New report looks at optimising defence acquisition

Homeland March 15, 2023

A new report from Redstone Risk outlines the changes required to optimise defence acquisition in the UK.

Risk management consultancy Redstone Risk has published a report – Unwrapping the Riddle of Defence Acquisition in the United Kingdom – setting out the fundamental changes required to optimise defence acquisition in the United Kingdom.

The company has developed the Redstone Way, based on learning gleaned from their contribution towards £22bn-worth of UK defence programmes, which blends risk management competencies with an unwavering focus on military outcomes and technology integration.

Co-written with Professor John Louth, a leading expert in defence and security research and former Director of the Defence, Industries and Society Research Programme at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the paper seeks to understand the challenges facing UK defence acquisition, and the options for maximising future performance to eliminate cost overruns, schedule slippages and capability gaps.

Coinciding with the Defence Sub- Committee’s inquiry into the Ministry of Defence’s equipment procurement processes, Redstone’s paper represents a timely and necessary intervention aimed at strengthening UK Defence’s ability to deliver critical military effects with greater agility.

Currently, Redstone Risk argues, defence acquisition in the UK is ‘requirements’-led, based on reforms from the late-90s, which government had intended to be a ‘faster, cheaper and better’ way to procure equipment. Whilst on paper such an approach seems sensible, the report from Redstone Risk argues that the ‘requirements’-led approach is dysfunctional, out-of-date and leads to a focus on project outputs rather than military outcomes.

Redstone Risk recommends in their paper that there should be a shift in focus from milestones and outputs to defence effects, and acquisition projects would be better delivered through the insights offered in ‘the Redstone Way’.

This is underpinned by the belief that considerations of the speed of technology innovation, changing budget assumptions and evolving conditions of warfare must be prioritised over misplaced project certainty and frozen user and system requirements within acquisition programmes.

Applying a strategic change budget within the UK Defence’s equipment plan would provide much needed flexibility to mitigate programme risk where it threatens operational effectiveness whilst, at the same time, maximising returns for the taxpayer.

The ‘Redstone Way’ also introduces an ‘Investment Ladder’ framework, which provides an architecture to help those delivering large scale acquisition projects.

William Foulds, Managing Director of Redstone Risk, said: “The Government’s Integrated Review, renewed war in Europe and the challenges faced by our public finances has brought our defence acquisition model to the fore once more. Our paper offers a robust framework, based on my company’s practitioner experience on strategic programmes and Professor Louth’s research, that re-imagines risk management, benefits management and technology investments in defence. Redstone Risk offers a proven approach that has minimised cost overruns and schedule slippages on the programmes with which we’ve been involved. With the current economic climate placing constraints on the UK’s defence budget, adopting the ‘Redstone Way’ will help bolster the UK’s ability to respond to emerging threats whilst maximising taxpayers’ investments.”

Professor John Louth, former Director of the Defence, Industries and Society Research Programme at RUSI and a strategic advisor and non-executive director to a number of defence companies said: “Much of the UK’s approach to defence acquisition and capability generation is stuck in the late 1990s whilst profound technological change can be timed in months or just a few years. The practices of procurement, therefore, must be updated to reflect a period of unprecedented transformations in technologies, behaviours, governance and data-led decision-making. The practitioners of Redstone Risk understand this and have offered great value to their corporate clients and the UK frontline itself. This paper captures their approach which is in tune with much of my thinking.”

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