Ask most militaries how many aircraft they operate and you get an exact number. Ask the Australian Army how many uncrewed aerial vehicles it has and you get a range, plus an explanation of why there is no exact figure.
Speaking to Janes at Land Forces 2026 in Perth, held 6 to 8 October, Brigadier James Davis, Director General Systems and Integration, said the number of UAVs in Army service is "in the low thousands." He then explained why he could not be more precise: "I don't know the exact number and that probably points to a philosophy, as some of this is decentralised and we allow units to acquire their own systems. And the other thing is, a lot of these systems are what we call attritable, so we don't expect they'll have a particularly long life."
It is an unusual thing for a senior officer to say on the record. It also describes a real change in how a Western army is choosing to handle small drones: as consumables that units buy and expect to lose, rather than as tracked capital assets.
What the Army actually flies
Davis did not give an exact count, but Janes described the fleet. The largest aircraft in the Army's UAV inventory is the Insitu Integrator. Below it sit about 20 different Group 1 and Group 2 UAV types in the sub-25 kg category.
The named systems include:
- Sypaq Corvo X: a 1.4 kg fixed-wing aircraft introduced under Project DEF129. Deliveries were completed in early 2026.
- Quantum Systems Vector AI 2-in-1: a small UAS the Army is flying, pictured in Janes with soldiers of 3rd Brigade.
- Elbit Systems Skylark I-LEX: a UAS in the Army's inventory.
- Teledyne FLIR Black Hornet: nano-UAVs, with a couple of hundred reported in circulation.
- Quadcopters from the ASCA sovereign UAV programme: acquired under the Advanced Strategic Capability Accelerator programme as a domestic equivalent to commercial DJI drones (more on this below).
Most of these are already familiar. In September 2024, Colonel Helen Mammino of Army Aviation Command described DEF 129 to C4ISRNET as a program organised into four size categories: nano, small UAS (SUAS), SUAS-plus and tactical UAS (TUAS). At that time the RQ-21A Integrator was being fielded to replace the Shadow 200, with six systems of four aircraft each planned by the end of 2025. Skylark I-LEX sat in the SUAS-plus tier. The Vector 2-in-1 (for mounted operations) and Sypaq's CorvoX (for dismounted use) were to replace the AeroVironment Wasp AE under a contract worth more than A$100 million announced in mid-July 2024. Black Hornet 3 covered the nano tier.
Comparing the two accounts, the same program-of-record names appear in both. Davis now reports Corvo X deliveries complete and the Integrator as the largest aircraft in the fleet. What the 2024 description did not cover is the layer underneath: a large and loosely counted mix of small systems that units acquire for themselves.
The DJI problem
The most revealing part of Davis's remarks concerns quadcopters. "Since about 2023, we haven't allowed the use of DJI drones in defence for security reasons," he told Janes. He said such UAVs perform important functions, including general-purpose training. "And so we asked Australian industry to produce an equivalent drone for those purposes." The ASCA sovereign UAV programme is the vehicle for that.
The ban matters because cheap commercial quadcopters are basic equipment in drone-heavy warfare, and training is one of the jobs Davis named for them. Once DJI aircraft were barred, a replacement had to be found, and Australia chose to have local industry build one rather than buy another off-the-shelf import.
The Janes report, as visible without a subscription, gives no unit price, production rate or fleet size for the ASCA quadcopters and does not name the manufacturers. Whether a sovereign substitute can match the cost and availability of the product it replaces is a question the reported figures cannot yet answer.
A count-free philosophy
The decentralised model Davis described has a clear logic. If units can acquire their own small systems and the Army treats them as attritable, then a central inventory count matters less. These aircraft are not expected to have a particularly long life. They are meant to be used and, often, lost.
The trade-off is visibility. A force that cannot state its own drone numbers may have a harder time planning training, spares, spectrum management and security controls. That last point matters given that the DJI ban was imposed for security reasons in the first place. Davis's comments suggest the Army has decided that speed and flexibility at unit level are worth some loss of central oversight.
Ukraine as the reference point
The Land Forces remarks follow a signal from Army itself about where all this is heading. Defence Connect reported on 24 September that the Army is preparing to make robotic and autonomous systems a routine part of combat-team operations, with Talisman Sabre 2027 emerging as a major demonstration point.
That report drew on a podcast, "Drone-Enabled Battlefield: Army's RAS Revolution," published on 20 September by the Army's professional development platform, The Cove, featuring Captain Andy Dunn-Lobban of the Land Combat College's Remote and Autonomous Systems Cell. Dunn-Lobban previously deployed to train Ukrainian forces on Operation Kudu and the UK's Interflex. According to Defence Connect, it is understood that Army drone doctrine will be largely informed by Ukrainian results-based best practice. Dunn-Lobban called the explosive FPV drone "the most efficient weapon system on the battlefield today," citing a cost of under $5,000 and a reach of 20 km.
Put that next to Davis's comments and a consistent picture emerges. The Army is studying a war in which cheap drones are used up in large numbers, and it allows units to acquire drones themselves. And it has a major demonstration point in 2027.
Why It Matters
Australia's approach tests three ideas that other Western armies are also weighing.
The first is attritability as policy. By choosing not to track every small drone centrally, the Army is treating Group 1 and 2 aircraft more like consumables than like conventional aircraft. That fits the Ukrainian experience Dunn-Lobban described. It also gives up some of the accountability that defence organisations usually insist on.
The second is security against cost. Banning DJI removes the most widely used commercial option from Defence. The Army's answer, Australian-built quadcopters through the ASCA programme, addresses the security concern. Whether it can also deliver the volumes and low prices that make attritable drones worthwhile has not been publicly shown.
The third is a deadline. With Talisman Sabre 2027 emerging as a demonstration point for routine robotic and autonomous systems in combat teams, the Army has about a year to show that a fleet it counts only as "low thousands," made up of some 20 types, can work together at combat-team level.
The named program systems (Integrator, Corvo X, Vector, Skylark, Black Hornet) are in Army service. The harder parts are what Davis described: a decentralised, uncounted layer of small drones, and a sovereign quadcopter built as an equivalent to the DJI aircraft the Army no longer allows.
