills, an ageing population and stagnating student attainment.”28 The industry-led non-profit Jobs and Skills Council’s 2024 inquiry into the manufacturing sector identified the greatest ongoing challenges as attracting young people, Australia’s aging demography, the under-representation of minority groups and the adaptation of workers’ skills as advanced manufacturing technological solutions are adopted.29
2. Concurrent demands for talent
Demand for skilled technicians and tradespeople is soaring across Australia, driven by a confluence of factors. The projected 85,000 construction and manufacturing workers required by 2030 to support the clean energy transition is just one example.30 Surface fleet manufacturing and sustainment is projected to create a further 3,700 direct jobs over the decade.31 Almost inevitably, workforce is a zero-sum game; the mobilisation of workers behind one national priority will limit the volume available for another project with demands on the same timeline. A push towards domestic manufacturing across a number of defence and civil priority areas in Australia will exaggerate existing scarcities in construction and manufacturing.
There is a particular risk of workforce cannibalisation as multiple defence projects clamour for workers. AUKUS’s projected demand for 8,500 industrial workers and the overall direct workforce of 20,000 will accentuate intra-industry competition for talent.32 It is not evident from current programs aimed at growing the industrial workforce whether the transferability of talent between specialised projects has been purposefully considered.
Since planned defence manufacturing projects will be geographically dispersed, the Australian Government faces challenges with best directing its investment for economies of scale. At present, the Australian Government is at risk of funding discrete workforce initiatives for GWEO and AUKUS without considering how they are related to one another. The scale of AUKUS and the South Australian and Western Australian governments’ focus on shipbuilding have seen GWEO relegated to a marginal priority of national and state-level industrial workforce planning.33 Trusting that GWEO workforce preparation will be subsumed within these sweeping initiatives or delivered by industry without direction is not consistent with GWEO’s importance to Australian defence strategy.
The scale of AUKUS and the South Australian and Western Australian governments’ focus on shipbuilding have seen GWEO relegated to a marginal priority of national and state-level industrial workforce planning.
There is an opportunity to purposefully build GWEO requirements into national workforce initiatives and draw lessons from recent exercises in workforce development initiatives for AUKUS. Following the publication of the 2023 Defence Strategic Review, the Australian Government committed A$11.4 million to its Defence Industry Pathways Program over three years for the Western Australian shipbuilding sector to launch industry careers for participants.34 In January 2025, it also committed A$850 million to complement the South Australian state government’s A$1.4 billion investment in a landmark National Skills Agreement, with a heavy focus on construction and defence informed by AUKUS.35 Most recently, the South Australian Government pioneered an Australia-first Industry Accelerated Apprenticeship pilot program to fast-track 1,000 apprenticeships in seven critical trade areas.36 These programs should exponentially increase the volume of available defence sector talent, limiting the need for cannibalisation, and may even provide a model for dedicated GWEO-specific programs at a smaller scale. They may create transferable skills, provided that the further specialised demands of GWEO work on explosive materials are accounted for in upskilling or micro-credential programs.
3. Creating specialists from scratch
Australia has a limited pool of specialists to draw from to lead the technical workforce for GWEO. Though Australia has some experience in missile manufacturing, GWEO demands unprecedented scale and technical expertise from industry.37 Missiles currently represent a negligible portion of national defence exports,38 and there are few pathways for Australian graduates into the rocketry industry. To build on this low base, a cohort of technical experts should be rapidly recruited to oversee missile assembly.39 As previous analyses have noted, guided weapons differ significantly from other defence capabilities, including in their proportionately greater demand for research, development, testing and evaluation.40
The greatest demand for workers is in vocational areas, rather than in areas requiring advanced research degrees. The University of Sydney capacity estimation study projected a future GWEO labour force composition of 27% PhD or master qualified technical specialists, 34% bachelor’s qualified professionals and 39% vocationally trained workers.41 Still, there is still a significant demand for presently unavailable specialists trained in working with technically complex and hazardous explosive materials. Future ambitions to design, modify and upgrade GWEO capabilities would further increase demand beyond current estimates. Consequently, the Department of Defence GWEO Group and its strategic industry partners face several challenges: facilitating the lateral movement of experienced workers from adjacent sectors to reduce the reliance on new graduates; recruiting experts from overseas to meet short-term requirements; and growing a specialist national workforce on the fastest timelines possible. As the Defence Industry Development Strategy acknowledges, developing expertise in defence areas is time-intensive, with lengthy degrees and high standards for integration into any secure defence production site.42
Mapping stakeholder preparedness for GWEO
Delivering a major national capability will require a workforce from a range of educational and experience backgrounds. Locating, attracting and training these workers will require the combined efforts of the federal and state governments, industry and the higher education sector.
