Reflections by Dr Andrew Dixon, SVGC Managing Director
The return of the DSEI conference got me thinking about the challenges and complexity of Defence Planning.
I have been working in the Defence and Security sector since BAE SYSTEMS sponsored my PhD in 1991 … some 34 years ago. The focus of my PhD was on the determination of order and predictability in chaotic systems. I didn’t think I would ever have to apply that thinking to the Defence and Security strategy, but it has never seemed more appropriate!
Many of the positions I have been fortunate to hold have required analysis of Defence Strategic Guidance, Defence Strategic Direction, Strategic Defence and Security Reviews, Defence Strategies, Integrated Defence Reviews, and their subsequent updates and refreshes. In 34 years, I have never seen or felt such a challenge and tension in these strategies as we find ourselves with today. The current environment feels chaotic, and, just like my PhD topic, there are predictable patterns and trends.
The historic strategies were dominated by slow rates of change – long term trends that changed at a defined rate, making the general direction of travel relatively clear. This allowed decision-makers to extrapolate from past experience and rely on established trends to guide their choices. “Today we are here; we are heading in this direction; so, we need these solutions”. Those trends were not just about the military capability and equipment needed, they were also supply-chain trends, capacity, capability and security of supply.
None of that is true today.
The changes in global strategic positions are not just continuing to change, but the rate of change is at an unprecedented level. This acceleration is driven and compounded by the rate of change of technology, and consequently by the rate of change of the threat environment which is also at an unprecedented level.
When actions change so dramatically, responses to those actions also move in a surprising and disproportionate manner – they become less predictable. Who predicted that within 6 months, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi would change his “best friend” of President Donald Trump to President Xi Jinping of China. Sometimes the world reminds me of a junior school playground!
All this is being accelerated partly due to technology evolution, not least in the Cyber and Space domains. It isn’t that long ago that threat changes were being tracked on an annual basis, but we are now having to track and analyse threat changes monthly – another symptom of the apparently chaotic world which we now operate within.
Changing threat monthly means that systems and solutions need to be much more inherently flexible and agile in the way they operate. An example of this is software-defined-radios which can be reprogrammed with different ways of working, encoding and encryption, changes in frequencies and so on. Our spacecrafts need to be able to change their processing methods and be designed to accommodate agility and flexibility as key requirements.
Agility and flexibility come at a price and there’s a limit to how much is possible in a system, so extracting the trends, patterns and making the best possible decisions in an apparently chaotic world is challenging, but necessary.
At SVGC, we thrive on helping the public sector make the best possible decisions, whether in the Defence and Security environment, border security, national strategies or in transport. I’ve recently found myself having to use some of my PhD in chaotic systems to look at underlying trends and patterns and see what discernible patterns exist in order to improve the advice we were giving.
All this complexity manifests itself within Defence Strategy updates. I have never seen or felt such a challenging situation for those in the policy or strategy environment – seeking to respond to the emerging changes within tight fiscal constraints and the largest degree of uncertainty probably since the 1930s.
The UK Defence review recommends integrating AI and autonomy deeply into operational capabilities (Rec. 29). That is a good thing, but we need to ensure that the AI understands how to look for patterns in chaotic behaviour and not just for extrapolations or we are in danger of hallucinating scenarios that probably won’t exist. Just because it says “AI” doesn’t automatically make it better, but there is no doubt that the right computational analysis is able to make predictions.
The introduction of the dedicated Cyber and Special Operations Command (Rec. 51) signals a bold recognition of the new-age battlefield. However, we also need a bold recognition of the need for Acquisition to fundamentally change. Defence Reform is doing some of that with the introduction of the National Armaments Director (NAD), bringing together key capabilities. This is aiming to improve acquisition, reduce waste, and drive economic growth through exports. Integrating key organizations like Defence Equipment & Support and Defence Digital, the goal is to streamline processes, shorten contract times, and ensure that Britain’s Defence spending translates into increased capabilities for the armed forces.
Defence Reform needs to recognise the fundamental challenges in the threat environment, the technology environment, and the patterns underlying the apparent chaos around us. Agility and flexibility need a fundamentally different approach to the relationship with the small business sector – something which has started to be addressed with the SME support which is now being established by the MoD. This, however, is only scratching the surface. Agility and flexibility needs to deliver a mechanism for Defence to respond to the rate of change of threat. To achieve this demand means pre-approval of relationships, confirmation of organisations fit for funding and, at the same time, encouraging and enabling entry of new cross-domain capabilities from outside the traditional defence and security realm. Frankly, that is a task better performed by existing small businesses rather than by Defence itself.
So, I propose that , in order to harness trends and patterns and create conditions for the success of small, agile, and flexible businesses, Defence should set the small business sector the challenge of forming new collaborative relationships with adjacent capabilities in the non-traditional defence and security sector and reward such initiatives with rapid, flexible contracts.
The Strategic Defence Review positions defence as an “engine for growth,” aiming to boost prosperity, jobs, and security across the UK by leveraging SME businesses and their innovation and ingenuity. SDR 2025 offers a potentially transformative pathway for SMEs to become integral to the UK’s defence industrial base and broader economic growth. But this depends upon:
- effective and sustained execution of the new procurement reforms;
- robust support mechanisms for SMEs, and
- a concerted effort by MOD and defence industry to address skills shortages and historical procurement biases.
How does Defence and Security use DSEI and other Defence & Security shows to do so? Well, the cost of having a stand at DSEI is mostly prohibitive to small businesses. Indeed, most of the Defence & Security events, like Global MilSatCom and those run by Defence IQ and others, refuse to have a tariff suitable for small businesses (I have asked repeatedly!). Yet countless military and Defence Acquisition staff attend these shows. That seems a bit hypocritical. Isn’t it time for a boycott of attendance unless there is a reasonable and responsible way of encouraging smaller businesses to showcase their capabilities? This is all part of the way Defence and Security embraces flexibility and agility – come on DSEI and Defence IQ – and come on Seniors in Defence Acquisition – use your ‘vote’ and let’s help the UK really respond to the patterns underlying the chaos.
