The Ministry of Defence is assessing its cryptographic dependencies as part of continued preparations for transition to post-quantum cryptography, according to an answer given in Parliament.
Stuart Anderson, the Conservative member for South Shropshire, asked what assessment has been made of the level of vulnerability of military command-and-control networks to quantum-based decryption.
Luke Pollard, the Minister of State for Defence, said: “The Ministry of Defence is assessing its cryptographic dependencies as part of its continued preparations for transition to post-quantum cryptography.
“This assessment remains ongoing in line with wider Government advice and guidance. Necessary replacements will be managed through Defence’s post-quantum migration planning and appropriate equipment refresh cycles.”
A sufficiently capable quantum computer would break the public-key cryptography that secures most military and civilian communications, which has produced the harvest now, decrypt later concern, where an adversary collects encrypted traffic today in the expectation of reading it once the machines exist.
The United States National Institute of Standards and Technology published its first post-quantum cryptographic standards in 2024, and the National Cyber Security Centre has set out a timeline for British organisations to discover their cryptographic dependencies, plan migration and complete the transition, with 2035 as the target for completion of high-priority systems.
Managing replacements through equipment refresh cycles ties cryptographic migration to the normal replacement of hardware. Military platforms have service lives measured in decades, and systems fielded now will still be flying, sailing or driving well into the period when quantum decryption is expected to become feasible.
Anderson asked a series of questions on emerging technology and industrial resilience on the same day, covering intellectual property arrangements in joint international technology projects, the balance between asymmetric capability and platform-heavy procurement, sovereign manufacturing for next-generation combat air, and maintenance resilience in domestic shipyards.
On procurement balance, Pollard said the Defence Investment Plan sets out how the Integrated Force will draw on a more varied mix of equipment and weapons, combining advanced platforms and precision weapons with autonomous technologies and lower-cost, expendable effectors, increasing the mass, lethality and resilience of the force while ensuring investment remains threat-led, affordable and aligned with NATO requirements.
On intellectual property, he said the most common framework for joint international technology development projects is laid out in NATO Allied Acquisition Practices Publication AACP-1, with conditions pre-agreed among NATO members, and that where projects involve non-NATO nations the department will suggest AACP-1 conditions in the first instance.
We are going to being assessing threats for this that and the next thing for the foreseeable.
Always pays to stay ahead of the game.