The following analysis
- assesses the most significant contributions each stakeholder group stands to make to GWEO workforce development efforts,
- considers the relevance of existing training initiatives funded or delivered by that stakeholder group and
- assesses key impediments to the development of an integrated training ecosystem in support of a sovereign GWEO enterprise.
Australian Government
The workforce puzzle begins with the Australian Government. The government will exercise enormous influence over the shape of the GWEO workforce, first and foremost, by nominating the capabilities that Australia will pursue and in what volumes. The munitions manufacturing objectives the Australian Government has set out include the assembly of GMLRS, which was first achieved in April 2026;43 the manufacturing and maintenance of Joint Strike Missile and Naval Strike Missiles from 2027; and the establishment of an Australian Weapons Manufacturing Complex capable of producing 4,000 GMLRS a year by 2029.44 These objectives together require the growth and reskilling of the Australian defence industrial labour force.45
To create a national ecosystem of workforce training providers, the Australian Government will need to clearly communicate future requirements and provide a sustainable funding stream.
Industrial workforce development must be strategically directed and invested in at the national level to best drive industry behaviour. To create a national ecosystem of workforce training providers, the Australian Government will need to clearly communicate future requirements and provide a sustainable funding stream. The Australian Government has advanced a series of defence industry skilling initiatives associated with other defence objectives that provide a useful starting point for GWEO preparations.
In 2019, the then-Morrison government published the first Defence Industry Skilling and STEM Strategy. Among its provisions, it offered A$32 million over three years to a new Defence Industry Skills Flexible Funding Pool.46 With the subsequent announcement of major new sovereign defence undertakings under the Albanese government, the gradual development of federal workforce programs has continued. The 2023 Federal Budget dedicated A$150 million to defence workforce development programs, principally associated with AUKUS.47 As part of the School Pathways Program, Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy announced over A$11 million of investment encouraging STEM education and supporting career pathways into the defence sector in 2025.48 Workforce themes are also consistently embedded in the priorities of Defence Industry Development Program grants.49 Cumulatively, these initiatives should input significantly into the GWEO workforce, as long as they are adequately promoted and integrated into Australian defence strategy.50
Table 2. Sample of major federally funded defence industrial workforce development initiatives51
Despite these incremental efforts by successive governments, defence industrial workforce issues are still not owned by a single federal department. Instead, workforce development responsibilities are spread between the Departments of Education; Industry, Science and Resources; and Defence. The incrementalism and siloing of workforce development efforts must be reconsidered for two reasons. While each area makes a positive contribution to national workforce uplift in areas of major shortage, the disaggregation of responsibilities and programs among departments makes it difficult to assess the precise impact on workforce availability and, accordingly, to prioritise and pivot when necessary. Further, it also obscures the avenues for stakeholders to seek federal funding, engagement or support.
Rather than innovate initiatives bespoke to GWEO, the Australian Government has assumed that industrial workforce solutions should be industry-led. As a result, several key levers at the government’s disposal remain underutilised — including its specification of current and anticipated requirements, its capacity to convene educational and industrial stakeholders and its creation of a favourable environment for international business activity.
Defence industry, university and training providers’ complaints about a shortage of demand signals are now very familiar to government.52 The communication of clear workforce capacity estimates across each phase of GWEO implementation would provide a clear demand signal to training providers, universities and defence industry. Further, giving formal responsibility for overseeing industrial workforce expansion to senior officials within the Defence Delivery Agency will ensure continuous and streamlined communications. A central effort is needed to cohere currently diffuse workforce initiatives being advanced across the defence organisation. Clarification, oversight and cross-project coordination should be priorities.
