Partnering with industry for growth
Our commitment extends beyond delivering world-class equipment and support to the UK Armed Forces; we are dedicated to supporting UK economic growth, driving exports, championing sustainability and creating social value across our operations and the contracts we place with industry.
We work hard to support UK economic growth, drive exports, champion sustainability and create social value across our operations and the contracts we place with Industry. In 23/24 our expenditure with UK industry was £10.5 billion, and we supported 87,000 UK jobs (46,000 direct and 41,000 indirect jobs) through industry expenditure.
Working with UK Industry – big and small
We aim to boost sovereign defence industrial capacity by working with the UK’s defence companies, large and small, to enhance the UK’s competitive edge. This helps to create high-skilled jobs with investment in the development of our people, and boost UK exports.
We know that SMEs are incubators of innovation who are highly agile in producing new products and technologies and often crucial to their local economies.
Through our day to day work we support their growth and success. In 2022-23, MOD spent just under £1.4 billion with micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, equivalent to five percent of total MOD expenditure.
We are also making it faster and simpler for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises and companies of all sizes to access defence procurement opportunities.
Delivering social value
Social value is integral to what we do, encompassing efforts to support local communities, promote diversity and inclusion, and uphold ethical standards.
We create positive impacts through our projects and programmes, fostering partnerships that reflect our values and benefit society. We work with partners to find ways for defence to operate more sustainably and limit impact on biodiversity. Our initiatives range from oyster conservation and recycling old aircraft parts, to supporting veterans and their families, to encouraging STEM education and community engagement and developing hundreds of apprentices through our schemes every year.
Supporting innovation
To deter threats to the UK we must stay ahead of our adversaries. Ensuring we innovate is critical, as is sharpening the edge for our nation’s armed forces and allies, and maintaining a credible, effective deterrent.
We must outpace our adversaries with rapid updates to our capabilities and championing advances in science and technology. We are investing in testing cutting-edge solutions, such as additive manufacturing, autonomous vehicles, and high-powered laser and radio frequency weapons, embracing the advantages that science, technology and digitisation bring, using innovative capabilities to give our aviators, sailors and soldiers the edge to deter potential aggressors and defend the UK.
Spearheading this work is our Future Capability Innovation (FCI) team. FCI specialises in the novel, disruptive, complex and cross-cutting technology risks and opportunities relevant to multiple projects across defence, delivering invaluable data insights and capability advantage to Front-line Commands.
How we’re delivering in numbers:
More about how we’ve partnered with Industry
Find out more about what we do at DE&S.
Support for global operations
Every equipment programme, every bit of kit, every UK military operation no matter where it is in the world across land, sea and air, is also backed by the support we provide 24/7, 365 days of the year.
Delivering Change to Drive Excellence
Within a context of increased global threats, DE&S has been changing. The new, improved DE&S will increase outputs for defence, improve availability of key platforms and get essential, innovative and life-saving kit to the front lines faster.
Defence Experts Delivering for the Nation
DE&S helps our armed forces protect the nation, our territories and our allies. Few other organisations have a higher collective purpose. It’s this purpose that drives our experts to deliver every day, making sure the soldiers, sailors and aviators serving our country have what they need to succeed.
Our strategy
Unlocking our capacity to increase Defence’s outputs
In the face of increasing global threats we are changing the way we work to be more efficient while driving greater pace and agility into our operations to stay ahead of our adversaries and protect our nation and allies.
Our strategy is built upon delivering more of what matters for our armed forces and the UK. To achieve this, our strategy has three strategic outcomes, each with ambitious targets to be achieved by the end of 2025.
