Defence has a problem getting hold of what it needs

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Published 16th December 24

By Megan Hatton, Commercialisation Manager at Ploughshare

The old saying goes that necessity is the mother of invention, and if you ask anyone in the defence industry in the UK – whether public or private – you’ll hear the need for innovation to be brought into service, and quickly! It isn’t that great inventions aren’t there; on the contrary, there’s so much incredible research and development along with a good many inventors. The problem is that getting innovation out of bright minds, taking a technology beyond the early-stage laboratory, over the valley of death, and into the hands of the user is quite complicated… It’s a challenge that all too often prevails against emerging technologies fighting for their chance of success. At Ploughshare, we spend every day nurturing technologies through this journey, and we know the value of being the expert that can help others do it too.

For UK defence to satisfy its gaps, it must open up the supply chain – ensuring that new players with bright ideas can get involved simply is critical as we move towards an uncertain future. The new warfare environment, yes, continues to rely on mass and people, but technology in all its forms is playing a much larger role than ever before. Budgets are being squeezed, we are being asked to do more with less, and the new battlefield is being challenged every second – not every day. We simply need to ensure that innovators can address the issues our nation faces daily – and to do that we need to be aware of the challenges that they, themselves, face.

There are many challenges but in the past summer, as a part of Ploughshare’s activity, I’ve been attending collaborative events up and down the UK where common themes are emerging. If we’re able – as a defence technology community – to tackle these themes, or at least acknowledge them, we will be able to better provide for ourselves and our allies.

But what are they?

1. The landscape for defence innovation and procurement is complex and confusing.

Primes with years of experience and myriad compliance, legal, and business teams still find it confusing, so spare a thought for start-ups and SMEs looking to supply their cutting-edge and agile solutions. Procurement itself is a lumbering beast with many strengths but also weaknesses. It’s too complex and it takes too long – often meaning solutions are already at the tail-end of being modern when they make it to the user. If we are to do anything to improve this, we need to advocate for simplified involvement mechanisms, and the gap to bring in new suppliers being shortened and forded. Let’s make it easy for non-traditional defence suppliers to pivot into the sector and supply their solutions with ease. From DASA to JHub, BattleLab to Commercial X: the defence innovation landscape (even inside MOD) is complicated and knowing who to engage with, how, and when can be a mystery to many – a run around too costly for startups whose time is money.

2. Defence has a people problem – no one wants to get involved.

This is perhaps one of the most worrying issues. As though pushing those eager entrepreneurs away with our impenetrable supply chain wasn’t enough, the UK has a workforce that is ageing, and the workforce in defence is not immune. The image of defence is also often seen as hostile and focused on things that go boom. The reality, as we all know, is that defence is an industry with a need for everyone from creatives to project managers to mathematicians and engineers. Offensive capability plays a part, but it isn’t the be all and end all. Health and wellbeing, environmental sciences, even linguistics all play a role in the defence ecosystem, and the opportunity that the industry gives to people is huge. We need to do a better job of telling that story and ensuring that innovation comes from all areas in defence, and all backgrounds – not just science.

3. As a result, the defence ecosystem is a little bit isolated.

But, we can fix that. We need to build – and urgently – ecosystems that are ready to respond. These ecosystems need to be built up from one end of the scale to the other: from ideation to commercialisation, and they need to be able to do it at speed. Collaborative partnerships underpinned with all the right resources should offer a home for industry, academia, the private funding sector, and the public sector to produce more than just the sum of their parts. Partnerships need to be worked at to ensure they’re more than just something on paper. They need to be trusted and lived, they need to be effective, and they need to build on the already fantastic work that is being done in the space. Without this cooperation, we can’t hope to foster knowledge exchange and embed the pathways to get commercialisation at a speed on par with what is actually needed to deliver innovation and generate impact.

I’ll be taking a look at technology transfer as we move forward towards the end of this year and the beginning of next – and I hope you’ll join me in coming along for the ride. There is a lot to discuss, and a lot to discover – and a lot that Ploughshare can help with in building our foundations for scaling innovation at pace.