The 2024 Defence Industry Development Strategy, supplemented by the Defence Workforce Plan that accompanied it, provided a call to action for ecosystem engagement and “genuine partnership” with state officials, industry and unions, marshalled by the Australian Government.53 Though its engagement with industry with respect to GWEO is generally strong, the Australian Government should play a more concerted role in regularising and expanding cross-sector engagement about industrial workforce development.54 This would offer momentum and central direction to the current discrete and periodic efforts occurring at a state level.
A significant further contribution the Australian Government will make to the success of GWEO is creating favourable conditions for international manufacturers and local SMEs to recruit a local workforce. Encouraging new entrants in the market will have the additive effect of growing training capability and the availability of apprenticeship opportunities. Clear demand signals from the Australian Government communicated in strategic documents and bilateral engagements must be present to attract offshore manufacturers. At the same time, incentives must be created for small and medium manufacturers to enter or expand operations. These incentives could take a variety of forms, from low-interest loans to partial equity to funded apprenticeship programs. Existing funding and investment cycles should be leveraged to direct prime defence contractors to invest in workforce training and resilience. Further, the Australian Government can accept greater risk in its clearance of workers for GWEO than it can for more classified adjacent projects. By driving recruitment and training opportunities across the sector, the Australian Government can support Australian industry’s preparedness to deliver the GWEO enterprise.
State governments
State governments play an integral role in supporting the expansion of Australia’s defence sector, attracting and training skilled workers and enabling industrial activity in their state. Many Australian states have set ambitious manufacturing targets to drive macroeconomic growth.55 However, as each state’s bureaucracy is unique, those interested in supporting GWEO activities will organise initiatives differently. While the Australian Government is well-placed to flow investment into national workforce programs, its officials lack regular engagement with local stakeholders and a granular understanding of state labour force characteristics, providing a justification for an expanded state government role.
Australian Government officials lack regular engagement with local stakeholders and a granular understanding of state labour force characteristics, providing a justification for an expanded state government role.
State governments have numerous tools at their disposal to support local workforce expansion efforts. State officials advocate for opportunities for their state at the national level and negotiate contracts with industry. They engage with industry training advisory bodies, training providers, the Office of Defence Industry Support and Jobs and Skills Councils. An example with respect to GWEO is the Australian Missile Corporation’s 2023 Memorandum of Understanding with the Victorian Government, focused on expanding local jobs, skills and training to accelerate Australia’s munitions industry.56 For industries deemed central to regional economic growth, state-level skills commissioners undertake skill forecasting and gather advice from industry for state officials.57 South Australia, as one example, created a Defence Industry Workforce and Skills Taskforce that delivers workforce plans to state defence projects in partnership with the Australian Government, including by growing the pipeline of STEM candidates and transitioning skilled workers from adjacent sectors.58 More so than the national Australian Government, state officials are well-positioned to engage regularly with local industry councils and unions.
AUKUS is an illustrative case study for the tremendous capacity of state governments to deliver investment and attention to defence industrial workforce efforts. In the wake of major AUKUS announcements, the South Australian Government committed to opening five new technical colleges in the state, supporting school-age students to achieve vocational education.59 Many of the most significant recent efforts in defence industry workforce development are supported by co-investment by the state and federal branches of government (with the A$480 million Skills and Training Academy at Osborne, South Australia and the Western Australian A$14.6 million Defence Industry Skills Centre of Excellence as striking examples).60 To avoid duplication and maximise the value of these investments, complementarity with future GWEO work could be considered in the design of curriculums and training. Moreover, though GWEO will not attract the same level of investment and attention as AUKUS, state governments must be similarly alert to opportunities that may arise for their state and be prepared to play a dedicated role.
For GWEO to succeed, it needs to be owned locally. State governments, industry and training providers need to understand the missile manufacturing opportunity and act where the Australian Government lacks the capacity or local inroads to effectively drive behaviour. State officials and stakeholders will await long-term clarity on the distribution of GWEO work. With the frenzied movement of national defence activity westwards, east coast state governments must better advocate for national opportunities and re-engage their local defence industry with a view to unlocking these future projects. Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Unions National Secretary Steve Murphy, speaking of the Australian Government’s push for sovereign capability, has stressed the importance of local job creation to community benefit across programs.61 The use of local talent, as well as local higher education and vocational training institutions, should be front-of-mind for state officials as they seek to contribute to this national enterprise.
