At a press conference following his speech at DSEI, Defence Secretary John Healey set out how the Ministry of Defence intends to work more closely with industry to accelerate the delivery of military capabilities.
In response to a question from the UK Defence Journal on how the UK can better utilise industry, Healey said the key is early and clearer engagement.
How does Government do better at utilising industry to get equipment into service faster? @geoallison asked Defence Secretary John Healey today at #DSEI2025. pic.twitter.com/gz151J5tiL
— UK Defence Journal (@UKDefJournal) September 11, 2025
“We can start by bringing you in sooner, we can start by bringing you in, not just sooner, but more clearly to understand the future war fighting and capability requirements problems we think we face,” he said.
Healey suggested a shift away from the government issuing rigid specifications and toward inviting industry to offer innovative proposals. “We can do so by switching our priority in on the government side, from detailed specifications that we then come out to you to looking for the innovative thinking and the suggestions that you can provide to us,” he explained.
He also acknowledged delays within government decision-making processes, promising efforts to cut through bureaucracy. “We then have a job to do internally. We have to clear the way for those on our side to be able to make decisions without having to go an endless merry go round, not just within defence, but in other parts of government.”
Linking his comments to lessons drawn from Ukraine, Healey underlined that readiness requires industry to be treated as a central partner. “If we believe as we must, as a country, we have to be more ready to fight in order better to deter and also to win. Should we have to fight then we’ve got to give the proper perspective and priority to industry and you’re part of defining that readiness, defining that increasing that deterrence in the future.”
He closed by stressing the need to act on those lessons rather than just acknowledge them. “That’s a very simple lesson that I touched on in my speech, that we have to take in Ukraine. We’ve been reminded, reminded about that over the last three and a half years. We’ve got to take that to heart and demonstrate it in the way that we act.”
Order equipment rather than cut and industry may up they game 🙄
I was about to say the same …amzing how industry would respond to getting an order for something!
Just this, what would bringing industry in earlier solve beyond another excuse to extend procurement timelines further. The issue industry has is it never knows if it will see any orders or know when the money is coming, then when orders eventually come, funding is spread out over the longest period possible with manufacturing kept at minimums at a point where it’s barely worth it.
It’s just more distraction from the fact the Govt simply does not want to order and commit to platforms, it’s not an industry problem, industry will move as soon as they get orders.
google this article in the Spectator – “Britain is broke” July 2025 as to why funding is short.
Agreed. I thought that is what I said. The government is the customer so it has to place an order for industry to respond.
I could understand the argument that Defence Primes should do more to invest in development themselves for products that can be marketed like Rheinmetall has been doing, potentially to lower the risk and delivery timelines, but again when you look at the path to Ajax and Boxer, you can see why they don’t and those are actually programs that have eventually gone somewhere.
Order some thing then apart from IA, service contracts and endless talked about never ending projects that so far have delivered nothing. So much kit needs to be placed on order rather than signing a work together agreement, etc etc.
I dont believe a word that man says.
He’ll be in Poland with Starmer next. Hands on hips, sleeves rolled up. Photo opportunity, as we send some of our small number of Sky Sabre Launchers ( 6, expanding to 12 ) to defend NATO.
Daniele, was Healey responsible for the Army having such a pitiful numberof SkySabre? Procurement was surely a bit before his time?
Morning Graham.
No, he wasn’t. My comment was based on his and Starmers penchant for a photo opportunity to go with the grandstanding and the strong words.
With the Polish Russian Drone situation and Starmers’ “iron clad commitment” to Poland, I was fully expecting us to deploy the system, even though we hardly have any.
But, headlines, photo ops and talk before substance or any real long term capability seems to be the norm now.
Against that, yes, I’m in full agreement with helping Poland as part of our NATO mission. But then in doing that, HMG won’t provide new money to paper over the cracks, and the cuts continue.
That, was the jist of my post.
Now, I know you yourself have sung his praises as a good bloke before, who will try to fight the forces corner. When we see and uptick in orders, people, kit, I’d be more complementary.
So far, not seeing anything to be hopeful with this government beyond the long lead investments in industry, which I have differing views to most here about their true motives there.
Hopfuly Trump will have a word with Starmer behind closed doors about the lack of will from this government, on the size and capability of our small forces .And time to put more money in the defence pot .
Thanks mate. I’ve just seen an article about Radakin, who slyly grumbles about being muzzled. More importantly he was critical about a huge rise in the number of senior civil servants and the increase in conferences over TEAMS where noone took accountabilty for decision making. He references three failures over several years to greenlight the Dreadnought SSBN programme.
You are right that I have suggested that Healey has mastered his brief quite well and quite quickly, that he is quite a plain speaker and has integrity. He will try to do a good job, I am sure. His SDR was quite well set up and was thorough. But you are right. The proof of the pudding will be in closing out capability gaps and placing orders, and hopefully growing manpower numbers.
Hoping for a good DCP before too many more weeks elapse.
It’s well known that MoD gag senior officers, even when in session with the HOCDSC.
The tendency, if the government gives orders to business earlier in the process, will be to stay with the large conglomerates that they’ve always dealt with, rather than the smaller more flexible start-ups that they need to encourage. The only option is to move away from the understandable position of minimising the number of platforms which is done to aid the logistics tail. Ukraine has shown that operating a varied fleet is still manageable but has advantages in availability. If the government want to make progress in the rapid development of new kit, they need to invest in the testing regime so that SMEs can quickly bring their new products to market. They can then order smaller batches of similar products from a variety of suppliers. Think back to WW2 and the numbers of different tanks, bombers, fighters and ships that were all built concurently.
not being too cynical, but you need to order new equipment for industry to speed up deliveries. I saw a news article the other day that BAE are assisting Poland to set up a new factory producing 155mm shells
Just read an article in the DT about a Brit Company, Drone Evolution.
Small, but able to ramp up. Ceiling cost £4000 a Drone.
Is this pricy?
Most parts are British. Being ignored.
MoD automatically goes to bigger companies and has set revenue requirements in the tens of millions.
Apparently, one company wanted to test a Drone boat but were refused unless it had seat belts!
Drone Evolution has to go to Latvia to test theirs beyond visual range due to our laws.
Is the MAA strangling everything by red tape?
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‘Whitehall needed to reduce “the levels of hierarchy”, he said, adding: “We have increased senior civil service numbers in defence by about 85% since 2018 even as defence has got smaller and the military star count has remained largely static.”
The former admiral contrasted the normal civil service decision making processes with that adopted in the case of Ukraine, where ministers and officials were willing to take more operational risk. “What I think is frustrating is the outcome [in the case of Ukraine] is so much better,” he said.’
Admiral Radikin 14 Sept 2025
Confirmation, if confirmation were needed, that so much of what is said on here about a dire Whitehall defence procurement process is spot on.
* Radakin