Ministry Of Defence
Welcome, everybody, thank you so much for coming to Strategic Commands Now. Next. Future. Conference.
I am incredibly proud to be part of Strategic Command and were at a really exciting time for the Command. Its a dynamic time in the context of world events, and that creates challenges, but it also creates opportunity.
There are times where we are at risk of taking the sum of all our fears and looking too inward and being too worried. I think theres a moment for all of us to recognise that theres enormous opportunity. We have an opportunity to focus on challenges that are happening in the world, and the situation is more dynamic than at any time in my military career. Of course, the most self-evident part is whats happening in Ukraine, but theres a dynamic nature to the world as well as to politics, and to global challenge. This really sets up an on-off series of opportunities for us to think differently, to act differently, to organise differently, and to be able to achieve different results.
Theres something in the context of the Integrated Review Refresh and the titles of the two documents from 2021, and the one most recently published a couple of weeks ago. Global Britain in a Competitive Age in 2021, to Responding to a More Contested and Volatile World in 2023. The headline statements of those documents are radically different. That creates a series of challenges for us. In many ways, I feel as though the future is doing two things simultaneously. Weve got challenges which are accelerating towards us and saying how are you going to deal with this challenge? while at the same time it feels that the solutions are accelerating away into the distance. Thats not because those solutions dont exist and its not because there arent opportunities to grapple and solve those problems. I think our current ability as an organisation just doesnt enable us to really grab hold of those solutions. We often end up thinking were dealing with the future, but what were actually doing is innovating at the edge.
Now innovating at the edge is really good. You get dynamism, you get invention, and you get imagination. But what were not doing is bringing that into our core business. We almost end up fooling ourselves into thinking were really changing, when in fact, whats happening is were changing those bits around the edge of our organisation. What we need to do is drive that change into the very heart of how we run UK Defence. That is a purpose and one of the key functions of Strategic Command.
Of course, Russias invasion of Ukraine has changed so much and from 24 February last year, the world changed with war in Europe for the first time in decades. That posed a series of challenges to us. Although we were able to do some prediction around what was going to happen, of course, weve been surprised by many of the things that have happened since. What Im extremely proud about, in the context of Ukraine, is the role that the UK has been able to play. The UK role has been enabled by not just the military, but also by companies, and by journalists, being able to bring the story of Ukraine to a global audience.
At its heart, though, I think this is based upon an existing partnership which we made with Ukraine in 2014. Well talk a lot about technology, well talk a lot about digitisation, well talk about a software defined future. Well talk about lots of things, but at its heart this is a people business, and its about relationships and partnerships. Its the investment that many of us made with our partners in Ukraine, over a long period of time to establish those relationships which have enabled us to be much more effective with the Ukrainians.
I, and the other leaders in Strategic Command, are so incredibly privileged and incredibly proud of the people that we work with. We have a model that weve adopted in Strategic Command of inverting our pyramid. Normally, military organisations draw themselves as a pyramid with a little cherry on top, usually thats the person that calls themselves a Commander. Id like to not use the term, Commander. I would also like to invert our pyramid so actually, its the other way up. Our function, as the leadership team is to enable, support and empower our amazing people to actually do the amazing things that they do.
There are 25,000 people in Strategic Command, from our regular service personnel from all services, to Reserves, civil servants, contractors, and commercial partners, all of whom are acting together to enable these incredible outcomes.
Theres a slight risk, as we look at Ukraine lessons, that we look for the things which are either obvious, or apparent, or the things that were looking for ourselves. We just need to guard against the biases of availability, or confirmation bias. We also need to recognise that the next conflict that well be in is unlikely to be the same as the conflict we currently see in Ukraine. So, lets learn lessons which enable us to develop in order to move forward.
Now we have people that do that inside Strategic Command, who learn lessons for all of Defence, but we need to do that with all of you. There are lessons being learned by industry, there are lessons being learned by academia, there are lessons being learned by the media, and we need to somehow be able to work collaboratively to think about how we can change. Part of the function of Strategic Command is to help Defence to change. We have three things that we want to do, our core purposes: we want to support campaigning; we want to drive integration, and we want to lead the cyber and electromagnetic domain.
The verbs there are important. Were going to support campaigning; were not going to own it and Im not going to command it. Im going to support it. Charlie Stickland is the head of the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ). He delivers, and he drives the UKs campaigning. Charlie, in our organisation chart, is meant to work for me but actually in the organisation chart as I draw it, I work for Charlie in helping him lead operations.
So how can we support Charlie deliver campaigning? By bringing all of Defences capability together to deliver that campaigning output. That campaigning, of course, means endurance, commitment, time, persistence and avoiding moving around and doing lots of different priorities. Of course, priority originally was a singular word from prioritas, and it was only in the 1940s did the word priorities actually come into vernacular. Until then, people only had one priority.
Now we cant move for the number of priorities weve got. Theres something around being a little bit more disciplined. I view our core purposes rather simplistically in three timeframes. So, theres a Now, a Next and a Future. It sounds really simple, and it is. The Now to me is this year. What are we doing this year? What do we need to do? What are we in the flight of delivering?
Next is years two to five and saying: Okay, how can we be better largely with the resources weve already got? We ought not to always be thinking the answer is more money in the next budget round, or asking for new big programmes, but is in fact how can we be better. And, how can we be better is not just how we can be better but; how can we do that in partnership; how can we do that in partnership across government; how can we do that across Defence; how can we do that with allies and partners; how can we do that with the commercial sector; how can we do that with academia and how can we partner differently in that next space? I think thats where the exciting opportunity really is.
Future to me is five years to ten years. Defence has a habit of wanting to look so many years into the future in order to understand whats happening. The only thing that is true is that when you get there, youre surprised because the thing you thought was going to come never ever happens and I say that as a lifelong intelligence officer. Theres something about recognising; how are we going to set ourselves up for the future and how are we aiming for a destination? Ive been in Defence for so long that I can remember the various objective forces weve had; of force 1995; the force 2000 and 2025. These forces never appear, and we never get that. Theyre only ever headmarks. So, lets adopt an approach whereby were building in adaptability and agility, rather than necessarily always imagining that were driving to a destination.
As part of that, I think within our three purposes, across those three timeframes, we then need to make sure that were living up to our values. I really want us, as a Command, to be innovative. Thats not about innovation at the edge, as I said earlier, this is about driving innovation into the core of what we do and living that innovation and we need to therefore be different. We cant imagine that we can stay in our existing structure, our existing processes, our existing ways of working and be more innovative, because thats a fallacy. We need to be willing to recognise that adaption is actually part of our function, and that there are things which are under our control.
Now, theres a whole load of things outside of our control, which are going to force us to change, and we need to be willing to think really differently about how we do our business. We need to think about our second value of being progressive. Lets be a really progressive element of Defence. I want us to be able to do things differently, to push boundaries, and to not be the same as the rest of Defence but actually to be a thing thats going to help Defence on that change journey, and really push that. I think if we can live that through our values, then it works.
And the third is about inclusivity and making sure that were t