The Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) is the MoD-led framework defining how the UK builds, sustains and exports from its defence industrial base. The current iteration — DIS 2025 'Making Defence an Engine for Growth' — replaced the 2021 Defence and Security Industrial Strategy (DSIS) and sits as the defence sector plan of the UK's Modern Industrial Strategy, supported by the Strategic Defence Review 2025.
DIS 2025 governs over £85bn of equipment and support spending, underpins more than 200,000 direct and indirect jobs, regional Defence Growth Deals worth £250m, an £182m Defence Industry Skills Package, and a redesigned approach to procurement, SME access, exports and onshore resilience. Industry investment decisions, regional industrial policy, and Ukraine-driven rapid innovation cycles all depend on its delivery.
DIS 2025 was published on 8 September 2025 and is in operational delivery: Defence Growth Deals have launched in Scotland (March 2026) and Northern Ireland (April 2026); the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) replacing the Equipment Plan is awaited but materially delayed past its expected June 2026 horizon, drawing Defence Committee scrutiny.
The current regime-defining document. Sets DIS as the defence sector plan of the UK's Modern Industrial Strategy and frames defence spending as a driver of growth, jobs and onshore capability.
Root-and-branch Defence review that frames DIS, the Defence Investment Plan and reforms to DE&S/UKDI. Establishes the strategic context (threat, ambition, fiscal trajectory) within which DIS operates.
Amends Export Control Order 2008 schedules — adds and refines controls on military goods, dual-use items, semiconductors, quantum computers, additive manufacturing, and lifts UK arms embargoes on Armenia and Azerbaijan. The live statutory expression of the export-controls limb of DIS.
Companion document mapping regional and national defence industrial capacity. Provides the basis for Defence Growth Deals and regional industrial-policy alignment.
Cross-government shipbuilding strategy with £4bn investment commitment and pipeline of 150+ naval and civil vessels over 30 years. The naval-industrial limb of DIS.
Sectoral strategy establishing long-term collaboration between MoD and land-systems industry, co-investment in capability delivery and innovation.
Strategy on increasing additive manufacturing in Defence; a building block of the productivity and resilience limb of DIS.
Outlines how Defence plans to build supply-chain resilience — directly relevant to DIS critical-supply-chain commitments.
Classified strategy fulfilling an SDR 2025 commitment — links defence exports and international partnerships to industrial strategy.
MoD's SME engagement framework — predecessor of the SME Action Plan refresh promised under DIS 2025.
DE&S's own strategy detailing how the delivery arm equips the Armed Forces — direct implementation arm of DIS commitments.
Multilateral treaty reducing export-licence friction between the four signatories — key export-promotion deliverable of DIS.
Establishes UKDI consolidating DASA, DIU and DE&S Future Capability Innovation under a single operating model — a structural reform delivering DIS innovation ambitions.
Restructures MoD ALBs as part of Defence Reform and the Productive and Agile State Programme — strengthens ministerial oversight of delivery bodies.
Government's response to Defence Committee scrutiny of the IR/DSIS package — primary parliamentary scrutiny record on the predecessor regime.
NAO finding that the Equipment Plan was unaffordable with the largest deficit since 2012 — the audit baseline against which DIS/DIP affordability will be measured.
Committee scrutiny of the shipbuilding pipeline in Scotland — relevant to DIS regional/Growth Deal architecture.
Underlying Defence Committee report on the DSIS 2021 regime.
Library background on the SDSR framework that historically underpinned UK defence-industrial planning.
Government's signalling document setting up the DIS 2025 consultation, defining scope, focus and the new shift away from 'global competition by default'.
The Conservative-era predecessor regime — Lords statement repeating the Commons announcement of 23 March 2021. Established many concepts continued in DIS 2025: shift from 'global by default', social value in DSPCR procurement, industry as strategic capability, SME prioritisation.
Directly delivers a DIS 2025 commitment to explore measures to support UK-based businesses through offset policy.
Predecessor consultation establishing the policy-refresh cycle that ran through DSIS 2021 into DIS 2025.
Making Defence an Engine for Growth
Why linked: Defining ministerial commitment of DIS 2025 — links defence spending to industrial-policy growth targets.
The MOD committed £1.5 billion of additional defence investment for energetics and munitions including the 'always on munitions' pipeline
Why linked: Material spending commitment under DIS/SDR to onshore munitions production.