Current unknowns around the location of future industrial activity make the activation of state governments around tailored workforce development efforts challenging. AUKUS has the benefit of a well-defined geographic footprint from the outset, which has increased stakeholder confidence at the local level. In contrast, the ad hoc nature of GWEO announcements and the limited senior official engagement around the enterprise limit state governments’ interest and understanding of how opportunities may be dispersed.
State governments are essential and capable partners in the delivery of industrial uplift. State governments across mainland Australia have embraced advanced manufacturing objectives; the Western Australian Defence and Defence Industry Strategy explicitly recognises perceived opportunities for northern Western Australia in supporting the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Enterprise.62 The NSW Government, in particular, has the potential to play a central role in overseeing ecosystem coordination on workforce planning and training delivery between industry, training providers and the Australian Government for GWEO. Because Australian technical workers are generally immobile due to both preference and circumstance, it would be wise to base manufacturing projects in hubs of population depth with a strong baseline of skills.63 NSW leads the nation in various advanced manufacturing, engineering and defence areas; more than 29,000 manufacturing businesses operate across the state producing 31% of national output.64 As of July 2025, more than 2,700 apprentices and trainees were completing programs aligned with defence priorities in the state.65 NSW is well-positioned to be a key hub for GWEO manufacturing, building upon the work already underway at Orchard Hills, Newcastle and Mulwala.66 The NSW Skills Plan identified six priority areas for resource allocation, including one area, ‘advanced manufacturing’, which may be in scope for GWEO.67 The state’s first Industry Policy, released in March 2025, set ambitious local manufacturing Gross Value Added targets.68
Despite this strong baseline in defence areas, there is little awareness of GWEO at the state government level. Stakeholders report that GWEO is seldom mentioned among officials and it does not appear explicitly in state industry planning documents.
Yet, despite this strong baseline in defence areas, there is little awareness of GWEO at the state government level. Stakeholders report that GWEO is seldom mentioned among officials and it does not appear explicitly in state industry planning documents. The NSW Government is yet to play a significant role in connecting stakeholders and investing in training efforts.69 Defence manufacturing has not been prioritised locally. Few officials are working on manufacturing issues full-time, and their portfolios are focused on export controls and industry expansion rather than the equally critical matter of ecosystem-level coordination with skill and training providers.70 Defence industry group membership has declined in NSW in recent years, even as membership has grown nationally, due to a perceived waning of opportunities in the state.71 In the absence of a state spokesperson and dedicated consideration within the state’s skills plan, the most that can be hoped for is that GWEO bubbles beneath the surface, benefiting inadvertently from broader industrial development efforts.
Defence industry
The strategic industry partners and enterprise partners of the GWEO Group will have the most involved task in recruiting, training and retaining a missile manufacturing workforce.72 Some of this will occur in close coordination with the Australian Government. The 2024 National Defence Strategy committed to more effective partnerships between government and industry that attempt to offer certainty of demand and provide long-term opportunities for collaborative capability development, workforce growth and innovation.73 In practical terms, this involves opportunities for organisations’ input into the research of Jobs and Skills Councils — state-level, industry-led not-for-profits — that will inform the Australian Government on job requirements by location across the nation.
Defence industry prime manufacturers are also experienced independent training providers. In the wake of GWEO announcements, Australian and international firms have ramped up their investments in training and innovation. Lockheed Martin, a strategic partner of the Australian Department of Defence for GWEO, offers training directly through the Australian Graduate Development Program, internships through the Industry Based Learning Program, traineeships and apprenticeships for high-performing early career talent.74 Thales, the industry operator of Commonwealth-owned munitions manufacturing locations at Benalla and Mulwala, typically trains its workers in explosive ordnance in-house, rather than leaning on vocational education providers.75 However, experience alone does not make industry organisations capable of overcoming challenges independently.
