SGShelby Glaskin
Independent researcherPerth · Western Australia

Research & analysis

Shelby
Glaskin

Independent research and analysis on emerging security risks, critical infrastructure and organisational decision-making.

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Short analysis on security, infrastructure and the decisions organisations make when the evidence is incomplete.

01

Australian risk · 7 min read

Distance is not a defence

The point of employment needs to be near the target, not near the sponsor. Remoteness can work in the opposite direction to conventional protection because fewer people are present to notice.

03

Decision making · 7 min read

Nobody buys detection until after the first incident

Counter-drone investment repeatedly follows the incident that justified it. The pattern says less about competence than it does about how organisations allocate money against unfamiliar risks.

04

Force protection · 7 min read

The cheapest counter-drone system is a roof

Active defences can be defeated or designed around. A roof has no false-positive rate, needs no operator and protects the target even when nobody detects the drone.

Featured research

Ambiguity has consequences
without a proven attack.

Persistent aerial surveillance and the ability to place a payload precisely on a target can now be bought, assembled and flown by individuals with a few thousand dollars and an internet connection.

View all six findings
Figures from Version 8Fig. 2 / 06
Figure 2

Selected incidents, 2018–2026

Figure 2: Selected incidents, 2018–2026
Plotted on a true time scale to show the clustering from 2023 onward. Navy marks the small quadcopter and FPV class; Abqaiq is included for the infrastructure lesson only.
Figure 3

Detection modality comparison

Figure 3: Detection modality comparison
No detection modality is strong across every measure, and some weaknesses are correlated. The comparison shows why a single sensor is not enough.
Figure 4

The counter-drone chain

Figure 4: The counter-drone chain
Detection is necessary and rarely sufficient. Documented failures cluster in the middle stages, where a track must be identified and a decision made.
Figure 5

Australian counter-drone authority

Figure 5: Australian counter-drone authority
An indicative view of Australian counter-drone authority at September 2026, including capabilities available only with licensing, approval or specific authorisation.
Figure 6

Recommended posture by time horizon

Figure 6: Recommended posture by time horizon
Recommendations for industry and critical infrastructure operators, grouped by time horizon. Nothing in the immediate column requires capital expenditure or regulatory change.

All research statements on this site are drawn from Distance Is Not a Defence — Australia’s Vulnerability to Small Drones, Version 8 draft, September 2026.

About

Independent research,
written for decision-makers.

Shelby Glaskin is the author of Distance Is Not a Defence, a strategic assessment of Australia’s vulnerability to small drones.

The paper is based entirely on open-source research and is written for industry leaders, critical infrastructure operators and government stakeholders.

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