Search on Ifri.org

About Ifri

Frequent searches

Suggestions

Defence Reform in the United Kingdom: A Twenty-First Century Paradox

Studies
|
Date de publication
|
Référence taxonomie collections
Focus Stratégique
Image de couverture de la publication
Defence Reform in the United Kingdom: A Twenty-First Century Paradox
Accroche

The context of budgetary constraint offered a strong incentive for the 2010 Coalition Government to improve its management of defence equipment.

Corps analyses

Before that, the previous Labour governments already focused on smart acquisition so that the procurement process could reach a trade-off between military performance, the R&D costs and the purchase value. Thus, several smart acquisition reforms aimed at importing private sector skills and behaviours into the defence public domain. By building its logic around public-private partnership (PPP), smart acquisition can be apprehended as an interlocking of three factors: organisation, the high level of process and body of knowledge, and the people who promoted and enacted its processes, behaviours and objectives. Due to organisational confusion, ineffective project management and unclear objectives, successive UK governments have failed to manage operational and financial risks, cost overruns and diseconomies.

 

Decoration

Available in:

ISBN / ISSN

978-2-36567-149-1

Share

Download the full analysis

This page contains only a summary of our work. If you would like to have access to all the information from our research on the subject, you can download the full version in PDF format.

Defence Reform in the United Kingdom: A Twenty-First Century Paradox

Decoration
Author(s)
Image principale
 A soldier watching a sunset on an armored infantry fighting vehicle
Security Studies Center
Accroche centre

Heir to a tradition dating back to the founding of Ifri, the Security Studies Center provides public and private decision-makers as well as the general public with the keys to understanding power relations and contemporary modes of conflict as well as those to come. Through its positioning at the juncture of politics and operations, the credibility of its civil-military team and the wide distribution of its publications in French and English, the Center for Security Studies constitutes in the French landscape of think tanks a unique center of research and influence on the national and international defense debate.

Image principale

The Future of Air Superiority. Command of the Air in High Intensity Warfare

Date de publication
24 January 2025
Accroche

Air superiority, understood as control of the air, is a cornerstone of the Western art of warfare. It is a decisive condition, albeit not sufficient by itself, to achieve military victory, as it enables the concentration of air power toward the achievement of wider strategic objectives and protects other components from unbearable attrition levels. It is best achieved through the offensive use of air power in a joint effort to neutralize the enemy’s air power.

Image principale

How should Britain and France cooperate to realise the Northwood Declaration?

Date de publication
18 July 2025
Accroche

During his state visit to the United Kingdom (UK) last week, Emmanuel Macron, President of France, signed a joint declaration with Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, on nuclear cooperation between Britain and France. The Northwood Declaration highlights that while both countries’ nuclear arsenals remain sovereign, cooperation on nuclear deterrence can ‘contribute significantly’ to the security of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Euro-Atlantic region.

Image principale

The Evolving Role of Nuclear Rhetoric in Iran’s Strategic Calculus

Date de publication
03 July 2025
Accroche

How has the Iranian strategic discourse about nuclear weapons and deterrence evolved? 

Image principale

Design, Destroy, Dominate. The Mass Drone Warfare as a Potential Military Revolution

Date de publication
18 June 2025
Accroche

The widespread use of drones observed in Ukraine—both in terms of the scale of the fleets deployed and their omnipresence in the operations of both belligerents—appears to meet the conditions of a genuine military revolution.

Vincent TOURRET

How can this study be cited?

Image de couverture de la publication
Defence Reform in the United Kingdom: A Twenty-First Century Paradox
Defence Reform in the United Kingdom: A Twenty-First Century Paradox, from Ifri by
Copy
Image de couverture de la publication
Defence Reform in the United Kingdom: A Twenty-First Century Paradox

Defence Reform in the United Kingdom: A Twenty-First Century Paradox