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Building on the Strategic Defence Review, the DefTech Manifesto sets out the importance of information technology in underpinning and enabling all military capabilities, and the challenge the UK Defence enterprise (Government and Industry) faces in grasping the increasing complexity, scale and cadence associated with integrating DefTech into these capabilities.

The DefTech Manifesto has been created under the auspices of techUK’s Defence Board, which brings together senior industry representatives from strategically important technology companies of varying sizes and types to address high-level concerns affecting the UK Defence sector. The DefTech Manifesto, which builds on techUK’s 2024 “DefTech: Technology Transforming Defence” paper, sets the challenge the UK Defence enterprise (Government and Industry) currently faces in grasping the increasing complexity, scale and cadence associated with integrating DefTech into military capabilities.

To address this, the Manifesto sets out 4 Focus Areas identified by the Defence Board as essential activities to improve the UK’s sovereign DefTech position. These are encapsulated in the diagram opposite and are:

1. Architectural and Technical Innovation
2. Commercial and Financial Innovation
3. Capability Delivery
4. Skills and Resources

For each area of focus, the Manifesto outlines 3 actions which the techUK Defence Board and its subsidiary specialist Forums commits to undertaking in collaboration with the MOD to address the challenges articulated in that area. These actions are as follows:

1. Architectural and Technical Innovation

   1. To support the National Armaments Director Group (NADG) in the enhancement of the MOD CTO’s Digital Technology Reference Model helping enable the Integrated Force and allowing for rapid, coherent digital technology insertion, providing a foundation for the journey to data-centric security and zero trust networks and services and their integration into platforms and systems across Defence.
   2. To partner with UK Defence Innovation (UKDI) to implement the architecture and standards required to enable innovative digital technologies to be rapidly pulled through into the segmented procurement approach, speeding up the acquisition lifecycle to deliver digital capability at the required pace.
   3. To participate in pilot projects with the Defence AI Centre (DAIC) to demonstrate how AI can be deployed based on sufficient standards and architectural principles to be safe and secure whilst bringing the massive potential value of AI to users effectively and efficiently.

2. Commercial and Financial Innovation

   1. To work with NADG to provide input on what enhancements to market engagement would help to encourage greater investment and innovation, and to help enable that engagement. This would encourage investment, increase the diversity of the digital supply chain, ensuring resilience and optimal procurement choices.
   2. To initiate a project that considers the adoption of AI technology across the MOD “back-office” working jointly with the supply chain to optimise contract obligations, delivery and financial reporting (including that of Social Value), and cross-portfolio working.
   3. To collaborate with the MOD to learn from the experience (LFE) to date of bidding and contracting, to include a review of inappropriate or excessive T&Cs; implementation of DEFSTANs; Social Value; and novel funding - to develop an improvement plan that reduces business development costs and maximises return on investment for all parties.

3. Capability Delivery

   1. To support the implementation of more appropriate processes, methods and models into a modernised end-to-end procurement and delivery approach for DefTech. This will drive efficiency throughout the lifecycle with all the consequent benefits for all parties.
   2. To advise the MOD of opportunities to remove impediments and constraints to the success of UK-based DefTech suppliers, enabling us to jointly deliver better outcomes more effectively.
   3. To work with the MOD to enhance opportunities for exports and international partnerships (such as NATO, AUKUS, and GCAP) in the digital arena, alongside the successful equivalent activity associated with platforms. This will help share the costs of capability development, provide export levies to be recycled into enhanced digital capabilities, and ensure better interoperability for our integrated forces.

4. Skills and Resources

   1. To create a proposal to help MOD address workforce gaps across the department through responsible introduction of AI, freeing up highly skilled personnel to undertake more productive tasks.
   2. To support workforce planning of MOD’s Whole Force through the generation of a diverse pool of digital skills across both government and industry thereby increasing the availability of DefTech specialists in the Reserve Forces that can be scaled and deployed at times of national crisis.
   3. To work closely with MOD to support diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across the Whole Force, opening a far greater pool of digital talent to work in this highly important domain.

techUK and our Defence Board believe that addressing the challenges outlined in this document is critical if the MOD is to deliver on the ambition to transform UK Defence as set out in the Strategic Defence Review (SDR).  The technology war is not a future threat, it is a reality today and the UK needs to act rapidly to maintain the security and resilience which underpin its productivity and growth as a nation.  As representatives of the UK DefTech Industry, the Defence Board stands ready to do its part and will be actively offering its support to the MOD to deliver against these actions.

Commenting on the launch of the DefTech Manifesto, Neil Timms, Chair of the techUK Defence Board, yesterday said:

We are pleased to publish this manifesto, in part as a technology industry response to the SDR, but also to address the broader changes underway in defence procurement, supply chain engagement and the Government’s digital agenda overall.

As a group of strategic digital suppliers to Defence, we are aligned in our collective resolve to work collaboratively with the MOD to help understand and address the inherent DefTech related risks faced in building and maintaining critical defence capabilities and, ultimately, helping protect the UK.

Click here to dowload the manifesto