“Start planning much earlier”: delivering defence support in an era of disruption

The contemporary security landscape is complex and challenging, encompassing factors ranging from wars in Europe and the Middle East to cyber threats, supply chain vulnerabilities and intensifying operational demands. In response, the UK defence industry must look beyond production and logistics, prioritising operational readiness and sovereign capability.

Team ORION was founded to meet just these requirements for the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), offering a joined-up approach to operational delivery that is optimised to address the challenges of modern sustainment. It brings together KBR, Unipart and IBM into a single team that blends experience across several crucial areas: the ability to handle complex strategic programmes; manufacturing expertise; supply chain sustainment; and advanced capabilities in digital systems, data and a range of other critical emerging technologies.

Complementary capabilities

Readiness today is about far more than front-line support, explained Geoff Maple, business development director at KBR.

“You’ve got to start planning much earlier in through-life support, because the picture is changing so frequently that you simply can’t be reactive - you’ve got to be proactive,” said Maple, who previously held a range of logistics roles in the Royal Air Force and MoD, including serving as support solutions lead at Defence Equipment & Support. “You’ve got to start readiness long before it’s required at the front line.”

Gerry Ewart-Brookes, defence sector director at Unipart, previously served as the British Army’s head of logistics and as director of plans at NATO’s Allied Joint Support and Enabling Command. Until recently, he noted, defence planning worked on the premise that the UK could choose whether to engage in military deployments.

These were usually focused on stabilisation operations or interventions against non-state actors, Ewart-Brookes said, with a belief that large-scale efforts would have a “ten-year warning sign. Anything that might involve a peer-to-peer environment was seen as being a long way away, and we’d have time to prepare for it.”

But the situation has changed: “You’re now talking about deploying forces at a much larger scale to Europe or further afield.”

This places significant demands on the defence industrial supply base, which must be ready to respond far more quickly than anticipated in the recent past. “The NATO warning times for deploying some forces are now measured in weeks, not months,” noted Ewart-Brookes.

Giles Hartwright, defence and security client partner at IBM and the chair of industry body techUK, previously served in the Corps of Royal Engineers and across a range of technology-focused roles in government, including as chief technology officer in the Cabinet Office.

He pointed to lessons learned from Ukraine, which have demonstrated the evolutionary path of modern warfare, notably in terms of the speed of change.

“Decision time is only getting shorter and shorter,” Hartwright said. “Look at drone technology, which updates in life cycles measured in weeks – that is just so different to the planning timetables we have had to date.”

The UK’s adversaries are adapting to this new dynamic, he warned, rapidly updating their tactics, techniques and procedures. Ultimately, this means the supply chain must evolve, including working more closely with allies in Europe and NATO.

“We can’t just go out now and buy several Challenger 3 tanks or Boxers or a warship and expect those platforms to last for 30 or 40 years,” Hartwright said. “The very nature of warfare we’re seeing in Ukraine is changing the way we need to think about supply chain resilience and onshoring capability.”

The enterprise view

If the defence sector fails to adapt to these evolving requirements, there is a significant risk of fragmentation across programmes or slow delivery, Maple said. To avoid this danger, the priority is to contract not against a requirement, but for collaboration.

This means developing a holistic, enterprise view, moulding logistics, data and programme management into a coherent picture that offers greater visibility, he explained: “You then ensure that incentives, contracting and data are optimised for a mission outcome approach, so they’re not managed separately but as an enterprise.”

Against this background, industry must give more time to decision-makers by providing as much clarity as possible up front. From a digital perspective, it is crucial to shift away not just from legacy technology but from legacy processes, said Hartwright. The MoD has recognised this imperative and defence is going in the right direction, he added, with a range of programmes focused on defence support transformation.

Sovereign capability

Sovereign capability is a central demand in this new age of increasing threats and disruption. Industry must play a central role in delivering a genuinely resilient sovereign supply chain, balancing day-to-day efficiency with the capacity to respond to rapidly changing demands.

“Sovereign capability isn’t about self-sufficiency in everything. It’s about having sufficient control, visibility and resilience in the capabilities that matter most, so defence can continue to operate effectively when supply chains come under pressure, or circumstances change unexpectedly,” Ewart-Brookes said.

