MOD launches UK Defence Innovation and StratCom renamed
Sitting within the new National Armaments Directorate Group (NADG) under Defence Reform, and with a ringfenced annual budget of £400mn, UKDI is intended to dramatically simplify MOD’s innovation landscape. It brings together previously separate innovation organisations including the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA), J-Hub, the Defence Innovation Unit (formerly within Head Office), and Future Capability Innovation (formerly within DE&S).
UKDI will work with the newly created Military Strategic Headquarters (MSHQ) to agree capability priorities, engage industry and academia, ensuring ‘that game-changing technologies can be rapidly identified, developed, and deployed to the front line’. This represents a marked shift from FLCs setting requirements themselves before going to market, as before. FLC innovation units will remain in existence, but their work will be directed and financially resourced by UKDI.
In practice, UKDI will be responsible for those acquisitions that fall under the three-month ‘rapid commercial innovation’ cycle of MOD’s new segmented approach to procurement.
UKDI will also enhance the MOD’s regional engagement, building on the previous work of DASA Outreach and FLC Innovation Scouts. Regional Innovation Managers will lead teams of tech scouts and others responsible for acting a single point of contact for MOD SME services as well as driving industry and academic interaction. They will also lead engagement with the Regional Defence and Security Clusters.
Finally, a ‘Rapid Innovation Team’ which will focus on the delivery of dual-use capabilities, working at a ‘wartime pace’.
techUK has long argued that the fragmented nature of MOD’s existing innovation ecosystem has led to a disjointed and inefficient approach to the development and acquisition of new technologies. With the creation of clearer lines of command – both horizontally, with problem setting between MSHQ and UKDI, and vertically from UKDI down to FLC innovation units - the dangers of duplication should be avoided.
Also announced last week, Strategic Command (StratCom) will be renamed Cyber & Specialist Operations Command (CSOC). It will continue to be led by General Sir James Hockenhull, sitting alongside the Front-Line Commands within MSHQ under the Chief of the Defence Staff. The new name reflects its enhanced responsibilities for the cyber domain, as well as its continuing role with UK Special Forces, medical services, and intelligence.
These changes are just the latest in a series of reforms carried out by Defence over the past 12 months, leading up to the Strategic Defence Review. You can find an explainer on those changes here, as well as our summary of the SDR.
For more on the work of techUK's Defence Programme, email Jeremy Wimble.
Jeremy Wimble
Jeremy manages techUK's defence programme, helping the UK's defence technology sector align itself with the Ministry of Defence - including Defence Digital, DE&S, innovation units and Frontline Commands - through a broad range of activities including private briefings and early market engagement events. It also supports the MOD as it procures new digital technologies.