The Defence Industrial Strategy committed £250 million to fund all five Defence Growth Deals across the UK, and announced an £182 million Defence Industry Skills Package
Why linked: Headline regional and skills commitments under DIS 2025, being delivered region-by-region (£50m Scotland March 2026, £50m Northern Ireland April 2026).
The Ministry of Defence has set an ambitious target to increase direct and indirect spending by 50% compared to FY 23/24 baseline. This increase in total spend would equate to £2.5 billion total spend increase with Small and Medium Sized Enterprises
Why linked: Headline SME-engagement target under DIS 2025 — the successor framing to the DSIS 2021 25% SME target.
It signals a shift away from global competition by default towards a more flexible, nuanced approach
Why linked: Foundational DSIS 2021 commitment that DIS 2025 continues — explicitly broke with the 2012 'national security through technology' presumption of global competition.
we are investing more than £6.6 billion in R&D over the next four years … reconfirmed this Government's commitment to spend more than £85 billion over the next four years on equipment and support for our Armed Forces
Why linked: DSIS 2021 spending envelope establishing the baseline that DIS 2025 builds on.
The Ministry of Defence’s Equipment Plan for the next decade is unaffordable and it is facing the largest budget deficit since the Plan was first published in 2012, according to a new report by the National Audit Office. Report type: …
Why linked: Defence Committee Second Report on the Integrated Review, Defence in a Competitive Age and DSIS (July 2022) — the underlying committee scrutiny report on the predecessor regime.
Defence Committee Second Report on the Integrated Review, Defence in a Competitive Age and DSIS (July 2022) — the underlying committee scrutiny report on the predecessor regime.
Why linked: Commons Library briefing on the SDSR framework that historically underpinned UK defence-industrial planning — scrutiny baseline for the regime lineage.
Type: Standard Note (SN05592) That Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) was announced shortly after the new Coalition Government took office in May 2010. As the SDSR is ongoing, it is difficult to conclude with any certainty what its final …
The Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) is the Ministry of Defence's framework for building, sustaining and exporting from the UK defence industrial base. Its current iteration — DIS 2025, 'Making Defence an Engine for Growth' 1 — was published on 8 September 2025 as the defence sector plan of the Modern Industrial Strategy, sitting within the Strategic Defence Review 2025 2. It replaced the 2021 Defence and Security Industrial Strategy (DSIS) statement and the December 2024 Statement of Intent 3. The regime now turns on delivery: regional Defence Growth Deals (£250m total, £182m skills package 4); a 50% SME-spend uplift on the FY23/24 baseline 5; £1.5bn additional munitions and energetics investment 6; consolidated innovation through UK Defence Innovation 7; and a forthcoming Defence Investment Plan replacing the historic Equipment Plan. The Defence Investment Plan's slipping publication date is the regime's live affordability question, drawing a Defence Committee inquiry.
DIS 2025 is in operational delivery, but with a structural gap: the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) that should give the strategy its budget envelope has not been published, and PQs on its timetable from across the political spectrum went unanswered before Prorogation 12. Two of the five planned regional Defence Growth Deals have launched — Scotland's £50m deal on 12 March 2026 3 and Northern Ireland's £50m deal on 22 April 2026 4 — alongside an £182m Defence Industry Skills Package 5. Structural reform continues in parallel: UK Defence Innovation (UKDI) was established on 1 July 2025 consolidating DASA, the Defence Innovation Unit, and DE&S Future Capability Innovation under a single operating model 6; MoD Arm's Length Bodies were reformed via the April 2026 WMS HCWS1538 7. The Defence Diplomacy Strategy (March 2026) 8 and the UK's accession to the multilateral Agreement on Defence Export Controls with France, Germany and Spain (December 2025) 9 operationalise the export-promotion limb. On the regulatory side, the Export Control (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2025 updated the Export Control Order 2008 schedules — adding controls on quantum computers, advanced semiconductors and additive manufacturing, and lifting UK arms embargoes on Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The April 2026 cluster is dense and revealing. The £50m Northern Ireland Defence Growth Deal launched on 22 April 2026 1 alongside the Scotland deal six weeks earlier 2, operationalising the regional limb of DIS 2025. The same day as the NI announcement, the WMS HCWS1538 announced sweeping MoD Arm's Length Bodies reforms under the Productive and Agile State Programme 34. Within a week, PQs tabled by multiple members on the Defence Investment Plan, Northern Ireland industrial capacity, the National Shipbuilding Strategy update and Ukraine-driven rapid innovation cycles 56789 went unanswered before Prorogation — exposing the gap between strategy and delivery. The Defence Committee inquiry into DIP affordability is the primary parliamentary scrutiny vector for that gap. Earlier in the cycle, the Defence Diplomacy Strategy (March 2026) 1011 fulfilled an SDR 2025 commitment, the Factories of the Future WMS (November 2025) 12 committed £1.5bn for energetics and munitions, and the December 2025 Defence Export Controls Agreement 1314 reduced licensing friction with France, Germany and Spain.
