Emerging Technologies
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
The beauty of an 80 percent solution: lessons from the RQ-7B program
26 March, 2025
As so often, the Australian Defence Force wanted the exquisite solution. It wanted uncrewed battlefield reconnaissance aircraft of a design that wasn’t operational anywhere and would achieve performance that other countries didn’t have.And the acquisition led nowhere—except to prompt a successful replacement effort that gave the ADF a powerful lesson in the merits of toning down requirements to get something that is good enough and can go into service fast enough.
