Following the Strategic Defence Review, the government is set to boost investment, resources and technology into the Army and Royal Navy, boosting their efficiency and effectiveness of their worldwide military operations.
This is set to boost the Army’s lethality by ten times through harnessing firepower, surveillance technology, autonomy, digital connectivity, and data, with the Royal Navy to ramp up new drones systems towards a mix of crewed, unscrewed, and autonomous technologies.
In a meeting for NATO Defence Ministers in Brussels today (Thursday 5th June 2025), the defence secretary is set to outline the government’s plan for the biggest transformation of Armed Forces ever and its approach to NATO.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is to increase its spending to at least ten per cent of its budget on drones and novel technologies, following the government announcement that £5 billion will be invested on new drone and laser technology.
The Army will see a prioritisation of the ‘Digital Targeting Web’ which will increase the pace and scale of change already being tested through initiatives like ASGARD, a programme to enhance the command-and-control capability of the force defending Estonia, and will increase the Army’s ability to find and strike enemy targets quickly.
This follows the government’s decision to open a new framework to encourage defence companies to submit ideas for new digital systems that could be integrated into ASGARD, with the aim to capitalise on advanced technologies such as AI and unscrewed capabilities, enabling the development of advanced digital decision-making on the battlefield.
The Royal Navy will see developments such as moving towards autonomy and unscrewed systems, such as moving towards a “New Hybrid” fleet that merges these technologies with conventional warships. The Strategic Defence Review will see the Royal Navy’s Carrier Strike programme, which includes Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers, evolve into ‘hybrid’ carrier airwings by introducing uncrewed platforms to increase the strength of carriers.
Defence secretary John Healey MP said: ‘We will invest in technology to give our troops the edge in the battlefields of the future; transforming our Armed Forces and boosting our war fighting readiness.
“This will increase our lethality, provide a powerful deterrent to our adversaries, and put the UK at the leading edge of innovation in NATO.
“We will back the UK business to invite at a war time pace; creating highly skilled jobs and fast-tracking the weapons of tomorrow in to the hands of our warfighters, as part of our government’s Plan for Change.”
