Money builds a precinct. Demand, labour and suppliers build a capability.

That is the discipline running through Raelene Lockhorst’s recent piece for ASPI’s The Strategist, “Plant alone isn’t enough: a defence factory is not a defence capability.” Lockhorst, deputy director of National Security Programs at ASPI, takes on the plan for naval shipbuilding and sustainment in Western Australia and asks the question that any large industrial program eventually has to answer. What turns a very large investment in infrastructure into something a navy can rely on?

Her answer is not more infrastructure. It is the connective tissue around it.

The scale of the bet

The Henderson Defence Precinct, south of Perth, is meant to support continuous naval shipbuilding and sustainment, and the maintenance of nuclear-powered submarines. It has received A$12 billion in initial funding for early works and infrastructure, with total costs estimated at around A$25 billion. This is among the largest industrial commitments in Australian defence history.

Lockhorst’s caution is that new facilities must be matched by skilled workers, qualified suppliers, secure supply chains, utilities and a reliable pipeline of work. Without those, a precinct is a very expensive set of buildings. Her objective is to connect new investment with the businesses and capabilities that already exist, and to strengthen the wider ecosystem rather than treat each project in isolation.

The shared-facilities model

The most useful detail in her account is how the Australian Marine Complex, part of the Henderson precinct, is organised. Its common user facility offers heavy engineering, fabrication and assembly infrastructure, vessel berths, workshops, ship hardstands, and a floating dock and ship-transfer system. Defence, marine, energy and resources customers all draw on the same specialised infrastructure as they need it, and none of them has to justify its full cost alone.

This is more than a cost-sharing arrangement. A shared facility keeps utilisation high across the commercial cycle, which keeps skilled people employed and suppliers qualified between naval programs. It is a structural answer to the stop-start demand that has hollowed out shipbuilding workforces in many countries. Western Australia’s iron ore and critical minerals sector has already built the heavy-industry base that a naval enterprise needs to borrow from. The multi-user model is how that base is connected to defence without being dedicated to it.

The Anzac proof point

Lockhorst’s best example of sustainment as a real capability is also the least glamorous. In 2024 the former HMAS Anzac was dismantled at Henderson, and components were recovered from the retired frigate. That work required specialist engineering, transport and coordination among local providers.

The point is that parts taken from a decommissioned ship can keep ships still in service at sea. A domestic industrial base that can take a hull apart intelligently, recover what the fleet needs and feed it back into readiness is doing something different from building new vessels. It is regenerating the force from its own inventory. Few things show more clearly that domestic capability extends well beyond the launching ceremony.

The same logic applies to the build side. Civmec’s fabrication and hardstand facilities at Henderson delivered the future HMAS Pilbara, the third Arafura-class offshore patrol vessel, launched in October 2025. That shows local industry can deliver complex vessels. The harder test is sustaining and scaling that ability to meet longer-term Defence requirements.

Scale is the test

Lockhorst ties the argument to the lessons of Ukraine and the Middle East: technological advantage has to be matched by the capacity to manufacture at scale, secure component supply, and adapt designs as operational needs change. She describes a Defence West industry tour, held during the Land Forces 2026 exposition, that ended with a briefing on Innovaero’s One Way Loitering family of autonomous munitions. A participant on that tour put the standard bluntly: “It’s not a capability unless you can manufacture it at scale.”

Developing a promising system, she writes, is only the first step. Dependable production needs investment, components, testing, certification and the ability to raise output when required. Her demand on Defence is specific: clear requirements, predictable procurement schedules and sustained demand, so that industry can invest with confidence in capacity, people and supply chains.

The Western Defence Forge, announced at Land Forces, points the same way. Five preferred proponents have been identified as prospective anchor tenants, spanning aerospace, autonomous systems, guided weapons, communications and defence infrastructure. As Lockhorst notes, its strategic value depends on moving from announcement to investment, operating facilities and sustained production aligned with what Defence needs.

Why this belongs in Partners Corner

Her test is, in effect, the argument we have been making about regenerative airpower, applied to ships. The next generation of airpower is an enterprise rather than a platform. A force is only as credible as its ability to produce, repair, replenish and adapt under pressure, and a platform that cannot be sustained and rebuilt at scale is a demonstration, not a capability. The Henderson story puts a maritime face on the same idea. The shared common-user facility is the enterprise. The Anzac recovery is regeneration in practice. The unanswered question is whether demand signals will be steady enough for the enterprise to hold together.

It also raises a question we should put to Europe. Industry there is trying to scale up for a prolonged war, and the same test applies. Does a promising system become a capability, with trained labour, qualified suppliers, utilities and a procurement pipeline that does not stop and start? Where the answer is no, the gap is not technology. It is the ecosystem around it, and the European experience of the past few years suggests the gap closes more slowly than announcements imply. Australia has the advantage of asking the question before the precinct is built rather than after.

This also connects to our wider look at the age of autonomous maritime systems. If small, numerous and rapidly produced systems are to carry more of the load at sea, then the capacity to build, sustain and iterate them at tempo matters as much as the hull forms themselves. A shared, multi-user industrial base is a better foundation for that than a facility tied to a single program.

The bottom line

Lockhorst’s piece is short, and its message is hard to dispute. The building blocks of a stronger Australian defence industry exist in Western Australia. The task for Defence, government and industry is to connect and expand them into an enduring system that can manufacture, maintain, repair and replenish capability at the scale and pace the strategic environment demands. A defence factory is not a defence capability until it can do all four.

Read the original: Raelene Lockhorst, “Plant alone isn’t enough: a defence factory is not a defence capability,” The Strategist (ASPI), 20 October 2026.

Partners Corner highlights work from our partner organizations: Breaking Defense, ASPI’s The Strategist, the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, and Opérationnels.