Number of mysterious drones flying over defence bases rises as authorities in the dark

Authorities are in the dark about who is behind the major jump in the number of unidentified drones flying over Australian Defence Force bases in what has been described as a national security threat.

Defence officials told a Senate committee the reports of unidentified drone sightings over bases have risen from 19 in 2022-23 to 204 in 2025-26.

These added to a total of about 420 sightings over the past four financial years.

In the financial year to date, which started on July 1, there has already been 42 reports.

Asked how many of the incidents were just “a silly teenager” and how many were foreign interference or espionage, the defence officials were unable to say.

“I can say we’re working really closely on the motivations,” the official said.

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“We haven’t identified particular high-end concerns but we are very concerned that this is a growing challenge.”

Australian Strategic Policy Institute defence expert Malcolm Davis said the rising number of unidentified drones was “absolutely” a national security threat.

“The risk is there’s not so much some amateur flying a drone over a base creating an incident,” he said.

“It’s the possibility that you could have a foreign adversary or a terrorist organisation utilising drones to actually attack one of our bases.”

The Williamtown RAAF Base, home to fighter jets and aircraft about 30km north of Newcastle in NSW, made headlines after unidentified drones were found to have breached the restricted airspace on two separate occasions in July and August.

Defence personnel did not shoot the drones down and investigations are still ongoing to determine their origins.

Defence officials flagged the current legal framework was “not straightforward” about their powers in responding to these incidents.

Davis said the incident showed how easy it could have been to damage aircraft and infrastructure and pointed to Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb.

The covert military operation had caused damage to multimillion-dollar Russian military assets after cheap drones were unleashed in a surprise attack in July 2025.

“Drones are cheap. They can be armed with explosives. They can do real damage,” Davis said.

At the time of the Williamtown base incident, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said it was “unsafe and dangerous” to have drones around defence airspace.

“It makes no sense for that to occur,” he said.

Legislation to grant defence members the ability to shoot down any unidentified drones was introduced in October.

Shadow defence minister James Paterson said it should not have taken so many months of pressure for the federal government to finally act and bring forward those reforms.

“The Coalition has been raising the alarm on drone attacks on our major defence infrastructure for many months, particularly our RAAF bases,” he said.

Australia will spend a record $425 billion over the next decade to overhaul the defence force.

About $22 billion has been spent on counter-drone technology and $7 billion on counter-drone investment over the decade.

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Davis called on the federal government to fast-track its investment into counter-drone defences.

“At the moment, I think that we’re only just starting to wake up to this threat and the government is moving way too slowly to respond to this threat,” he said.

“We don’t have 10 years to think about a capability solution and then buy it. We’ve got to get this in place within 12 months.”