The difficulty of sustaining and growing a guided weapons workforce to meet the scale of current requirements is familiar to Australia’s international partner in its GWEO enterprise — the United States. Inconsistent and under-investment in munitions because of complex joint and service processes, congressional funding cycles and a tendency to cut munitions accounts to fill shortfalls elsewhere has made it challenging to sustain the US industrial base at scale.76 Wages for US munitions assembly workers have fallen well behind inflation, and a series of large-scale strikes among defence industrial workers in recent years underscore the difficulties of maintaining and appropriately compensating the skilled workforce, even in a larger-scale industrial base.77 Losing workforce capability during periods of decreased demand for munitions has proven particularly damaging to long-term outcomes.78
Australia may face similar issues of inconsistent funding, wage shortfalls and fluctuating demand. Accordingly, Australian industry is unable to act alone to guarantee the industrial workforce on the required timelines. Government-to-industry coordination in all defence projects is generally hampered by distrust between the sectors.79 Though defence industry contractors have commended GWEO Group for the extent of their proactive engagement,80 lethargic and closed decisions on contracting inhibit collaborative workforce planning. In the absence of long-term contracts, defence firms lack the certainty to invest in staff recruitment and training. The indefinite suspension of the rocket motor manufacturing inquiry, even temporarily, was cited as one example of the uncertainty that hangs over industry investments.81 Experts have warned of the opportunity cost of official emphasis on purchases of foreign equipment. While strategically necessary to grow Australian stockpiles in the near term, this approach limits the capital available for Australian defence contractors to invest in their labour force.82
While strategically necessary to grow Australian stockpiles in the near term, emphasis on purchases of foreign equipment limits the capital available for Australian defence contractors to invest in their labour force.
A second critical consideration, as government turns to industry for workforce solutions, is future workforce sovereignty. Given aforementioned shortages of specialist expertise in guided weapons manufacturing in Australia, the GWEO workforce will initially be dependent on international talent. Fortunately, Australian industry representatives are confident about their capacity to recruit experts from partner countries to fill a limited collection of highly specialised leadership roles in Australia’s enterprise.83 However, if the scale of requirements expands or this reliance endures long term, it would limit Australia’s defence sovereignty and could raise poaching concerns from partners, especially against a backdrop of competition for talent across other Australian manufacturing and defence projects. Fortunately, GWEO’s workforce requirements will unlikely grow to a scale that would detract in any significant way from other partners’ work programs. In the short term, state governments should encourage international firms to set up local operations, attracting global talent. In the long term, it also falls to officials to invest in the education of a pipeline of national specialists to avoid poaching and ensure sustainability.
All the same, Australian industry must embrace a decisive role in preparing the future GWEO workforce. Among the most significant decisions the Australian Government’s industry partners will make pertain to achieving labour force diversity, succession planning for the ageing defence industry workforce, and investments and innovation in advanced manufacturing technologies to achieve greater automation. To ensure that the future industrial labour force for this project is sustainable in the wake of competing defence projects and adjacent sectors, defence firms must expand their focus on the non-monetary benefits as part of their employee value proposition. Survey research by Defence Connect emphasises that commercial reputation, culture and diversity are the main factors driving defence industry talent to join a firm — sovereign ownership and, surprisingly, alignment with skills were not high priorities for those surveyed.84 Provided that organisations are reasonably assured of future returns on their investment, Australian defence industry firms seem confident they are well-positioned to support the training of a sovereign GWEO workforce into the future.85 With this recognition in mind, prime manufacturers must be willing to bear the costs in the first instance for recruitment and training.
Prime manufacturers will have final say in defining the requirements of their workforce. Defence industry recruiters must prepare to define suitable talent diversely. Manufacturers note that many of the requirements of GWEO work, beyond the explosive content, will be relatively straightforward.86 Workers from adjacent manufacturing areas, from AUKUS to aerospace, will be capable of playing an instrumental role in the GWEO sector. Among those attributes most in demand will be senior engineers who are capable educators. Industry should assume a strategic approach to risk in recruitment. A willingness to define the suitability of future candidates more flexibly will ensure that potential workers are not arbitrarily eliminated from contributing to this enterprise.
