Defence procurement system must become more capable of converting money into military effect, analysis says

The new Government investment plan will give the UK’s defence system a better opportunity to succeed, but only if it becomes more capable of converting money into military effect, experts have said.

A focus for the Armed Forces should now be performance and “shaper discipline” while Britain’s security is under time and money pressures and increasing threats.

The analysis, for the University of Exeter’s Centre for the Public Understanding of Defence and Security, is by Air Vice-Marshal Philip Lester CBE.

He warns the move to make defence spending 3% and then 3.5% of GDP will never compensate for weak prioritisation, slow delivery, unclear accountability or a culture that avoids hard choices.

Air Vice-Marshal Lester says the recently-announced Defence Investment Plan is a significant opportunity for defence and should provide a stronger basis for planning and industry engagement. But it does not remove the need for continued review and prioritisation or eliminate delivery risk.

He urges the Government to ensure the Defence Investment Plan priorities are not “diluted by legacy commitments, fragmented governance or incremental compromise”.

There should be improvements to how defence works with industry: setting clearer demand signals, sharing risk more intelligently, supporting small and medium enterprises, protecting sovereign advantage and the creation of routes for innovation.

The analysis says: “The key requirement is to align ministerial intent, military requirement, affordability and delivery into a single coherent portfolio. Reform should strengthen the link between strategy, finance and execution, so that investment decisions are made against clearly understood operational outcomes rather than institutional preference.”

Systems in the UK for acquiring drones, autonomous systems, AI-enabled capability, munitions, digital targeting and faster fielding should be scaled up at the pace required by operational reality and be synchronised over short, medium and long-term timeframes. That means shorter but more decision loops, better commercial judgement, more iterative procurement, greater tolerance of controlled experimentation and stronger mechanisms to stop, reshape or accelerate programmes as evidence changes.

The analysis urges the Ministry of Defence to do more to ensure clearer cost ownership, better data, earlier escalation of financial risk, stronger portfolio controls and a willingness to make hard decisions before problems become structural.

It says: “defence reform must address how people act under pressure: whether they escalate risk honestly, collaborate across organisational boundaries, make decisions at the right level, challenge optimism bias, prioritise outcomes over process and accept ownership for delivery. The problem is one of institutional muscle memory. Defence needs new, well-chosen routines, incentives and leadership expectations that make delivery discipline normal rather than exceptional.”