Accelerating the digital battlefield

Guest blog by Jon Yates, Solution Design Team Leader at AtkinsRealis #DefTechWeek2025

Jon Yates

Solution Design Team Leader, AtkinsRealis

Rapid software development is essential to support military capability, but defence software acquisition and deployment often moves slowly. AtkinsRéalis’ Jon Yates considers strategies to help deploy software at the speed of relevance.

The modern battlefield is becoming increasingly more digital – as the Rt Hon John Healey MP, Secretary of State for Defence, said in the recent UK Strategic Defence Review: “technology is changing how war is fought… whoever gets new technology into the hands of their Armed Forces the quickest will win.”

Recent conflicts have demonstrated how software agility translates directly to battlefield advantage. Frontline personnel rely on software tools as much as their physical equipment: from drone control systems, to battlefield management applications, the side that can develop, adapt, and deploy software fastest gains a significant tactical advantage. Yet while technology advancement moves at a lightning pace, military software acquisition and deployment often moves much more slowly, following processes designed for hardware acquisition cycles – risking the creation of capability gaps that could threaten national security.

The deployment of military software faces a number of common hurdles, including:

Sequential security testing: Traditional waterfall approaches to assurance delay deployment while every possible vulnerability is examined.
Risk aversion: Fear of failure and security breaches have created a culture where ‘no’ is a safer answer than ‘yes’.
Classification boundaries: Moving software across security domains results in significant technical and procedural friction.
Legacy infrastructure: Frontline networks often have limited bandwidth, outdated hardware, and intermittent connectivity.

How can we address these challenges? By approaching software development in a more ‘modular’ way – with validation of the software element throughout, to ensure it will make a valid contribution to the capability – we can enable rapid feedback and bug fixing. The motor industry, for example, will make changes to the software in a test vehicle as it’s being driven, as they get real time data on its performance, and understand how changes to the code impact upon the performance.

Rather than waiting until the full product is developed, defence developers can create sections of software that deliver specific parts of the frontline use case, test them, then integrate them with other parts of the software being developed. This allows defence developers to gain confidence that the application is on track to deliver its mission, and that integration with existing capabilities is being considered across the whole development lifecycle.

Overcoming the obstacles

To ensure software is deployed at the speed of relevance, while upholding the rigorous governance and security standards essential to military operations, four approaches can help cut through traditional processes and place the user at the heart of development.

Implement DevSecOps at scale

DevSecOps – development, security, and operations – emphasises automation, continuous security monitoring, and proactive risk management, to maintain security without slowing down development and deployment. The three elements must work together, with users brought in early, and at the centre of the development process. Embedding software developers in operational units, for example, will help them gain first-hand understanding of users’ challenges.

Environment parity is essential, from development through to deployment; while infrastructure-as-code will ensure consistent security controls. Automated security testing within continuous integration (CI)/continuous deployment (CD) pipelines reduces demand on resource, enabling faster, more reliable software releases; and containerisation can create standardised, pre-verified deployment packages.

Create clear ‘deployment lanes’

Not all military software requires the same level of scrutiny. Tiered deployment pathways should be created to circumvent unnecessary red tape. A fast lane could be used for commercial-off-the-shelf applications with minimal customisation and non-sensitive data; a standard lane for adapted commercial tools handling mission data; and an enhanced lane for custom-built tools with direct operational impact. Each lane would have pre-defined governance requirements and timeframes, providing predictability for both developers and military customers.

Design for the edge from the beginning

Ensuring resilience at the frontline starts with strategic planning – thinking about the mission, and what the capabilities are there to do, and designing around that. By designing systems that anticipate connectivity challenges, defence organisations can empower forces’ operations with locally-hosted applications, smart synchronisation, and an adaptable development environment. Applications that can function effectively with intermittent connectivity should be prioritised; and intelligent synchronisation mechanisms implemented for when connectivity is restored.

Deploying edge computing infrastructure to frontline units will allow local hosting of critical applications, while the creation of robust local development environments will enable essential field modifications to these applications.

Empower frontline personnel to create their own solutions

By providing secure, low-code platforms, curated component libraries, and automated security checks, frontline commands can foster Agile development while maintaining governance and standardisation. These platforms will enable non-developers to build simple applications, with rapid assembly from component libraries of pre-approved, secure building blocks. This may help overcome challenges of technology adoption: users who are developing software directly relevant to the work they are doing, are more likely to actively participate in using it.

Automated testing and security scanning should be implemented for user-created applications; and governance frameworks for these applications must balance innovation with security and standardisation requirements.

A critical military capability

While the SDR proposes taking a Commercial X approach to defence software procurement, which may help speed up current processes, defence leaders must recognise rapid software deployment as a critical military capability in its own right.

Rapid deployment of software to frontline commands is not only a technical challenge, it requires cohered transformation across organisational structures, personnel capabilities, and technological infrastructure. By addressing these dimensions simultaneously, we can create a sustainable advantage that gives our forces the digital agility to outpace adversaries.

Operationalising DefTech campaign week 2025 #DefTechWeek2025

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Operationalising DefTech: Defence campaign week launch

Launching techUK’s Defence Campaign Week, Operationalising DefTech, techUK is pleased to welcome John Cunningham, the Director of UK Defence Innovation within the Ministry of Defence to brief members on MOD’s evolving approach to new technologies, alongside the co-founder of Anduril Industries Christian Brose, and Sara Sharkey from Prolinx.

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