Higher education and vocational training providers
Though industry prefers to conduct much of its training internally, universities and TAFEs will undoubtedly have a role to play in the GWEO project by creating pathways for young Australians into defence sector careers, designing technical training and educating the senior specialist workforce. The education sector is at the centre of increasingly expansive collaborative efforts to grow Australian students’ interest in STEM, in response to poor rates of maths and science achievement at the high school level,87 and stagnant attraction of women and diverse students to related qualifications.88 With research and development (R&D) spending declining across industry and government, universities also play an increasingly significant role in Australian R&D, cultivating specialist technical expertise and driving advanced manufacturing innovation.89
Even in the absence of top-down coordination, discrete efforts from the education sector have begun to emerge to support the future GWEO enterprise. For instance, the University of New South Wales, Canberra, has established a one-to-three-day short course, directed largely at policy practitioners, to introduce students to the fundamentals of work in guided weapons and explosive ordnance.90 In July 2024, the Australian Defence Force announced that select military and defence industry personnel will receive training in pursuit of a master degree in explosive ordnance.91 Defence industry organisations have sought out relevant relationships with universities on an ad hoc basis; for instance, Nova Systems in 2024 announced a partnership with Cranfield University in the United Kingdom to introduce three GWEO training courses into the Australian education market.92 Limited efforts from government to fund PhD scholarships are important but fall short of funding a larger ecosystem in the defence area.
Though these efforts are undoubtedly a positive contribution to the talent pipeline, future funding and delivery models remain uncertain. Fortunately, the 2025 investment announced by the Australian Research Council (ARC) may fortify this progress. In July 2025, the ARC unveiled A$62 million in funding for 13 new Training Centres and Research Hubs.93 One of these hubs, hosted at the University of Sydney, will be a A$5 million ARC Training Centre for High-Speed Propulsion, Rocket and Launch Systems for dual use applications in Defence and Space.94
Among the most significant measures that could better prepare university students to contribute to the GWEO enterprise on faster timeframes is early integration with industry and experience in facilities.
Among the most significant measures that could better prepare university students to contribute to the GWEO enterprise on faster timeframes is early integration with industry and experience in facilities. Both companies and students interested in propulsion would benefit from facility access, for students’ early fluency in the operation of equipment is cited by manufacturers among the most important and favourable characteristics enabling early and productive entry by new graduates into the labour force.95 Investing in relevant manufacturing infrastructure at universities and integrating student interns and apprentices onsite during their studies should be a priority, accompanied by appropriate operational equipment effectiveness requirements.96 The Australian Government supports some short-term models, including 12-week placements under the aforementioned Defence Industry Internships Program, but practitioners emphasise that more enduring integration with the site is necessary to drive post-graduation employment and to add value for industry partners.97
Compared with Universities, the TAFE sector is yet to make any significant moves to prepare for GWEO. Given the relatively limited requirement for specialised vocational workers for the GWEO enterprise (as per the University of Sydney’s capacity estimation), there is insufficient demand for a tailored qualification introduced nationally by TAFE.98 Instead, TAFE representatives expect that dedicated programming will be introduced at the local level once the geography and scale of requirements are specified.99 The absence of demand signals and industry’s preference for in-house training have discouraged action from the TAFE sector to contribute to a talent pipeline. It is not yet clear whether the enterprise will demand the study of additional university or TAFE courses on top of existing qualifications or a bespoke credential, and in what volumes. The GWEO Group need to communicate their project workforce demands so the education sector writ large can respond accordingly in both designing programs and making a case for the transferability of similar qualifications in existing foundation skillsets or programs.
The GWEO Group need to communicate their project workforce demands so the education sector writ large can respond accordingly in both designing programs and making a case for the transferability of similar qualifications in existing foundation skillsets or programs.
Collaboration among training providers will be necessary to optimise the preparation of Australia’s defence industry workforce for GWEO. At present, there are few incentives for universities to work with TAFEs. Universities’ collaborative activities and programming relevant to GWEO are largely driven by academic-to-academic relationships, rather than by a clear demand signal from government.100 The Australian Rocket Systems Training Network (ARSTN) emerged in 2023 as a coordinating body of government, education and industry organisations to improve advocacy and collaboration on establishing a world-leading training and educational ecosystem meeting the needs of GWEO.101 To date, this effort has effectively configured a broad church of GWEO stakeholders and driven attention to the project, even as the group’s future funding and impact remain open questions. It has effectively sought collaborative research and education funding and shaped coursework in participating universities. As these defence programs grow in scale and national significance, and as other university revenue streams (namely, the flow of international students) wane, tertiary and vocational education providers should expand such collaborations. At the industry level, intellectual property remains a barrier to integration with university students.
