Why mid-sized innovation is vital to UK defence sovereignty
Published 30th August 2025
As we approach DSEI 2025, the defence industry finds itself at a transitional moment. The Strategic Defence Review has laid out clear priorities for strengthening the UK's operational independence and resilience. But how do we translate strategic intent into technological, and ultimately tactical reality?
The answer lies not just in the grand platforms that capture headlines – the nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, and fighter jets – but in the sophisticated systems that make them truly effective. It's one thing to design and build a physically large and complex naval platform that can travel vast distances at great speed. But the critical question is: what does it do once it arrives?
The real capability challenge
Defence platforms must gather information, deliver effects through weapon systems, defend against threats, and communicate both up the command chain and between local platforms. This is where the UK's mid-sized defence companies deliver exceptional value – providing the systems that transform impressive platforms into effective warfighting capabilities.
Take Cohort's latest innovations, which we'll be showcasing at DSEI 2025, as examples. SEA's Ancilia trainable decoy launcher protects surface ships against missile threats and has been selected by the Royal Navy for its Maritime Electronic Warfare Programme. MCL has developed the UK's first flight and speed controller for FPV drone use, alongside breakthrough hyperspectral imagery technology that detects variations invisible to conventional cameras. Chess Dynamics's Vision4ce team delivers AI-enabled video processing and target detection that's revolutionising surveillance and counter-drone operations.
These aren't standalone products – they're the systems that transform platforms into genuinely effective operational capabilities.
The mid-sized advantage
There's been considerable fascination around small defence innovators, and rightly so. University spin-outs and start-ups bring fresh thinking to old problems, but there's a crucial gap between PowerPoint presentations and deployable capability. The harsh reality is that not every innovative idea will result in truly capable equipment, and even fewer will reach full-scale production.
At the other end of the spectrum, large defence primes excel at managing complex programmes and delivering platforms of unparallelled sophistication. But their scale comes with a heavy weight of process and complex decision-making processes that can struggle to keep pace with rapidly evolving threats.
Mid-sized companies like Cohort occupy a unique position. We combine the innovative ideas and engineering excellence typically found in smaller enterprises with the manufacturing capability and capital to deliver at scale. Our decentralised structure enables rapid decision-making without lengthy internal consultations, enabling us to respond quickly to evolving customer needs.
Sovereign capability in practice
The UK is fortunate to have a strong defence industry – one that's as capable as anywhere in the world. While multinational programmes can offer economies of scale and overseas procurement may sometimes appear advantageous on cost or timeline grounds, these benefits must be balanced against the strategic value of sovereign control.
When we invest in UK defence technology, we strengthen multiple layers of capability: the ability to upgrade and modify equipment locally, maintain responsive support and supply chains, scale production when needed, and build the industrial expertise that enables exports to allied nations. This creates a positive economic multiplier effect, supporting not just direct employment but entire supply chains of local businesses.
The current global security environment makes this particularly relevant. When conflict shifts from theoretical contingency to immediate possibility, countries understandably prioritise their own defence needs first. Long, vulnerable supply chains become strategic liabilities rather than cost efficiencies.
Technology that matters
The Strategic Defence Review rightly identifies key capability areas where innovation can make a decisive difference, one of which is autonomous systems. But whilst unmanned platforms are important, the real competitive advantage lies in the payloads that give these systems their operational value. Our portfolio demonstrates this principle, for instance SEA's towed-array sonar systems for anti-submarine warfare, MASS’s electronic countermeasures to defeat lethal modern missile threats, and ELAC SONAR's next-generation seabed defence system combining advanced sonar processing with fibre-optic technology.
The hybrid navy concept, mixing manned and unmanned platforms, demands resilient long-range high-speed digital communications. Our Australian subsidiary EM Solutions is a world leader in this technology, providing its Cobra and King Cobra satellite-on-the-move terminals to the Netherlands, Belgian and Portuguese navies, as well as the Royal Australian Navy’s fleet-wide SATCOM modernisation.
Through our international subsidiaries - from Germany's ELAC SONAR and Portugal's EID to Australia's EM Solutions – we can leverage diverse expertise while ensuring local support across multiple allied nations. This strengthens allied interoperability and exploits economies of scale while avoiding vulnerable long-distance supply and support chains.
Building agile defence ecosystems
Creating truly effective defence capability requires moving beyond traditional tiered supply chains toward integrated innovation networks. This means fostering partnerships between government, industry, and academia, while maintaining the competitive tension that drives excellence.
Mid-sized companies are particularly well-positioned for this ecosystem approach. We can engage meaningfully with universities, work effectively with both defence ministries and large primes as customers, while building relationships throughout our supply chains.
The key is balancing competition with collaboration. Partnerships are established, fostering flexibility and trust becomes vital once selection processes conclude. This requires procurement approaches built on understanding that both sides must be flexible to deliver what defence truly needs.
The path ahead
The Strategic Defence Review provides clarity and direction that previous reviews sometimes lacked. What we now need is an implementation plan that addresses resource allocation and prioritisation, providing the industrial partnerships framework that enables rapid, flexible delivery.
For the UK's defence industrial strategy to succeed, it must recognise that mid-sized companies represent the optimal balance point between innovation and delivery capability for high-technology systems. We can respond to emerging threats with the agility that large primes cannot match, while delivering at a scale and speed unachievable for that small companies.
The platforms grab the headlines, but it's the systems they mount that determine operational success. As we prepare for DSEI 2025, where we'll be demonstrating these capabilities on stand N6-120, the focus should be on how the UK can best leverage its mid-sized defence innovators to deliver the sovereign capability that our strategic situation demands.
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