The Defence Innovation Theatre

“Yeah, yeah. It’s time to call bullsh*t.”

 

 “Bullsh*t on what?”

 

“On every f***ing thing!”

This striking and not-so-subtle conversation is between two key protagonists in the 2015 film The Big Short. This was the moment in the dramatisation of the 2007/8 financial crisis when a small team of financial professionals linked various strands of evidence to conclude that the inherent risks in the US subprime mortgage market were totally unsustainable. Their insight into the fragility of the complex financial instruments and the shady behaviours this drove ultimately led them to a position where they could bet against the market. The true story is of a handful of bold financiers who correctly predicted the crash that would eventually torpedo the global economy and won big ‘shorting’ against it.

‘Carry On Innovators’?

I had an innovation “BS” moment recently. I have been leaning this way for a while, but the tipping point came from the confluence of three separate strands. Firstly, I was passed an account of a recent capability demonstration that read more like a ‘Carry On’ sketch than the dawning of some modern-day ‘Wunderwaffe’. Experiment, fail fast, I hear you say, but this was a system that had been achieving not a lot for quite some time, with further plans ahead. Interesting, maybe? Game-changing, less convinced!

The second was listening to a Tortoise Investigates podcast called Walter’s War. This investigative journalism takes an unconventional and somewhat controversial approach to shine a light on a “tissue of lies” in an element of the UK/US innovation ecosystem. It identifies how some individuals were guilty of “over hype”, both of themselves and the capabilities they were offering. Not that all of defence industrial innovation is a hollow shell filled with smooth-tongued snake oil salespeople, although they are definitely out there, but a reminder of the need for honest critical review of potential offerings. What can they really do now? What will they actually be capable of when they reach maturity?

When Performance meets Performative Art

The clincher was hearing a UK flag rank officer at an innovation event describing some of what is going on in the entrepreneurial elements of UK Defence as little more than ‘Innovation Theatre’.¹ A line that they credited to a Harvard Business Review article by US entrepreneur Steve Blank. I wasn’t seized by this view of the performative art of defence innovation because it shocked me, but because it resonated with what I had already sensed in several areas. This neat term for some of the less coherent ‘be seen to do something’ elements of defence innovation stuck in my head. The speaker was clearly seeking to be provocative, and so am I, but I firmly believe that there is a fire at the source of this smoke.

As ever in UK Defence, the baseline is good people working hard to do their best for the nation’s defence. But it doesn’t all stack back up. There is genuine gaslighting: photos and reports that allude to the kit being operated by service people when contractors are actually demonstrating it. Repeated claims of ‘game-changing’ equipment, which, even if the system performs, suggests little evidence that it will nudge the game, let alone change it. I deliberately use the term gas lighting rather than info ops because I don’t buy the case that it is the latter. The target audience for this sleight of hand is internal. Whether this is for organisational or individual gain isn’t always clear. Regardless, honesty with ourselves has to be fundamental, and we should recognise that we don’t always have a good corporate track record of that, even in conventional procurement. We can’t afford to play the entryism game that has historically beset some major projects across a plethora of new capabilities. The enormous level of resources needed to bring those capabilities to life across the Defence Lines of Development (DLODs) would create a black hole that would make the current situation look like more of a pothole—even taking into account a versus GDP uplift.

It shouldn’t be ‘all about the likes’

One of the real tells of ‘innovation theatre’ is when some of the prime output is a picture on Twitter or ModNet, rather than the results being slipped into a metaphorical red folder and pressed forward far from prying eyes and the quest for likes on X. Being blunt, our innovation must be a pure capability sport and not a performative sport seeking staff report dividends. Clearly, advancement is one of the sources of reward available to us (we don’t offer stock options!), but this must not be allowed to dilute the purity or honesty of the approach. I believe there is a systemic and somewhat normalised problem here, with the appearance of innovation as one of the prices of entry.

We should, of course, experiment, monitor demonstrations and, when appropriate, fail fast and iterate. But we must recognise that we are bankrolled by UK Plc and not Silicon Valley venture capitalists who are prepared to burn through dollars fast, knowing that their next Unicorn exit will more than pay for those projects that fail to deliver along the way. Likewise, the resources for even innovative approaches to development, evaluation and tac-dev are limited. We must recognise that every avenue we pursue at length threatens our ability to go fastest with the best candidates. The answer is hard-nosed prioritisation; pruning the branches of the innovation tree much earlier.

Do Something v. Do the Right Thing – a perennial problem, exacerbated by Ukraine

Ukraine feels like it has been a mixed blessing for Defence innovation so far. It has undoubtedly shaken awake an innovation structure that has flown value both to our allies and back into our own system. The downside lies in the direct translation of the ‘get them whatever we can, as quickly as we can’ approach that we appear to have picked up and be running with towards the Strategic Defence Review (SDR). We must be much more discerning. The time pressure is different, as is the broader resource picture. We must fully transition from a ‘do something’ to a ‘do the right thing’ mentality. We don’t have the people, the expertise or the money to run hard at everything. Ruthless prioritisation informed by rapid, targeted experimentation is where we need to be. Much ink has already been spilt on consideration of whether the lessons we are learning from Ukraine are the right ones. My aim is not to take a side in that debate but to propose the view that the innovation journey now needs a course correct to a model that is more predominantly focused on what UK Defence fundamentally needs.

Unstructured and innovation lacking clear reason: as bad as, if not worse than, no innovation!