In practice, sovereign logistics means supply chains must be built to function in a time of disruption, rather than being optimised for efficiency alone. He noted that in previous decades, support operations could be effectively cocooned, hardened against any external dangers short of out-and-out conflict or perhaps espionage or sabotage. But in the age of pervasive threats like cyberattacks and artificial intelligence (AI) agents, this relative security has disappeared, Ewart-Brookes noted.

“We don’t have that luxury – if we’re not careful, we could be disrupted by our adversaries across our supply chain, and they can do it in a deniable form,” he observed.

Stockpiles remain a crucial element, Ewart-Brookes added, and militaries and their industry suppliers must understand where they want to invest in these resources. It is about fully understanding the entirety of the supply chain, he explained.

Data is a fundamental resource for delivering such a complete enterprise-level view, Hartwright noted. By bringing together that data across logistics, engineering, inventory and the supply chain, militaries and their industry partners can change the traditional approach: rather than relying on forward planning alone, logisticians can now see their changing levels of materiel and supplies in real time.

There is no longer the operational luxury of a long lead time, he stressed. “We can’t just pick up the phone and have a conversation about requirements. We need to know in advance what might happen and how we would address those demands.” The focus is not on sheer quantity, but “how we take that data and give analysed information to decision-makers ahead of our enemy.”

This underscores the need for trusted data, he said. “If you don’t trust it or it’s late, you might as well not have it,” he said. “But when you remove legacy processes and connect operational planning, engineering, inventory and the rest of the supply chain data, it becomes really powerful.”

Harnessing technology

Connected data can be used for a variety of purposes, Hartwright said, such as predicting potential constraints or modelling a range of scenarios: “You can use that data to do courses of action. You can look forwards. You can say what might happen and how we might need to change. And then we can start making decisions that flow all the way back through the supply chain, asking industry to start ramping up production or changing that production.”

This will be enabled by emerging technologies, he said. “Analytics can look at the identification patterns and predict demand. AI can help planners interrogate those complex data sets, something that humans can’t do with the quantity of data.”

Hartwright also pointed to the potential of technologies like digital twins, allowing militaries to model the impact of disruption. Team ORION brings deep experience of this work in a range of sectors, he noted.

Security is a crucial focus for such technological innovation and must be embedded throughout modern military supply chains, Hartwright stressed. It must be the foundation layer; it cannot simply be “bolted on” later. Such an approach means focusing on the design architecture, trusted data provenance and appropriate human oversight in the use of AI.

For example, he drew particular attention to the need for quantum security. IBM has long worked on both sides of the equation, Hartwright said, developing quantum computing to optimise supply chains and post-quantum cryptography to secure those chains against future threats; this expertise is now incorporated into Team ORION.

Industrial innovation

Defence challenges are now too complex for isolated solutions, demanding innovations in integrated delivery, sovereign capability, shared governance and transparency, said Maple. It is vital to “work differently” across industry to meet these challenges and exploit new opportunities.

“You absolutely need a collaborative service integration approach that enables the customer – in partnership with Team ORION – to understand the impacts of a decision in one isolated area and how that affects the enterprise as a whole,” he said.

This relies on developing the highest levels of expertise, with supply chain experts and technical specialists working together to solve modern problems. Essentially, it comes down to collaboration.

“If you don’t have a particular capability, you must ensure that you partner with somebody that can deliver it. There’s no one single organization that will deliver everything together: you have to team up.”

Because military supply chains must be capable of dynamically responding to weekly or even daily changes on the battlefield, they need a source of capability nationally to deliver on these ambitions, stressed Ewart-Brookes. Once more, data is the key: for example, effective deployment of information offers clarity across the supply chain, including insights into the impact of second- and third-tier suppliers on resilience, he said.

This wider view is crucial. Team ORION combines the specialist expertise of its three members, but it is also focused on the broader defence ecosystem, Ewart-Brookes stressed, including supporting small and medium-sized enterprises throughout the UK and empowering the industrial base as a whole: “That develops a network of capability which you can call on, which gives you inherent resilience.”

This resilience will help sustain the armed forces across domains, no matter the challenges ahead. Just as importantly, it is a military resource in its own right, demonstrating to adversaries that the UK and its allies retain the ability to respond to disruption and deliver readiness at all times, Maple concluded.

“British defence support readiness is a deterrent as much as anything else,” he said. “The enemy will know the UK will never run out of support – that’s a strong message.”