Papua New Guinea needs to prepare for the threat posed by cheap, commercial drones. Given Australia’s defence cooperation with PNG – formalised into an alliance by the Pukpuk treaty – and the two countries’ proximity, this is a challenge for both nations. To prepare, they should particularly pay more attention to drone warfare in the Sahel, an African region where circumstances more closely resemble the Pacific than Ukraine does.
PNG’s security and stability are critical for Australia’s own. This is underscored by the treaty, which reaffirms the vital need for collaboration amid a deteriorating rules-based order. Drones would almost certainly feature in any conflict that materialises out of this deterioration.
Indeed, this is the case in the Sahel. Salafi-jihadist insurgencies there have employed inexpensive, commercially available quadcopters and modified first-person view (FPV) drones for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and kinetic strikes. This has given them asymmetric advantages in both areas, against both states and each other.
Specifically, use of such drones by these actors, predominantly Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), Al-Qaeda’s Sahelian affiliate, and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), has directly contributed to the resurgence of their influence in the region.
Like Sahelian states, PNG also grapples with violent conflict stemming from non-state actors. Tribal militias have several times clashed with the PNG Defence Force (PNGDF) and Royal PNG Constabulary, often armed with high-powered firearms. Reports have also confirmed that these groups have begun using commercially available drones for ISR against one another. It seems it’s only a matter of time until the police or PNGDF encounter a hostile drone.
Such an event would dramatically expose PNG’s vulnerability to cheap hostile drones, creating opportunities for potential foreign adversaries. This needs to be addressed for the security of both PNG and Australia.
According to the 2025 edition of Military Balance, published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, PNGDF doesn’t possess any counter-drone equipment. And there’s been no indication from official state sources that the PNGDF has procured any.
However, under Pukpuk, Australia has agreed to help train and build the capacity of the PNGDF through ongoing cooperation, joint exercises and capability development. When helping PNG’s development of counter-drone capabilities, Australia needs to consider the country’s Sahel-like constraints, including a limited military budget and rugged, diverse, infrastructure-sparse terrain.
The first step should be to implement a strict, enforceable legal framework to regulate the import, sale and use of commercial drones, a process that Mali began in January. Ultimately, any measure that prevents a drone going up in the air in the first place is the best defence.
In the Sahel, the biggest challenge that state forces face is knowing whether a drone is there at all. Therefore, the second step should be to acquire drone detection measures for the PNGDF. PNG couldn’t implement the radar-based and distributed-sensor systems used in Ukraine, as they’re too expensive and are ill-suited to PNG’s geographical conditions.
Instead, the PNGDF should be equipped with cheap, portable, radiofrequency (RF) detectors. These can detect and classify a drone from its control signal. Australia has acquired such systems under Project Land 156, including DroneShield’s RfPatrol Mk2. Australia should share this technology with the PNGDF under Pukpuk.
The third step should be to equip the PNGDF with drone-downing measures. To take down cheap drones cost-effectively, the PNGDF should consider systems such as the French-made Nerod RF, which Cote d’Ivoire’s military acquired last year for use in its northern areas. DroneShield’s DroneSentry-X Mk2 could also be used on road vehicles.
However, these countermeasures aren’t failsafe and don’t stop drones controlled by optical fibre, which even the resource-poor Azawad Liberation Front in northern Mali has managed to acquire. While affordable acoustic detection systems like what BeephoniX are developing could be helpful tools, some drones will avoid detection.
Given this, the fourth step should be for PNGDF forces to receive counter-drone training in the joint exercises proposed in Pukpuk. Training would be valuable. Studies of experience in the Sahel show that survival rates of FPV kinetic strikes noticeably increase when targets are trained in exploiting natural cover and creating smoke screens.
Although not included in Pukpuk, PNG’s police force should receive similar capabilities and training as part of its longstanding policing partnership with Australia. Demonstrated police resilience to a domestic drone threat could help deter potential adversaries equipped with commercial drones.
Ultimately, if Australia fails to help its closest ally neutralise the democratised threat of commercial drones now, it risks a future where a vulnerable PNG requires increasingly frequent – and increasingly dangerous – Australian military interventions to secure its own doorstep. The two states should both learn from and monitor Sahelian mistakes and countermeasures to ensure commercially available drones don’t pose a threat to PNG and Australian security.