Christopher Luxon talks maritime intelligence with Mat Brown of Starboard. Photo: RNZ / Phil Pennington
The Prime Minister says a homegrown maritime surveillance platform might help in the fight against meth.
Starboard Maritime Intelligence's technology is already being used to combat pirates as well as the sabotage of vital subsea cables.
Four government ministers and Wellington's new mayor Andrew Little helped open the firm's new headquarters in the capital on Thursday morning.
On a big screen at the opening, the story played out of the system earlier this month detecting pirates boarding a fuel tanker, the Hellas Aphrodite off Somalia. It showed the tanker changing course after being boarded. The crew took refuge in a safe room and were later let out, safe, when a Spanish warship saw off the pirates.
Christopher Luxon said the value of a platform using satellites to monitor swathes of ocean in near real-time could be taken further.
"When we see submarines or ships that are coming in with huge supplies of meth because they think it's more attractive to sell into Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, tools like this can pull that information together and actually help us all in a fight like that," the prime minister told RNZ.
Starboard began six years ago with government funding and a first contract with MPI to monitor ships that might pose a biosecurity pest threat.
Now it provides subsea cable monitoring in the North Sea, and Singapore had just deployed it against drug trafficking and transnational crime, the company said.
Starboard's Mat Brown shows the platform monitoring for subsea cable risks off the UK coast. Photo: RNZ / Phil Pennington
Luxon said this sort of tech could help build out a new domestic defence industry.
About 800 local companies supply to the Defence Force - but their industry body, the NZ Defence Industry Association which represents 200 of those, said this was a step short of having an actual "defence industry" in the country.
Luxon said the $12 billion in the defence capability plan could move the dial.
"We actually want off the back of that to create a defence industry here in New Zealand that can plug into our partners and friends and their defence acquisition programmes, whether that be in Europe, whether that be in North America or Australia as well."
The country had to make sure it was "incredibly well positioned" in what was becoming a more volatile, power-based world order, he said.
Starboard was one of over 100 companies that registered to get briefings from the Defence Ministry in Wellington in May and Auckland in June, on what the defence capability plan was looking for.
These included massive US defence contractors like Boeing and Lockheed, and their tech cousins Amazon and Microsoft, as well as small local aerospace-oriented firms and ones building underwater drones.
Several companies also opted to have one-on-one meetings with Defence officials on 20 May, an Official Information Act response said.
Starboard said its platform was getting a lot of interest from governments as oceans became ever more strategic.
"Did you know that the US Navy is using Starboard to monitor North Korean sanctions compliance right now?" company chair Jonty Kelt asked the assembled dignitaries, including Associate Defence Minister Chris Penk.
Footage shown to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on Thursday morning at Starboard showing a fishing boat's movements in the western Pacific and satellite imagery so powerful it can see the nets, at left. Photo: RNZ / Phil Pennington
'Warfare is fast moving'
Demand is ramping up, along with the pace.
Defence Industry Association chair John Campbell said the government's strategy was a "great step forward and what we want to see now is just the meat on the bones".
The next six months were the real test.
"Today's warfare is fast moving, it is faster than it's ever been," said Campbell.
"We can't afford to have a system that takes two to three years to get to contract.
"The whole of industry needs to see it speed up - how they do that, it's up to them [but] if we're not careful industry will outpace defence."
Starboard's chief revenue officer Mat Brown shows off to government ministers on Thursday at the company's new Wellington headquarters with a copy of real-time monitoring of fishing vessels in the northwest Pacific. Photo: RNZ / Phil Pennington
Militaries worldwide are notorious for being slow to get going.
The US is trying to upend that, with Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth just last Friday giving an order to prioritise speed over cost when buying weapons. "We're looking to inject urgency," a Pentagon chief said.
Hegseth said US allies would benefit from getting arms orders on time, as quoted by Politico, which called it America's arms sale shakeup.
Kelt said "speed is a necessity", adding he was "very impressed" with the decisions the NZDF was making.
A widespread view is that start-ups and small tech firms like Starboard have an edge in this speed-first environment over the big contractors.
Luxon said he was already taking defence companies with him in delegations around the world.
"It's already happening."
Starboard just raised $23 million in a private sector funding round, however, the prime minister put government contracts in the mix.
"The government getting in behind and actually negotiating and doing its own deals and being a customer of the company like this, is really kind of important."
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