Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 14
14
Accepted
Rapid capability development process involves industry proposals, expert selection, and field testing.
Conclusion
The Department explained that for the third segment, it has developed a process through its support for Ukraine whereby it provides industry with a problem statement and within a month gets proposals back from industry. It requires at least three proposals but often gets more than that, many 18 Q 39 19 Q 26 20 Q 26 21 Qq 26 and 41 22 Q 41 23 Q 22 11 from British small and medium-sized enterprises. The Department then uses experts to select the two best proposals, which are tested in the field. It then selects the best solution to scale up.24
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the implicit recommendation to learn from Ukraine procurement methods, detailing ongoing reforms and the establishment of UK Defence Innovation (UKDI) on July 1, 2025, for faster capability delivery.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
2.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: June 2026 2.2 As the report recognises, the government has identified and implemented numerous lessons learned from supplying Ukraine into how it is reforming the department’s procurement processes, and the department is committed to continuing to learn from this conflict. 2.3 The conflict in Ukraine has shown that the department must fundamentally change the way it procures. The rapidly changing threat and technology environment requires the department to increase the pace of military capability delivery, maximise the output from the defence budget, and ensure that the department can innovate at a wartime pace. 2.4 The Strategic Defence Review (SDR) recognised the complexity of the defence operating environment and the imperative to reflect national and industrial needs in the department’s procurement strategies. The department’s response to Ukraine has shown that the system can work in an agile and accelerated way, balancing risk to deliver capability at pace. The vision set out in the SDR is now being delivered through Defence Reform. 2.5 As such, the department is reforming its acquisition system to drive increased pace and agility in capability delivery. A new segmented approach to procurement will enable tailoring of acquisition processes to the type of capability, supplier and risk involved. The department will also engage with industry early, rewarding productivity and risk-taking and sharing risk with suppliers earlier in capability development to increase the speed of delivery whilst ensuring alignment. 2.6 The department will drive pace through approaches such as spiral acquisition to deliver a minimum deployable capability to the front line more rapidly and then iterate it to adapt quickly to a changing environment. 2.7 On 1 July 2025, the department stood up UK Defence Innovation (UKDI), a new organisation that draws on lessons learned from Ukraine, MOD’s own best practice and the experience of international partners. UKDI will ruthlessly prioritise to focus on the areas with most potential, with significant freedoms to contract with speed, simplicity, and flexibility, harnessing and bolstering the competitiveness of the UK’s tech sector, as well as further supporting UK SMEs.