UK Defence Must Transform Faster Warns Combat Veteran

One of Britain’s highest-ranking military officers believes that the armed forces must speed up innovation and become more efficient to avoid falling behind adversaries.

Air Marshal Andrew Turner, who was second in command of the RAF from 2019 to 2022, said the UK needs to “dramatically raise productivity” and invest “deeper and faster” into space, artificial intelligence and quantum technologies.

He warned that one of the biggest challenges facing the British military is “the failure of imagination – of what the enemy might do, of what technology could achieve, of what our people are capable of and how we might fight”.

Turner’s comments come amid the government’s Strategic Defence Review, which was launched by the prime minister, Keir Starmer, in July.

The government has said that it aims to make Britain secure at home and strong abroad for decades to come and will be “delivered at pace”. The chief reviewer, Lord George Robertson, is expected to publish his recommendations in the first half of this year.

Turner, 57, who has been honoured with an OBE, CBE and CB for services to national security, said he recognised that defence budgets are finite but warned that existing funding mechanisms were “clunky” and “risk is often avoided rather than managed. New ways and tools in warfare create shock and unbalance the enemy; we need more of both.”

He added: “There needs to be a more dynamic risk-sharing partnership with private industry to find and scale successful technologies quicker and get them into the hands of those sniffing cordite faster.”

Turner believes that accessing market finance is key to moving faster and has set up Saibre Capital, a new investment fund, to raise more than £10 billion to address the nation’s most pressing security, health, energy, transport and communications needs.

“We think that the market is better placed than the government to find, fund and grow breakthrough businesses and this will help propel Britain to the top tier and stimulate growth at home through emerging technology. Government will set the priorities, we will build the businesses, companies will thrive and Britain will grow; everyone wins”.

Meanwhile, Turner is convinced that a defence priority should be “getting more out of what we buy” with the MoD’s spending expected to be about £57 billion this year, rising to almost £60b in 2025/26.

“We need to get a lot closer to what the private sector views as the absolute minimum levels of productivity, which will substantially increase what is available for combat,” said Turner.

“It is generally the case that the MoD buys 100 things, operates 60 and 40 are at readiness for the nation. If we could raise productivity to 80 percent, it would double what we could do on any one day, without needing to buy new hardware. In commerce that’s a very low bar to get over.”

He added: “A focus on compressing maintenance regimes, increasing spare part availability and shifting to synthetic training, would generate ships, tanks and aircraft for operations without the need to buy more expensive platforms,” said Turner.

Turner, 57, joined the RAF in 1985 and had bold plans when he was promoted to air marshal and appointed deputy commander in May 2019.

He led a venture capital fund into which £50m a year would be invested in emerging technologies and supported measures to help the RAF become net zero.

Plans included solar panels on aircraft hangars, a moss-planting initiative around airfields to sequester carbon and heat pumps under runways to keep them clear in winter.

“We should think more about net zero, not only to save the planet, but novel fuels will give the UK Armed Forces some independence from the grid at home and far less reliance on host nations overseas,” said Turner. “Removing vulnerable points will enhance effectiveness.”

Turner believes there are opportunities to improve training methods amid concern that “too many people are in too many schools, colleges and academies for too long. We need to put training tools at the fingertips of our people and let them learn at their own pace. If we can change how we train, we can release more people back to the front line and increase our lethality”.

He added that “some core practices need to modernise faster. Defence HR is dealing with a unique set of challenges, but its systems and approaches lag all known commercial comparators. These are not simple to change, but they are vital if serving is to stay relevant to those that follow Gen Z.”

However, a glittering career – which had seen him fly helicopters in 19 combat operations on four continents – came to a halt after Turner was reported to police by a neighbour in August 2021 for being undressed in the garden of his 14th century Oxfordshire cottage.

A police investigation came to nothing, but the married father-of-two said he felt he had no choice but to resign when media reports surfaced in early 2022.

“I did nothing wrong, it was a very hot day and I believed I was in an entirely private position. My garden is very secluded. Yet somehow a salacious story was passed to the media and became national headlines for a week such that it was a major distraction for the service and me personally. I had no choice but to step back from my role to remove heat from the coverage. It is deeply frustrating because though the case was dismissed, it was too late, the damage was done”.

Turner admitted that he is sad about his early departure from the RAF, adding: “In some respects, I wished I could have served for longer, but I can’t change the past.”

He is now involved – as investor, adviser or director – with more than a dozen companies that he believes will change the world, including the fossil-free synthetic fuel firm Zero, founded by Paddy Lowe, the former Formula One engineer (“it’s the global future of combustion”) and Space Aye, a Scottish firm merging internet of things data with live satellite images (“it will make everything, everywhere visible now – a critical national security capability”).

“Space must feature more prominently in leaders’ minds and if we are serious about being ‘top tier’ the UK needs to secure its own access to space and manage our own surveillance and communications constellations,” said Turner.

He insisted that the strategic defence review is “a crucial opportunity to address some of the biggest issues our nation faces.”

“The MoD has been inundated by ideas from service people and the public and it would be very easy to be overwhelmed by the volume.

“Defence is our nation’s instrument of last resort and with the constant rise in defence costs, expanding pressure on the Armed Forces and growing threats at home and overseas, we need to find a different way to take more measured risks, more often.

“Lord George Robertson oversaw what was perhaps the most prescient and far-sighted defence review in 1997. The scale of this one is greater, the world is far more unfriendly and technology is evolving faster than acquisition systems can cope with, perhaps except China’s. We cannot afford to fail.”