WIREDGOV

The 2025 Defence Industrial Strategy casts universities as suppliers of graduates and research. To deliver it, they must become part of the machinery itself.

Britain has finally started to think differently about defence, industry and economic growth. The 2025 Defence Industrial Strategy promises to make defence an ‘engine for growth’, rebuild the domestic industrial base, reform procurement and innovate at ‘wartime pace’. All welcome. But there is still a university-shaped gap in the machinery supposed to deliver it.

That sounds odd because universities are suddenly everywhere in defence policy. The new Defence Universities Alliance (DUA) brings together 35 institutions around research, skills and closer collaboration with the Armed Forces. Government is investing in defence-related university places and talking about easier movement of people between the military, industry and adjacent sectors.

But the underlying view of higher education remains rather narrow. Universities are still mostly cast as places that produce skilled graduates or clever research which defence and industry can then use.

Both matter. Neither is enough.

If Britain is serious about sovereign capability, technological adoption and warfighting readiness, universities need to be treated as part of the defence ecosystem, not simply as suppliers to it.

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