Why the £80m defence skills investment matters, but why it’s not enough on its own

What has been announced?

The UK government has committed £80 million to train the next generation of defence engineers, cyber specialists and drone technology experts. This is great, not just because of the funding itself, but because of what it tells us about how seriously the country is finally beginning to take the relationship between industrial capacity, talent and national security. Long overdue.

What is the money intended for?

Announced by the MOD, the headlines include £50 million to fund almost 2,500 new student places over five years in engineering and computer science, and £30 million for new teaching facilities and equipment over the next decade. A further £50 million from the wider defence skills package will establish five Defence Technical Excellence Colleges in Blackpool, Plymouth, Lincoln, Rotherham and Yeovil. The £80 million is the largest single element of a broader £182 million Defence Industrial Strategy skills package.

On paper, this is a serious attempt to rebuild the UK’s defence industrial base. Whether it is even a good start depends entirely on execution. The risk is not that the money will not be spent, but that it gets absorbed into existing course structures with a light defence rebrand, produces graduates who still cannot get security cleared quickly enough to be useful, and ends up serving institutional balance sheets more than national security. As accountants, we are trained to have a healthy dose of scepticism…!

The problem is not solely the number of graduates in defence

The pipeline is not empty and the talent exists. What is broken is the pathway from education into defence. This should be the fundamental goal of this scheme.

Too few STEM graduates end up working in the sector. Defence careers are often poorly understood by young people, perhaps because of stigma. The recruitment process for both the Armed Forces and industry can be painfully slow, and the salary offer at entry level, as well as earnings potential, does not compete with tech, finance or professional services. The latter is the biggest issue: we need to attract the best, brightest and most driven individuals into defence.

On recruitment speed alone, the numbers are damning. Defence Minister Louise Sandher-Jones confirmed in a Parliamentary answer that, for the twelve months ending 1 July 2025, the median time between application and untrained entry for UK Army Regular Other Ranks was 249 days. Eight months. For a generation used to instant feedback, this is not acceptable.

Meanwhile, engineering and manufacturing apprenticeships have fallen by approximately 40% since the introduction of the Apprenticeship Levy in 2017, according to Make UK. The funding mechanics are a large part of the problem. As Make UK Defence’s Director General told the House of Commons Defence Select Committee in March 2025: “It costs us £35,000 to train one apprentice, but the apprentice levy only allows us to recover £27,000. We lose money on every single apprentice.”

The next conflict won’t be the last conflict

The nature of warfare is changing faster than the talent pipeline. What we are seeing in Ukraine tells us what the next conflict will look like because it shows how fast operational requirements can evolve. What began as a conflict of trenches and attrition has become a battlespace defined by drone technology: first ISR, then one-way effectors, and now drone-on-drone engagements for aerial dominance and freedom of movement over a geographic area. Capabilities are now emerging in months. The best innovation often happens in a time of need, not an abundance of finance and resource. Funding does help though…

Carrying on with the drone theme, drones have become the disposable military asset of modern conflict. Your ability to win depends increasingly on your ability to out-manufacture and out-adapt your adversary in real time. The underbelly of this is having the right people, with the right skills, in the right place, at the right time, backed by the right materials and production processes.

The acknowledgement that providing a pathway for talent is the foundational building block into the UK’s defence industrial base is refreshing. However, it will only work as part of a wider ecosystem.

The defence ecosystem also has a role to play

Some of that ecosystem is already moving. NMITE in Hereford has partnered with the British Army to launch the UK’s first undergraduate degree in drone technologies, supported by £240,000 of Army funding. The first cohort starts in September 2026. This is great: small in scale, but fantastic to see.

The RAF has moved too. In April 2026, it became the first of the UK’s Armed Forces to launch a national virtual work experience programme, partnering with Springpod. More than 1.2 million young people have already gone through Springpod’s programmes. You cannot recruit people who have never considered you a realistic option.

The MOD supported over 24,000 apprenticeships last year. A new Defence Universities Alliance is being established to create structured collaboration between universities, the MOD and industry. The 24 institutions selected for the £80 million funding were chosen from 112 applicants, which tells you something about the appetite in the academic sector to engage.

But the intelligence community is also at risk

One area that does not get enough airtime in these conversations is the intelligence and security community. These are not organisations that advertise their problems publicly, which is understandable, but the pace of technological change is creating a quiet crisis behind closed doors. The people serving those communities today are increasingly unlikely to have the right skills for the roles of tomorrow, and the gap is widening faster than traditional recruitment and training cycles can close it. The private sector has a growing role to play here, but this requires budget spend, which is a topic for another blog. Reskilling and skills mapping have become critical elements of their people strategies.

Digital skills more broadly are not being adequately addressed. Julian David, CEO of techUK, told the Defence Select Committee: “Digital skills are increasingly going to be a huge part of any defence deployment or defence capability that we have. That is really not being addressed in the current MOD and broader British defence forces environment.” Quite damning…

Is this enough?

A step in the right direction is a fair assessment. The £80 million is a necessary investment. The talent pipeline needs building from young people exploring careers they have never previously considered, through to experienced professionals being reskilled for emerging domains.

However, funding alone does not close a skills gap. What closes a skills gap is a genuine shift in how defence is perceived as a career. It needs to be more accessible, more visible, better rewarded at entry level and faster to recruit into. It requires the Primes, the MOD, universities and government to pull in the same direction with aligned incentives, not just shared ambitions and positive rhetoric.

Written by Matt Croker, Fin Bristow and Ben Addley