Australia’s national recruitment progress and its regional workforce distribution answer different questions. Together they show why defence suppliers need a location-specific operating model before committing to a new site.
Australia can recruit more defence personnel nationally while still facing a different workforce problem in a strategically important region. That is the tension examined by ASPI researcher Raelene Lockhorst in a 13 February 2026 analysis of where defence personnel are located.
For industrial businesses, the related question is practical: can a proposed site support the people required to deliver its contracts? A national shortage or surplus is an incomplete answer. Local availability, retention, supervision and customer support requirements determine whether a facility can operate as intended.
The strongest market reading combines the regional analysis with government workforce records. Those sources describe different populations and time periods, so their figures should retain their original definitions. Together they show why growth headlines need a location test before they enter an industrial capacity forecast.
Lockhorst’s ASPI article uses Defence annual-report data to examine the period from 2015 to 2025. It reports national growth of 11,617 personnel, or 13%, across permanent and reserve forces, alongside an approximately 12% decline in the Northern Territory’s permanent presence.
Those are different workforce categories. The national permanent-and-reserve total should not be treated as directly equivalent to the regional permanent count. The useful finding is the geographic divergence described by the analysis, rather than a simple subtraction between the two figures.
The article identifies housing, schooling, partner employment, posting arrangements and career progression as factors affecting enduring presence. These help explain why attracting an individual worker is only part of establishing a stable workforce.
ASPI’s underlying government dataset has not been independently recomputed here. Its reported comparison provides an analytical starting point, while industrial-location implications require a separate assessment of the work and skills involved at the proposed business site.
The government’s 4 August 2025 recruitment announcement reports a permanent and full-time ADF workforce of 61,189 people as at 1 July 2025 and an ADF-wide separation rate of 7.9%. It presents these as evidence of improved recruitment and retention.
These results answer a national workforce question. They do not identify the number of engineers, technicians or support personnel available near an individual industrial development. Nor should a government headcount be assumed to describe the labour pool available for private-sector recruitment.
The distinction matters for suppliers because their own expansion can coincide with growth among the customers and employers competing for related skills. A stronger national recruitment pipeline may improve the broader capability base while leaving particular local hiring markets tight.
A site investment model therefore needs its own assumptions. It should identify the roles essential to the first phase of operations, the experience needed to supervise new staff and the time required to develop the remaining workforce. Using a national percentage as a substitute for those assumptions would create false precision.
The 2024 Defence Workforce Plan links recruitment and retention with employment conditions, education, family support and organisational change. It sets out financial and non-financial measures rather than treating recruitment advertising as the whole solution.
The 2025–26 portfolio budget statements also distinguish the permanent ADF, Australian Public Service and contracted workforce. They describe plans to strengthen internal capability while retaining a need for specialist contracted support.
For a service business, that distinction affects the proposition it should make. A customer seeking to strengthen its internal team may value training, knowledge transfer or bounded specialist work. It may be less interested in a proposal that creates permanent dependence on an external workforce for a function it intends to own.
This does not establish the outcome of any individual procurement. It does provide a policy context for asking how an offered service helps the customer’s workforce model. A supplier that understands that model can explain where its capability complements the customer and how responsibility changes over time.
An industrial facility needs a combination of skills at the times the work occurs. A national count of engineers does not reveal whether a site has the experienced supervisors, quality staff and maintenance support needed to operate a particular process consistently.
Consider a hypothetical company establishing a regional electronics support centre. Some engineering analysis might be shared with an existing office. Physical inspection, repair coordination and customer handover may require local attendance. The workable staffing model depends on those tasks, rather than an assumption that every role can be remote or every role must relocate.
The business also needs resilience when a key person is absent. A staffing plan that meets average demand but cannot cover leave, training or unexpected workload may struggle to provide the promised service. That affects the contract’s delivery economics before any expansion into additional sites.
This is the same capacity distinction raised by Anduril’s proposed Long Beach campus. A large eventual employment target indicates ambition. It does not establish which teams are ready for current work or how the operating organisation will develop during the ramp.
A local education partnership can address a specific capability gap, particularly where employers can explain the skills and experience required for real work. Its value depends on the connection between curriculum, supervised practice and the roles available when learners finish.
The Babcock agreement with Scottish colleges provides a concrete comparison. It brings an industrial employer and education providers together, while a separate disclosure describes equipment already being used in training. The partnership and the installed resources represent different stages of workforce development.
For an employer, entry-level recruitment and experienced hiring also solve different problems. A growing apprentice intake can strengthen future capacity, but it needs instructors and workplace supervision in the meantime. Rapid growth can increase demand for those experienced roles before it increases the number of independently productive staff.
A useful training investment therefore has an explicit operating destination. It should be connected to the tasks learners will perform, the people responsible for supporting them and the employer’s capacity to absorb them. That makes the partnership easier to evaluate than a general commitment to creating skills.
Relocation can make a site viable initially while leaving it exposed to turnover. If experienced staff depart before replacements are ready, the business loses knowledge and spends additional resources restoring the team. The cost appears in delivery continuity as well as recruitment expenditure.
The household factors highlighted by ASPI are relevant here. A salary offer is one part of a worker’s decision, alongside practical questions about housing, family employment and education. An industrial business cannot control every condition, but it can account for them when deciding how much of its staffing plan depends on relocation.
Travelling teams offer another model, with different costs and continuity risks. They can provide scarce expertise across several sites, but they require scheduling, travel and a clear handover to local staff. The right balance depends on whether the work is occasional specialist support or a continuing customer-facing service.
These are commercial design choices, not conclusions that one region is inherently unsuitable. The purpose of the location test is to make the assumptions visible before the company commits to a service level or a fixed cost base.
The Estonian defence industrial parks analysis separates access to land and infrastructure from the company’s own readiness. Workforce geography adds another layer to that sequence: a site becomes commercially useful when the operating team can sustain the required work.
The next evidence for an industrial expansion should therefore connect physical progress with staffing, training and retention. National growth can create a favourable context, but the business still needs a local answer to who will do the work and how that capability will endure.
That is the practical value of ASPI’s geographic challenge. It turns a broad workforce discussion into a more precise industrial question, one that matters directly to delivery promises, customer relationships and the economics of a new location.
ASPI's complete public HTML article by Raelene Lockhorst was accessible and reviewed on 6 September 2026, including its account of workforce geography and housing, education and employment factors. The underlying government annual-report dataset was not independently reproduced. Industrial-location implications are BDI analysis.
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