At Canberra airport, a sleek modern building on the edge of Australia’s sleepy capital, evidence of Australia’s military build-up is everywhere. Almost every advertising hoarding is plastered with the name of an international defence company, such as Raytheon, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and ThyssenKrupp. The promotional blitz has even prompted a “No Airport Arms Ads” campaign to ask the airport to replace them with a “friendlier greeting to the nation’s capital”.

The world’s biggest defence contractors have been lured by a government plan to spend A$200bn ($147bn) on military hardware over the next decade — the largest build-up of military capabilities in peacetime in the country’s history. Companies are scrambling to catch the eye of the visiting politicians and generals who oversee procurement decisions. 

They are also hiring thousands of staff and establishing new manufacturing operations to help deliver Canberra’s strategy to create one of the most capable armed forces in Asia Pacific and transform Australia into one of the world’s top 10 arms exporters. It is currently ranked 19.