The single most important upcoming milestone is the publication of the Defence Investment Plan. Without it, the affordability of every DIS commitment — the £85bn equipment-and-support envelope inherited from DSIS framing, the £250m Growth Deals, the £1.5bn munitions investment, the 50% SME-spend uplift — cannot be verified. The Defence Committee's live inquiry is the principal scrutiny vector and its government response will be the next inflection point. The refreshed MoD SME Action Plan, promised since DSIS 2021 and re-promised under DIS 2025, is still in development as of April 2026 1; its publication will clarify whether the 50% uplift is direct, indirect or aggregated 2. Three further regional Defence Growth Deals are expected after Scotland and Northern Ireland, with implications for industrial-policy alignment in Wales, North West England and elsewhere. The DIS Offset Written Consultation, which closed on 23 December 2025 3, requires a government response that will shape industrial-collaboration terms with foreign primes. Finally, watch the update to the National Shipbuilding Strategy, on which the April 2026 PQ 129666 4 sought a timetable and received none; given the Type 26, Type 31 and prospective Type 32 / Type 83 programmes are central to the naval-industrial limb of DIS, the absence of an updated Strategy creates an industry-planning gap. The NAO Equipment Plan 2023-33 affordability finding 5 remains the independent baseline.
Three risks dominate. First, fiscal-credibility risk: the NAO's most recent independent finding 1 was that the Equipment Plan was unaffordable with the largest deficit since 2012; DIS 2025 commitments stack on top of that baseline and the DIP is overdue. Second, delivery-machinery turbulence: simultaneous standing-up of UKDI 2, reform of MoD Arm's Length Bodies 3 and DE&S evolution 4 create transition risk during the same window that Growth Deals are launching. Third, SME-target opacity: the 50% uplift target 5 is aggregated direct-plus-indirect and its baseline year (FY23/24) is recent, meaning headline progress is harder to dispute but also less informative. Inferred from corpus gap: there is no published subsidy-control assessment for the regional Defence Growth Deals, which are selective public funding to undertakings; cross-cutting subsidy-control law (Subsidy Control Act 2022) is materially engaged but the corpus is silent on whether assessments have been done. Inferred from corpus gap: the 2025 government response to the Defence Committee's DIP-affordability inquiry has not yet been published, and the Defence Committee's substantive scrutiny output is not yet in the corpus.
The Defence Industrial Strategy is a regime built around a strategy document rather than a single statutory hook. The architecture has four layers, and a practitioner needs to keep them distinct.
First, the strategic-framework layer: DIS 2025 sits as the defence sector plan of the UK's Modern Industrial Strategy, framed within the Strategic Defence Review 2025 12. This layer is policy, not law — it commits the government to spending envelopes, regional Defence Growth Deals (£250m total, £182m skills package 3), an SME-spend uplift of 50% versus FY23/24 4, and a Defence Investment Plan replacing the historic Equipment Plan. It binds Ministers and the MoD but not third parties directly.
Second, the procurement-statutory layer: the Defence and Security Public Contracts Regulations 2011 (DSPCR) provide the legal channel through which DIS commitments on social value, SME access, and innovation are operationalised [pk=531079]. DSIS 2021 made social value mandatory under DSPCR from 1 June 2021 — DIS 2025 builds on this. Single-source contracts continue to be governed by the Single Source Contract Regulations.
Third, the export-control statutory layer: the Export Control Act 2002 and the Export Control Order 2008 — as most recently amended by SI 2025/1197 [candpk=44139] — provide the live regulatory regime governing defence-goods exports, dual-use items and trade controls. The export-promotion limb of DIS depends on this regime being workable for industry; the December 2025 Agreement on Defence Export Controls with France, Germany and Spain 5 sits on top of this regime to reduce friction for multilateral exports.
