The Australian Pigeon Centre provided a proposal for the Australian Defence Ministry, sent on 7th September 2025, titled
“Homing Pigeons– A Last-Resort Communications Capability”
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Given the alignment with the 2024 National Defence Strategies focus on resilience and redundancy. 

The Australian Pigeon Centre (APC) is committed to working closely with Defence to explore this sovereign, low-cost capability. 

Executive Summary

The Australian Pigeon Centre proposes a doctrinal 5-year pilot program to re-establish trained homing pigeons as a last-resort communications capability. The program aligns with the 2024 National Defence Strategy priorities for resilience, redundancy, and sovereign capability. The Kalbar hub will act as the national breeding, training, and biosecurity centre, with locations identified as additional spokes in Bundaberg, Rockhampton, Mackay, Townsville and Cairns will be added after the evaluation of the Kalbar–Bundaberg corridor.

Strategic Rationale

- Ensures resilience when satellites, fibre, and ICT systems are disrupted.
- Provides a low-tech, cyber-immune, EMP-resistant courier option.
- Builds on APC’s proven breeding, training, and innovation expertise.
- Combines traditional resilience with modern doctrine (payload carriers, telemetry, welfare assurance).

We have submit that a homing pigeon capability could, if ever required, provide:

• An out-of-band, zero-spectrum messaging option in a degraded, denied or disrupted electromagnetic environment.
• A low-signature, non-electronic contingency layer that does not rely on satellites, terrestrial infrastructure, grid power, or network availability.
• A sovereign, domestically sustained capability that could support Defence preparedness and broader national resilience objectives in extreme scenarios.
• A scalable pilot framework that could be activated or trialled only if future strategic circumstances or capability reviews identified a requirement for non-electronic assured messaging.