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Defence at a Crossroads: Strategic Defence Review

  • Behind the Wire

03.June.2025

Introduction

Defence at a Crossroads: Strategic Defence Review Signals New Era of Readiness, Innovation and Integration

The Strategic Defence Review 2025 marks a generational reset for UK Defence. Faced with rising threats, evolving technologies and economic uncertainty, the Government is committing to a fundamental shift from post-Cold War structures to a new model focused on deterrence, integration, and rapid innovation.

With a clear focus on warfighting readiness, NATO alignment, and industrial regeneration, the Review calls for wholesale transformation: operational, digital, cultural, and organisational. It also emphasises partnerships: across government, with industry, and within society.

We recognise the scale of the ambition and also the opportunity. As experts in user-centred design and business transformation, we’re helping MOD and industry partners design and deliver capability that’s not only effective but usable, adaptable, and ready for the pace of change this new era demands.

Key Takeaways from SDR

Warfighting Readiness: A renewed emphasis on conventional deterrence and high-intensity conflict readiness, delivered through an Integrated Force model. Challenge: Delivering readiness will require cultural change, complex force integration across domains, and sustained investment in people, training, and logistics under fiscal pressure.

‘NATO First’ Strategy: A full commitment to NATO-led force design, capability development and operational integration, while maintaining sovereign flexibility. Challenge: Aligning national priorities with multinational constructs risks tension between agility and interoperability, notably where digital architectures and operational doctrine diverge.

Technology-Led Transformation: Defence must move at ‘wartime pace’ on digital capability, AI, autonomous systems, and cyber. A new ‘digital targeting web’ will underpin integrated operations. Challenge: Institutional inertia, fragmented digital delivery, and low user adoption pose risks to pace and coherence, particularly if end-users are not integrated into development cycles.

Procurement Reform: Defence procurement will be radically overhauled to deliver innovation faster, support UK industry, and embed spiral development models. Challenge: Legacy processes, risk aversion, and misaligned incentives within acquisition teams and commercial frameworks could stall the speed and scale of intended reform.

Whole-of-Society Approach: Defence is no longer the sole responsibility of the Armed Forces. The Review calls for deeper national resilience, increased Reserve participation, and broader societal engagement. Challenge: Achieving this vision demands coordinated public messaging, refreshed engagement strategies, and new models for mobilising skills and support across diverse civilian sectors.

How MilUX Can Help

The Strategic Defence Review sets bold, necessary ambitions. But delivery will depend on profound cultural change, cross-sector collaboration, and new ways of working. This is where MilUX brings immediate, practical value:

  1. User-Centred Design of warfighting capability: We help teams to place users, warfighters, operators, and decision-makers at the heart of capability development. Our approach ensures the correct functionality reaches the front line faster and in a form that people can use. Learn more about our Exploratory User Research and Capability Assessment services.

  2. Driving Defence Innovation Readiness: We ensure emerging technologies are usable, adoptable, and integrated from the outset, linking frontline user insights to tech delivery in real-time. Learn more about our Concept Generation and Early Prototyping service.

  3. Transformation at Scale and Strategic Integration Support: From digital targeting apps to integrated C2, agility is now mission-critical. MilUX helps businesses and MOD teams adopt a product-centred operating model, incorporating lean and agile ways of working. We can help you break down siloes to support integrated force models and align outcomes with NATO priorities. Learn more about moving from Project to Product with our Business Transformation service.

  4. Empowering Defence People: Transformation must be more than technical; it must be lived. We collaborate with command and delivery teams to develop internal capabilities through tailored training and cultural change interventions. Learn more about our People Development service.

Ready to Act

MilUX stands ready to support the MOD and industry partners in delivering the Strategic Defence Review’s vision. We bring clarity to complexity, pace to delivery, and people to the centre of change.

If your team is shaping what comes next in defence transformation, we’re ready to help.