Here’s Why Australia is Spending $1 Billion To Fly Drones Around Antarctica

Experts are concerned that Australia’s promise to spend close to $1 billion on a fleet of new drones and autonomous vehicles to fly across Antarctica could trigger an Antarctic “arms race” for surveillance technology. It’s a situation that the Australian government doesn’t have much experience with at all. 

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that his government would commit $804 million to flying drones over the frozen continent in an effort to push back on China’s growing presence in regions that Australia has already staked a claim for. 

Antarctica is not a country, and doesn’t have a government. Instead, the continent has become a safe haven for scientists and researchers to work in peace, free from the throes of the geopolitical turmoil tearing through other, highly contested regions (read: Ukraine). From 1961, that line of thinking was legislated in the form of the Antarctic Treaty, and the continent’s ideals of intellectual exchange were formalised.

That’s not to say that world leaders don’t want to plant their flags, though. And, with Morrison’s sizable cash commitment, Australia is making it clear that it only wants to plant more of them. 

“The money we are investing in drone fleets, helicopters and other vehicles will enable us to explore areas of East Antarctica’s inland that no country has ever been able to reach before,” Morrison said on Tuesday.

Morrison’s pitch is that the improved reach will allow scientists to research new parts of the continent, while staving off foreign efforts to claim Australian-claimed territories across the continent. But some experts say they have concerns about the use of technology, like drones, and the ways their use may trigger an Antarctic “arms race”. 

Elizabeth Buchanan, an Australian polar geopolitics expert from Deakin University, told the ABC on Tuesday that the move “clearly signals” Canberra’s appetite to move into  the “grey zone” of dual-use technologies, like surveillance drones that can also be used to monitor civilians. She warned that it’s a space that both Russia and China are better versed in. 

“Drones have both military and civilian research applications,” Buchanan said. 

Morrison is making two separate pledges. One is to build a smattering of mobile stations as part of an effort to increase Australia’s environmental protection efforts across the continent. The second part, meanwhile, would see the Morrison government spend about $35 million on new helicopters to extend the reach of its research programs. 

In recent years, the portion of Antarctica currently claimed by Australian researchers, which amounts to some 42 percent of the continent’s total land mass, has become a target for China, whose scientists have been trying to claim parts of the continent’s harder-to-reach Antarctic interior. 

Experts studying the region say the race not only to stockload arms, but also to become a “polar great power” – or Superpower, if you will – has ramped up enormously over the last few years. One of the earlier signs came in 2018,  when China published a white paper declaring support for the international legal regime after it committed to co-operation and investment in Antarctic scientific projects. It was received with mixed reaction from the Arctic states, of which Australia is one, who felt threatened by China’s interest. 

China is only really a recent addition, but they aren’t the only threat to Australia’s dominance across the continent. Russia, dubbed the “great polar power of the north”, has been sinking its teeth in the polar south since before the Middle Kingdom. Now, experts say both China and Russia are trying to get a tailwind in Antarctica, not just for scientific research, but with a view to exploit its resources. 

To counter China’s encroachment, Morrison hopes to establish a sort of “Antarctic eye” through the use of drone fleets and autonomous vehicles, each with integrated cameras and sensors, to feed vision back to scientists in real time. 

On top of remaining active in parts of Antarctica – where Australian researchers already have a claim – Morrison wants more. To get it, he says the government will buy four new purpose-built helicopters that will be able to fly as far as 550 kilometres from Australia’s new icebreaker to discover parts of Antarctica that have never been seen. 

But if older promises are anything to go off, Morrison’s plan is far from a sure thing. Back in October 2018, Australia’s Defence Minister Peter Dutton made a similar pledge, when he promised the Australian military a maritime surveillance upgrade. Basically: more drones. But they never came.

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