Fourth, the delivery-architecture layer: Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) executes procurement 6; UK Defence Innovation (UKDI), created July 2025, consolidates innovation funding 7; the National Shipbuilding Office runs the shipbuilding pipeline 8; sectoral strategies (Land Industrial, Defence Advanced Manufacturing, Defence Supply Chain, Defence Aviation Net Zero) operationalise the regime in specific domains 9101112. The April 2026 MoD Arm's Length Bodies reform 13 restructures this layer further.
What the regime cannot do: it cannot, by itself, bind another government's procurement decisions; it cannot override subsidy-control law on regional Growth Deals; and it cannot operate independently of HM Treasury Spending Review allocations — which is why the absence of the Defence Investment Plan is the live affordability question that the Defence Committee is investigating [candpk=56811].
Concept introduced in DSIS 2021 and continued in DIS 2025: 'industry as a strategic capability in its own right' — meaning the defence industrial base is treated as a national security asset, not merely a supplier market.
The pre-2021 procurement presumption that the MoD would be 'just as happy buying abroad as building in Britain' — now replaced by a 'more flexible, nuanced approach'.
Regional packages of funding co-designed between MoD and Devolved Administrations / regional bodies to grow defence industrial capacity. £250m total under DIS 2025, with five deals planned.
Industries identified by DIS as essential to UK operational independence — including nuclear, complex weapons, cryptography, armoured vehicles, shipbuilding and (under DIS 2025) munitions.
Procurement model emerging from UK defence support to Ukraine — short-cycle iteration of equipment based on battlefield feedback rather than traditional decade-long acquisition.
Defence Investment Plan publication — repeatedly slipped; PQs on the timetable went unanswered before Prorogation. Industry investment decisions and Defence Committee affordability inquiry both depend on this.
Government response to the DIS Offset Written Consultation (closed 23 December 2025).
Publication of the refreshed MoD SME Action Plan — PQ 127437 (April 2026) indicates plans are in development with no fixed publication date.
Defence Committee report on the Affordability of the Defence Investment Plan inquiry — central parliamentary scrutiny output.
Remaining three of the five Defence Growth Deals (after Scotland and Northern Ireland) — typically expected in Wales, North West England and one further region.
Update to the National Shipbuilding Strategy — PQ 129666 sought a timetable in April 2026; no answer before Prorogation.
Owns DIS 2025 as 'the defence sector plan of the UK's Modern Industrial Strategy'; positions defence spending as an engine for growth, jobs and onshore resilience, with structured Defence Growth Deals as the delivery mechanism.Sep 2025Oct 2025Apr 2026
Tension with National Audit Office
As Defence Secretary, has personally signed the Defence Reform WMSs (April and July 2025), Factories of the Future update (Nov 2025), and Defence Diplomacy Strategy (March 2026) — consistent line that DIS plus the SDR is the deepest reform of UK Defence in 50 years.Apr 2025Jul 2025Nov 2025Mar 2026
As Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, launched DIS 2025 on 8 September 2025 framing it as the delivery of a manifesto commitment, with skills as the central driver and SMEs as the lifeblood — the Government's primary spokesperson on operational delivery of DIS.Apr 2026
Lords MoD minister with the broadest WMS portfolio on this thread (twelve statements); has presented the Defence Export Controls Agreement, MoD ALB Reforms, Factories of the Future and the Defence Diplomacy Strategy to the Lords — the line minister for cross-cutting DIS operationalisation in the Upper House.Apr 2026Dec 2025Mar 2026Nov 2025
Has historically scrutinised the integrated IR/DSIS package and is currently running a substantive inquiry into the Affordability of the Defence Investment Plan — the most material parliamentary scrutiny vector on whether DIS 2025 commitments are fundable.Nov 2022
Independent audit position: the Equipment Plan 2023-33 was unaffordable with the largest budget deficit since the Plan began in 2012 — the baseline finding against which the Defence Investment Plan and DIS 2025 will be assessed.Dec 2023
Tension with Ministry of Defence
Pressed for consistent shipbuilding work for Harland and Wolff and other Northern Ireland yards — the regional-industrial-capacity scrutiny line which DIS 2025 has now answered in part via the £50m NI Defence Growth Deal.Apr 2026
Framed the operational-need-to-industry connection as broken by 'cautious procurement and monopolistic primes' — a structural critique calling for a 'speed-dating agency' between technology providers and operational requirements which DIS 2025/UKDI partially addresses.Jul 2025