Pollard says he does not want kit that fails in Ukraine

Equipment that would not survive the war in Ukraine has no place in the British armed forces, the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry has told an audience of financiers and defence firms at Mansion House, in a speech setting out how the government intends to bring private capital into defence.

Luke Pollard was speaking on Tuesday at an event hosted by the Lady Mayor, ahead of remarks by the Ukrainian Ambassador, and used the address to announce a Defence Finance Investment Strategy to follow the autumn budget along with a defence investment summit in December.

Warning that Britain must “discard the warm comfort blanket that we are used to, of polishing old things and pretending that that will protect us”, he put the test in a single sentence: “If our technology and kit will not work in Ukraine, I do not want it in our armed forces.”

That, he argued, opens the door to “new technology, new thinking, new weapons”, and to designing for “the conflicts of today and the battles of tomorrow”.

“The way that the United Kingdom would now fight is fundamentally different today than it was at the point when Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine only those four and a half years ago,” he told the room, adding that learning from Ukraine means changing how Britain itself operates.

Finding, funding and firing up

Much of the speech turned on speed, and on where the useful ideas are now coming from. Many of the most critical advances in defence, in the minister’s account, are emerging from technology startups and scale-ups, agile businesses “seizing the opportunities on offer and driving change at speed”. The challenge he set the room was framed as a question. “How can we get better at finding, funding and firing up the most creative minds and enterprise to get the best technology into the hands of our armed forces and those of our allies as fast as possible?”

He was unsparing about the position two years ago, describing a defence programme that was “to be honest and to be frank, unfit to counter the dangers that we now face”. Industry, he suggested, needs no reminding. “Those who work in our supply chains know how painfully slow, wasteful and costly the procurement the MOD previously undertook was,” he said, singling out small businesses and scale-ups with good products who “struggled sometimes to find the right buyer within the MOD”.

Small firms

Against that, Pollard set out the machinery now in place: a new National Armaments Director in Rupert Pearce, recruited from a FTSE 100 company and bringing what the minister called a new corporate approach and energy to procurement; the Defence Office for Small Business Growth, established to cut red tape and remove obstacles to entry; and an SME Action Plan published so the department can be held to account for the change.

The headline commitment is a 50 per cent increase in departmental spending with medium and small firms by summer 2028, which the minister described as “moving an extra two and a half billion pounds into the pockets of SMEs by changing the way we procure”.

Regional defence and security clusters have proved successful enough that more regions are developing them, he said, creating local routes that bring together major suppliers, devolved and local government, and giving investors a forum in which to meet them.

Bringing in the City

Running through the address was an argument that public money alone will not build the capacity required in the time available, however welcome rising budgets are. “As a defence minister, of course, I would like more defence spending,” he said.

“But it’s not just from the taxpayer that there’s opportunities for investing in defence. It’s how you crowd in private capital, how you use the institutions, the networks, the structures of the City of London and the UK’s place at the heart of global financial trade, to bring more private capital into defence, creating more good jobs and more deterrence.”

Waiting was not, in his view, an option: “In a more dangerous world, we need to build more capacity now, rather than just wait for the increase in defence money that we know is coming over the next 10 years.”

Whether the two sides can understand one another is a separate problem, and one he acknowledged. “There’s a risk that we sometimes speak past each other,” he said, arguing that a shared language and shared data would improve the department’s ability to deliver. The Defence Investment Unit announced in the Defence Investment Plan is meant to close that gap, giving investors a clearer interface with the department while bringing financial expertise in to turn priorities into market-facing propositions.

Companies already through the door

To show the approach producing results rather than remaining theoretical, the minister turned to firms that have already taken the route.

Thirteen British startups won contracts of up to £4 million in May under the Defence Unicorn Fund programme. Among them was Kraken Technologies, which builds maritime uncrewed surface vessels and has since raised $175 million in a Series B round on the back of a $1 billion valuation. Green Jets, one of three firms selected to develop a low-cost drone interceptor, has also secured significant funding. Both drew money from the National Security Strategic Investment Fund and the NATO Innovation Fund, with the British Business Bank financing Kraken as well.

JET Connectivity, a small business building 5G and 6G communications tools, was the only British firm admitted to the NATO DIANA mission track programme this year from more than three and a half thousand participants, which Mr Pollard called “fantastic recognition of British innovation at its best” while adding that it is “just the tip of the iceberg”.

There was a moment of self-deprecation over how the language has shifted under the current Prime Minister, with the Minister saying, “I used to be incentivised by the MOD press office to say defence is an engine for growth in all my interviews,” he told the audience. “With Andy Burnham in Downing Street I now say re-industrialisation, but the fundamental truth is there. Investment in defence creates good jobs. It provides opportunities in particular for our young people and we should be unafraid and unapologetic of saying that truth loudly.”

His closing argument was that none of this rests with his department alone, describing defence as “a whole of society endeavour, a whole of government endeavour” which the Ministry of Defence must lead but cannot deliver by itself.

He finished on deterrence, and on what follows if it does not hold, saying “That’s why increasing our deterrence matters with new technologies. But if deterrence fails, we must be ready to fight, and we must be ready to win.”