Ukraine's sea drone success shows how UK needs to respond to changing nature of warfare: James Cartlidge

The heart of this reform is technology.

The first point is to have joined up approach to procurement in practice.

By taking a joined up approach that is pan-defence, you are more likely to make your priorities based on the most important reason, which is the threat we face.

The second part is checks and balances. We will have a new Integrated Design Authority to oversee these changes to make sure they actually happen in reality.

The most important part of this second aspect of checks and balances is what I call the creation of a second opinion.

It is about genuinely kicking the tyres on programmes at the beginning so that you ask the right questions and you get the right answer.

We are very lucky in the Ministry of Defence, we don’t just have the military. We have amazing scientists in the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. We have Defence Equipment & Support with all their interface with industry.

We basically have this repository of data and information that is extraordinary.

I want to have a position where when that procurement begins, that big programme, you don’t just have the military assessment of the requirements that you need. You have the challenge of the other experts that we have in our institution.

We’re talking about fundamentally questioning some assumptions about the capabilities that we presume we’ll probably be procuring in the future.

I suspect the military evidence for wargaming from Ukraine will show that increasingly we are going to be vulnerable, and that we need to do what other countries have started to do.

The third point is about exportability. I think this should be ingrained in acquisition from the beginning.

The main problem at the moment in defence is the resilience of our supply chain, because we had great success with NLAW (Next generation Light Anti-tank Weapons) in Ukraine.

There tends to be a vector between international demand and your ideal domestic UK production. And if you can minimise that, you’ve got a pretty good product because it means you get it into line with the UK and then export it to protect your supply chain.

The fourth point is about empowering industrial innovation. We are doing more and more engagement in industry at a classified level.

That is so the industry can understand our requirements much earlier in the process. And in turn, we can pick up the feedback from what’s happening in the real world.

The most uplifting experience I’ve had as a Minister for Defence Procurement was last October when I went see a UK company developing a drone being used in Ukraine. While I was there, they were receiving feedback from the frontline. And they were then responding to that within days.

It is quite revolutionary what is happening.

There’s many other examples where we have SMEs who are coming forward with really cutting edge stuff and rapidly, particularly software companies.

This is about having taking advantage of the pace of innovation that’s out there. The UK could have much more survivable and meaningful capability within a relatively small amount of time, cost-effectively.

I think that we are on the cusp of a significant pivot to much greater use of uncrewed systems.

My Parliamentary colleagues will stand up in the House and they want us to commit to more ships more personnel, more aircraft, etc. But how will the traditional platforms cope going forward? Whereas we can bring out new drones, new ground effects and in particular in maritime relatively quickly. It’s already happening.

We all know what’s happened in the Black Sea. That’s an incredible strategic victory for Ukraine, which is unfortunately underplayed because of the coverage understandably for what is happening on land.

It is an incredible effect they’ve achieved.

This is learning lessons in real time. There is no better test lab than that.

We as a country have got to take that opportunity to drive proper embracing of uncrewed systems and all standard systems, the stuff that goes with it dealing with electronic warfare, which is all pervading in Ukraine.

It means that our armed forces can fight the fight that is going to happen today. And if we do that, I think we build prosperity for our industry and greater security for our people.

James Cartlidge is Minister for Defence Procurement. This is an edited version of a recent speech to the Military Robotics and Autonomous Systems Conference in London.