The Albanese government has spent the past week on a defence blitz with a string of multi-billion-dollar announcements landing just as the prime minister prepares to fly to New York for the United Nations General Assembly.

With uncertainty over whether he'll secure his first one-on-one meeting with US President Donald Trump, the political test is whether those commitments will be seen as a genuine step-up on capability or a sidestep from US calls to spend more.

In the past week alone, Labor has announced: $1.7 billion for lethal underwater drones or "Ghost Sharks" (the first combat aircraft to be designed and built in Australia in more than half a century), a $12 billion submarine base at Henderson in Western Australia (to service AUKUS nuclear submarines and rotating US troops) and

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