Senior defence figures have warned MPs that the UK procurement system is too slow and rigid for the pace of modern conflict, calling for a shift toward prototype warfare and rapid frontline experimentation.
Giving evidence to the Defence Committee, Air Marshal (Retd) Edward Stringer said the UK remained locked into a model of defence acquisition built around large, long-term programmes, rather than quickly iterating new equipment and adapting based on battlefield feedback.
“We need to work out what prototype warfare looks like,” Stringer said, arguing that current processes were still oriented around lengthy specification writing, complex contracts and decades-long disputes over requirements.
He suggested defence should take lessons from the software sector by embracing the concept of a “minimum viable product”, rapidly deploying early versions of equipment to frontline units and using service personnel to refine and improve them in real time.
“Create a minimum viable product and get it out to the frontline,” he said, adding that “clever young troops” should be empowered to trial new systems and feed results back to industry.
Stringer said this approach required government to reshape its industrial strategy away from selecting “winners” and instead focus on enabling the conditions for innovation, including access to energy, computing power and predictable investment environments. He told MPs that existing strategies were built on the assumption that capability could be defined years in advance, but warned that the speed of technological change made that approach obsolete. “You are trying to define exactly what you need and then to find a way of building it over the next 10 years, and that is not going to work,” he said.
Stringer pointed to the Strategic Defence Review itself, saying it recognised the difficulty of predicting future requirements over a decade-long timeframe, and argued the UK needed systems capable of producing solutions almost immediately before they are needed. “You need to be building a system that can build it possibly only minutes before you actually need it,” he said.
Sir Hew Strachan supported the argument, noting that in wartime the procurement cycle historically compressed dramatically. “Even in the two world wars, the whole procurement process is months,” he said, describing a continuous feedback loop between the front line and industry which he argued had been lost in peacetime defence planning.
Strachan also warned that Britain could not rely on fully sovereign capability in every area and would need to “spread bets” across allies, while recognising that US support could not be guaranteed in a major conflict with China. “We still will not get it if the US is engaged in a major war with China,” he said, arguing that American industrial capacity would be prioritised for US requirements.
Pressed on whether foreign-owned drone firms establishing production in the UK strengthened sovereignty or created vulnerability, Strachan said: “It could be either.”
Everyone in the MoD is happy with the current procurement system, no one in the MoD is capable of delivering an agile innovative system.
This is what happens when an organisation is almost entirely staffed by public schools boys whose main qualification is the ability to run fast and know which fork to use.
The only way you will get a rapid role out of autonomous systems is to create a new service branch.
The Army and Airforce are completely not cut out for this. The navy to its credit has made major strides in autonomous systems and basically replaced manned minesweeper. The current army “thinking” is to hand out a few quad copters to infantry units and say job done. It won’t loose a single cap badge to make way for autonomous systems. This is a service who recons a £10 million armoured vehicle with a sensor mast is a super advanced way to do reconnaissance.
Tell me you have never read the last 30 years of procurement acts without saying you haven’t read the last 30 years of procurement acts. The system is law and those working have no choice but to follow the law.
Hey Jim, Don’t feel you have to hold back there, I should tell us what you really think 🤔😁
The idea that everyone in MOD is happy with the system is absurd. Time and again they keep trying new things, but we’ve had review after review on procurement and on defence in general and every time the consensus is that procurement isn’t working. Nobody is happy with the way it is. Over the last couple of decades we had, the Smart Procurement Initiative, Currie, Levene, Gray, Better Defence Acquisition, half a dozen defence reviews, and I’ve lost track of how many NAO and parliamentary reports. They all said the same thing: we need faster, smarter, better procurement, and not one of them said they were happy with things as they are. The only people who actually like it are the Treasury as it gives their top excuse not to fund Defence.
First MOD need to divorce detailed requirements from procurement for most purchases, better to talk about the problems that need solving that the specific solution. I think there’s a recognition of this already. Second to fund initiatives properly including contingency commensurate with risk. No sign of that one. Third to accept there’s always risk and that projects will fail, and that doesn’t mean that an obligatory increase in governance must occur after every failure. No acceptance of that either. Fourth it’s better to have competent people in charge so it won’t go wrong, rather than senior arses to kick when it does go wrong. Still not on the cards at all.
And finally, yes! Stringer has it right. Minimum viable product followed by spiral development. However, that can only work when paired with continuous build or upgrades. If you accept at the beginning that MVP might also be the project end point and you won’t keep iterating as part of the same funded project, you’ll fail. People are only willing to accept a lack of gold plate if they are sure there’ll be a chance to add it later. Otherwise you will always get the expensive Gucci order up front: that is buying stupidly, slowly and more expensively. Just like we always have.
It boils down too is everyone wants a different system but doesn’t want the consequences of a different system. If you want the MoD to take more risks that means more projects will fail. Commercial risk does not disappear if you call things prototype warfare. Taking more risk also means more risk to life and limb. A failed projects or a lost life or serious injury will be used by opposition politicians for political advantage. Thats not going to magically stop.
The idea that you can magically upgrade things cheaply also isn’t going to fly. The big cost is intergation and the big risk is also integration. Just ask the Danish navy. In the case of stealth, its a fundamental physical property that you can’t make significant changes to.
I’m not sure taking more procurement risk always leads to greater risk to life and limb. I think you underestimate the military risk of not taking procurement risks, of never trying something new, of playing the game of an ever shrinking steady as she goes policy.
You are right in that the opposition will grab hold of every opportunity to take political advantage of failure. That’s modern politics and it’s up to government to persude the people of that. I also agree upgrades aren’t always cheap. They are often are so expensive, it’s better to do continous build, upgrading the specification of new platform purchases and jettisoning the earlier ones than upgrading platforms you already have. But if you design your platform to be upgradable, you should be able to make that the exception rather than the rule. That particularly includes open architectures and integration.
The UK policy on procurement is easy. we do not buy any thing for nearly 2 years, every thing is fine nothing to see here. No rush we have years to sort stuff out and cheuqe is in the post.