As Ministers fall like dominoes and the most oversold political document of the year, the Defence Investment Plan, continues to change shape, the call is for more money and now. Not the least as it is expected to be published before the all-important NATO Summit in Ankora, Turkey, on 7-8th July.

The airwaves have been full of how defence is underfunded, the Treasury need to look again at the spending settlement of Defence vs Welfare. The argument goes that the UK’s global leadership position and the competitiveness of its defence industrial base, especially in the face of unprecedented German spending as was on show at the ILA in Berlin this week, and new mechanisms such as SAFE in the EU, rely on more cash. And now.

But putting aside the arguments of money, and valid points on procurement and cultural change on NADG acquisition which are covered expertly elsewhere, there’s another key element to the UK’s industrial competitiveness. What is needed is a top line three point supply-side reform plan which could be enacted now and at low cost that would move the needle rapidly for the UK defence industrial base. The EU can simply not move as fast on these points as the UK could and should. For a defence enterprise fond of doctrines, here’s three over – arching ones to add into the mix:

Firstly, move rapidly on regulatory and testing reform. Autonomous systems are a UK advantage but can only be deployed in limited circumstances, especially with regard to beyond the line of sight circumstances, certain use cases and highly specific criteria. The Sandbox Bill needs to be advanced quickly with strong MOD and defence industrial input into DBT to move this into a permissive deployment environment that can compete rapidly with the Baltics and Nordics in particular. The availability of testing dates and capacity in ‘atypical’ environments is criminal and the legacy system is too constrained for scale and we need a more diverse marketplace for testing to be developed to meet demand.

A date needs to be put forward for the Bill’s publication and its scope clearly defined with an expert industry input group accelerated, with Ministerial interest and sponsorship for regulatory action on national security mandates. This supply side signal can be backed up the development of physical areas and infrastructure for testing and evaluation and a clearer pull through into programmes but also into formal MOD endorsement which are so powerful for defence exports into key markets. At the moment, the regulatory argument seems to have been well made and partly won but without a clear technology roadmap for the sandbox environment to turn into operational reality, we risk surrending the UK’s leadership position in these technologies.

Secondly, get clarity on definitions that are holding back investments, particularly form international partners. I will pick sovereignty as one such example. Most weeks there are new definitions and political calls for sovereignty in different critical industries. This year we have had DSIT, HMT and MOD all define sovereignty differently. There are competing definitions of the concept on the MOD 5^th floor alone.

The danger of this is that while it meets political needs in the short-term, it becomes dangerous to those looking to deploy capital that funds our industrial base, both from abroad but also home-grown. If investors do not feel that their asset is deployable or exploitable due to changing definitions on programmes, and may also not be then exportable, then they will choose to invest elsewhere, while UK competitiveness falters.

There is a case for sticking to the ‘Own-Collaborate-Access’ paradigm originally developed for the space sector and then layering in clearer definitions of what that means as it pertains to operational control (‘kill switches’), people and infrastructure. We also need to define what we mean by sovereignty of software, the UK’s strongest industrial asset and create an environment for that to flourish. The difference between steel hulls and software payloads are enormous but not being reflected in current debates and thinking on sovereignty which is a critical issue. Time to move beyond the emotional paradigm of considering sovereignty in steel terms alone. The Offset and Industrial Participation policies are imminent and will need clearer answers to these questions than what we have now.

Third, be bolder on alliances and on partnerships. The SAFE access debacle held us back by a year, despite clarity the French were not going to play ball. Other mechanisms and alliances remained untouched, despite ambitious trade chapters in new Free Trade Agreements coming into effect from India to the Gulf and beyond. The common JEF Nation procurement platform is an interesting concept too but has yet to see much meat on the bone.

Yet one is really pertinent, especially in light of the collapse of the FCAS consortium on the 6^th generation fighter to rival GCAP. Germany is apparently ‘considering its options’ and the Trinity House Agreement for UK-German defence cooperation could provide a strong window to address this now. The Anglo-German industrial base is ripe for exploitation, especially given that German industrial capacity cannot match spending and that the UK has specific capabilities that will take many years for the Germans to fully develop. Appreciating that there are complex UK-Japan-Italy political dynamics on G-CAP in play already around work shares, there must be a way of seizing the moment on FCAS gaps to build a more enduring Anglo-Germany aerospace bridge.  With real political ownership and drive, it’s not impossible to move PDQ on some of these blockers.

William Wallace is Group Head of Defence, Security and Aerospace at the DGA Group.