Britain puts space at centre of defence buying revolution

National Armaments Director Rupert Pearce says space is one of the first portfolios under Britain’s new procurement structure, as Defence seeks to become a much more active customer for UK industry.

Britain is placing space among the first major capability portfolios under its new defence procurement system, with National Armaments Director Rupert Pearce promising a more direct role for government in buying, developing and exporting UK space technology.

Speaking at the UK Space Power Conference, Pearce said the National Armaments Group, the new organisation he leads, had been created to bring together 15 organisations from across and outside Defence in an attempt to change procurement, supply-chain management and innovation. Pearce, a former chief executive of Inmarsat, described space as central to future warfighting, arguing that modern forces increasingly depend on satellite communications, positioning, navigation and timing, intelligence and surveillance.

He said: “As warfighting becomes more mobile, more digitally enabled, more autonomous, and more integrated, space capabilities are the red thread, bringing it all together into warfighting readiness and advantage.”

The Defence Investment Plan commits nearly £13 billion to enhanced military space capabilities over the next decade, Pearce said, while the new procurement structure is intended to give Defence greater control over how that money is converted into operational capability. One of the first capability portfolios established by the National Armaments Group is specifically focused on space, headed by Rear Admiral Tony Williams.

Pearce said the new model would give his organisation greater authority over the design of what Defence buys, responding to requirements generated by the frontline commands and military headquarters. Some requirements would be met by buying existing equipment, while others would require more specialised development.

He said: “Sometimes, I hope much more, we will go shopping and buy off the shelf. Sometimes we’ll need to develop the most exquisite of capabilities for advantage, and this applies as much to the space sector as any other market.”

The wider reform is also intended to make it easier for smaller companies to enter the defence market. Pearce said a new Office for Small Business Growth would provide a gateway into Defence and reiterated the ambition to increase annual business with small and medium-sized companies by more than £2.5 billion by 2028.

Defence is also preparing a finance and investment strategy and creating a Defence Investment Unit intended to attract more private capital into the sector, from venture investment through to infrastructure and conventional banking.

Pearce drew heavily on his own experience in the commercial space industry, including a decade leading Inmarsat and an earlier period working in venture capital. He said Defence needed to become a better customer for technology companies, particularly during the difficult transition between an innovative idea and an operational product. Under the new structure, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and UK Defence Innovation are being brought together within National Armaments Defence Innovation, covering activity from science and research through to later-stage development.

Pearce said £400 million a year had been committed to UK Defence Innovation, describing the funding as effectively creating a £2 billion defence venture capital organisation inside the department. He said closer links were also being created with frontline rapid-capability organisations so that military users could work with companies while technologies were still being developed.

Pearce said: “Expect to see a lot more problem statements coming out from us to solicit ideas from you.”

The objective, he said, was to move promising technology more rapidly through development and into procurement rather than allowing programmes to become trapped between experimentation and a formal equipment programme. His speech also contained unusually direct criticism of the Government’s previous relationship with the British space industry.

Reflecting on his years at Inmarsat, Pearce said successive attempts to build a stronger national space industrial strategy had struggled because Defence had not acted as a sufficiently consistent customer.

He said: “One of the things we struggled with was really to get the UK government to come on board as a major development customer of the UK space industry, to really lend its heft and its buying power to liberate the potential of our industry.”

Pearce added: “It is very clear to me at the time that the elephant that was not in the room was MOD. We couldn’t get MOD to the table.”

He argued that government had historically been stronger at producing industrial strategies than following them through with sustained purchasing and investment. Now responsible for a substantial part of Defence’s investment budget, Pearce said he intended to use that purchasing power differently.

He told industry: “Finally, ladies and gentlemen, I have the invest budget. You have the ideas.”

International collaboration will remain a central part of the approach. Pearce said British systems must be interoperable and increasingly interchangeable with those of allies, while the UK would use NATO, the European Space Agency and bilateral partnerships to encourage greater industrial coordination.

He said stronger allied integration should not be viewed as reducing sovereign capability.

Pearce said: “Building stronger collective capabilities does not diminish sovereignty; it strengthens it. It creates resilient, distributed capabilities, helping share the risk and increase the reward.”

Closing his speech, Pearce said space capabilities were now central to Britain’s ability to deter conflict and, if deterrence failed, to fight it.

He told the industry audience: “I firmly believe that space capabilities sit at the heart of the UK’s ability to deter, and if necessary, to fight and win. So bring it on. Let’s work together. Let’s spend my money on your capabilities.”