A clear counter to my argument is that it is clear that there is lots of genuinely brilliant innovation going on and a growing but still very resource-limited environment that supports it. I would point to 744 Naval Air Squadron as an example in my own world. This Joint test and evaluation unit, within the wrapper of a Naval Squadron, provides an unrivalled level of experience and expertise in the uncrewed air world, especially for test and evaluation. Their challenge is that they are significantly over-matched by the demand to assist in rapidly developing novel uncrewed air capabilities across Defence. Aspirations to turn them into a drone centre of excellence are worthy but must be accompanied by clear-eyed cross-service prioritisation and coherence regarding where we should invest our limited resources. We will only get the best out of these nodes of excellence if the rest of Defence does better at tapering what we expect from them. I see the same challenge for their single-service equivalents. Just because we can do it doesn’t mean we should! What is the capability benefit? What is the niche we are seeking to fill? How does this nest with other capabilities, current and future? Which will have the most significant effect? Where does this fit in the effects chains? We appear to be out of coherence kilter on so many of these questions. There seems to be broad agreement that the traditional defence requirements management model is not agile enough. Still, the fundamental tenets of need, niche and coherence should not be launched out with the bathwater.

The relationship with the defence industry plays an interesting role in this broader conundrum. It has always been challenging, but it has changed. With so many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) now making direct offerings to our market, there has been an order-of-magnitude change in our points of contact. The mix of genuine candidate capability against fanciful good ideas needs more discerning management than ever. Again, from my world, initiatives such as the Defence Uncrewed systems Design Authority (DUxDA) will provide an improved mechanism to bring coherence to an element of this swirly environment. However, it is still finding its feet and is under-resourced both in terms of people and depth of experience. The case for hard scrutiny of the actual technology readiness and a clear-eyed understanding of the time, effort and totality of the resources required to progress capabilities remains crucial.

Alongside the uptick in our quest for innovation, we have seen another trend. The desire to eradicate ‘blockers’. Some of this has also had a performative edge to it. “If only it weren’t for the pesky bureaucrats, scrutineers, financiers and regulators, the army of robot dogs and hypersonic attack drones would be good to go by now!” It’s flippant, but you get my point. It is fair to say that speedbumps have been flattened, and processes have been and continue to be improved. In other areas, perceptions have been debunked and relationships reset. The route to continued improvement is less bombast and more incisive and honest initiatives, especially around more sophisticated risk management. If the desire is to take more risk, this must be appropriately owned and managed. Taking more risk may involve bending and breaking more kit and people; that’s how risk works, so we must have our eyes wide open to this. If the necessity exists, and the baseline risk has been reduced to ALARP, then the increased risk must be considered tolerable. Before anyone bounces on my choice of language, when people say “take more risk”, they are most often talking about Operating Risk to Life, not financial, programme, technological, reputational risk, etc. Taking more risk in those areas should be an integral part of an innovative approach.  In my opinion, the most significant true blocker that is often too quickly (or deliberately?!) ignored is resources – the cash, people, expertise, time, etc. to drive capability forward. The two ways to overcome this are to get more resources or apply brutal coherence and prioritisation. Option A is likely to get blocked.

Lethality, Lethality, Lethality….

The danger is that the situation gets worse, not better. Taking the Army as an example, the Chief of the General Staff has recently challenged his team to become three times more lethal in short order. A worthy goal that everyone is naturally behind. Although not all of this will come from pure innovation, the conversion rate for innovation into actual capability and front-line lethality will need to be far higher and faster than we are achieving today. The jeopardy comes if this ambition drives more activity competing for resources, especially expertise and only serves to compound the existing challenge. There are early indicators of this already. Prioritisation and coherence across organisations and services must become even more precious. Defence already highlights the need for challenge driven innovation, but all too often, we are seduced by shiny things and guilty of reverse engineering them back into the perceived problem set. Some areas of defence purport to do innovative things that other areas have already done. Repetition and duplication are not uncommon, and the answer of “different budgets” really shouldn’t be good enough. We must stop faffing with stuff that is simply interesting and put our collective shoulder to the wheel of the identification, elevation and pacy development of those effects that will be the actual game changers.

It is not beyond recovery… yet!

The Emperor is far from naked at the innovation theatre, but they may not be quite as well dressed as they assume. The good news is that we have the cognitive horsepower, the defence hive mind is phenomenal when given the right combination of constraints and freedoms; support to Ukraine has clearly demonstrated this. The broader structures to support this environment are also continuing to mature. Likewise, we should be buoyed by the rate of potential innovations available across industries, both traditional and non-traditional, but we must be incredibly discerning. The delivery of SDR and Defence Reform now offers opportunities for a sharp-clawed stocktake of our innovation, to expand on what we do well, eliminate what is not adding value and bring focus and brutal coherence to defence innovation. This includes hiving off the resource headroom to really deliver on the best of our innovation. Our decision-making must be as sharp as the tech is phenomenal. As British entrepreneur Matt Ridley says in How Innovation Works, “It’s not saying ‘no’ that kills innovation; it’s saying ‘yes’ slowly”.

I’m not suggesting the innovation system is broken, but I sense a degree of consensus that it isn’t optimised. Clarity of requirements and honesty of possibility are the most effective bleach to much of the residual BS in the innovation environment. The only remaining whiff of BS should be reserved for the genuine obfuscation of our foes for the level of brilliance that we have up our collective sleeve for when it is absolutely needed.

1. This was in a ‘Chatham House’ panel discussion at an innovation event, but I have since been given express permission from the individual to reproduce this line.