The rhetoric around Britain’s war preparedness has ramped up significantly among ministers, officials and the media in recent months. Ministers are talking more openly about resilience, deterrence, and the need to prepare for a more dangerous world. For many in the defence sector, this is long overdue.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s speech at the UN General Assembly in New York, and Defence Secretary Wes Streeting’s comments at last week’s Labour Party Conference speech where he said “we must meet this moment with action and with strength,” demonstrate this change in mood.
At the same time, there is a clear commitment to backing British industry and building sovereign capability. The Conservatives’ proposed British “Iron Dome” – a new integrated air and missile defence system funded by the Party’s pledged Sovereign Defence Fund – adds pressure on Government to demonstrate how it is strengthening the UK’s defence supply chain.
These two priorities can reinforce each other, but sovereignty is doing a lot of work in the debate, and it has rarely had to be defined in a live decision.
That could change over the next couple of months as the Government makes a call on the forthcoming contract for the UK’s military satellite communications system, SkyNet. The FT has framed it as a test of the Government’s “buy British” pledge. The choice is between European incumbent Airbus and US company Lockheed Martin, but the nationality of the organisation is only part of the picture.
Whichever bid wins, Government will likely be judged on where the work is done, who holds the IP and what guarantees exist on supply chain control. Both bidders will point to UK value: Lockheed Martin has committed to a new site in the north-east of England, with up to 2,000 jobs across a broader space ecosystem; Airbus, the incumbent, supports around 2,500 jobs through its UK satellite work in Stevenage and Portsmouth, including around 650 on SkyNet.
RAF Fairford offers the other side of the equation. The withdrawal of US bombers from the facility is a reminder of the realities in defence, and that Britain’s security rests heavily on its allied partners. No one in Government believes the UK can do it alone – the question is where sovereign capability is essential, where allied partnership is enough, and where the red lines sit as threats from Russia, Iran and others edge closer to the threshold of open conflict.
Without a clear definition of what sovereignty means for defence, the Government could quite quickly become unstuck, either from accusations of protectionism that slows innovation or from giving away prime opportunities to foreign competitors.
In an environment of widespread misinformation, how these decisions are explained will matter as much as the decisions themselves.
For industry, while ambiguity remains over what Government means by sovereignty and “buying British”, the message is clear: be ready to demonstrate the value you bring to the UK’s economy and industrial base. Government will need concrete, defensible material on skills, supply chains, IP and resilience to justify its choices publicly, and suppliers who make that case easy to tell will be better placed.
The SkyNet decision, expected in the coming months, will be a real indication of how Government defines the term.
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