The question of attraction to GWEO work must be considered and connected to the education sector’s contribution to the talent pipeline. Industry does not anticipate any major difficulty with attracting graduate talent, given the relatively limited scale of GWEO requirements and fairly stable recruitment patterns across the sector in recent years.102 Still, the volatility of the Australian and international public debate around the defence sector — especially on Australian university campuses — merits consideration as Australia prepares to rapidly scale its defence workforce.103 This is a challenge across the civilian and uniformed defence workforce; though Australians hold the ADF in high regard, less than half of Australians would encourage family members to serve in the ADF, and support for increased defence spending is mixed.104 Further, though Australia has internationally competitive student rocketry teams,105 universities report a brain drain of STEM talent into finance areas, in pursuit of high salaries and city employment.
For the enterprise to attract high-performing university graduates, GWEO needs to be better linked in the minds of students and commentators to futures in space and rocketry. The significance of GWEO as a defensive, rather than offensive, capability should also be emphasised as industry and government hope to encourage service to country through contributions to the industrial workforce. Programs aimed at promoting STEM education must include an imperative to encourage students to remain in STEM areas.
Conclusions
Workers provide the fundamental underpinnings for any sovereign enterprise. Workforce may be the single greatest handbrake on Australia’s national effort to transform its defence capability across a host of simultaneous endeavours. Given the structural realities of Australia’s size and education sector, addressing industrial workforce challenges is among Australia’s most pressing priorities as it configures its future economy for an era of defence sovereignty. Yet, the picture is not so bleak for Australia’s Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance enterprise. When contrasted with other major Australian industrial efforts, from AUKUS to the net zero transition, the requirements of the GWEO enterprise are considerably more straightforward. Further, many of the host of programs government and industry have funded in recent years can be leveraged behind GWEO, provided the workforce requirements and geography become clearer.
GWEO should not be over-engineered. Simply, GWEO has not been appropriately prioritised across national and state lines of effort. The status quo of government inertia and industry tentativeness cannot continue if Australian sovereign guided weapons and explosive ordnance capability is to be delivered on the timelines expected. Certainty of demand, determination to move at pace and government ownership over the outcome are absent. To deliver the missile defences that may represent one of Australia’s most critical future capabilities and one of the most valuable contributions Australia makes to its partners’ future supply chains, industrial workforce development cannot tumble down the list of national priorities. In fact, it may be Australia’s single most important preparation.
Recommendations
- The Australian Government should specify workforce requirements and encourage private investment by clarifying the scale and geographic distribution of future GWEO work.
- The future Defence Delivery Agency should task senior officials with making workforce capacity estimations, monitoring progress across industry and training providers and integrating GWEO preparations with broader cross-government efforts to expand the manufacturing workforce.
- Accelerating decisions on GWEO’s geographic footprint should be an immediate priority, even if this precedes formalising additional contracting decisions. Decisions on GWEO’s geographic diffusion should be made with consideration of the limited mobility of Australia’s technical workforce.
- National outreach must occur to increase state governments and training providers’ buy-in into an enterprise that has been industry-led to date.
- State governments across Australia’s east coast must improve their literacy on GWEO issues and integrate the enterprise’s bespoke requirements into state-level manufacturing and education plans.
- The industry-government nexus should be strengthened by secondments and integrated project teams to overcome mutual distrust.
- GWEO workforce preparations must be purposefully planned alongside, and subsequently differentiated from, other Australian defence projects.
- GWEO Group and the future Defence Delivery Agency should examine the applicability of AUKUS-specific programs being trialled in South Australia and Western Australia. If effective and designed sufficiently adaptively, these configurations could be leveraged to train workers with GWEO skill requirements to limit the need for duplicative additional programming.
- Streamlining the process to reskill workers from adjacent sectors into GWEO work through micro-credentialing should be a near-term objective for industry and vocational training providers.
- Building future local talent should be a priority area for investment, including scaling master degrees and PhD programs of higher complexity, to minimise the sector’s future reliance on international partners’ workforces.
- GWEO’s qualities that are distinct from AUKUS work — namely, its small scale, east coast concentration and lesser security classification and skills requirements — should be central to industry’s recruitment messaging to prospective workers.