A Call to Arms

... metaphorically and literally.

This is a call to arms, both metaphorically and literally.

Democracy, the rule of law, the ability to freely exercise political rights, sovereignty, a rules-based international order, and the opportunity to live in peace and with security are precious and hard-won assets. They are not to be taken for granted. There are those, both state and non-state actors, who disdain them and who seek to deprive us of them, either for reasons that are ideological or rooted in greed, grievance, and hatred. They must not be permitted to do so.

Defence is our means of protection. At some point we may be required to fight, and at all times we seek to deter. Our friends and allies also require support and protection. For this purpose, we require the sharpest tools and the capacity to use force. This necessarily includes defence technologies and advanced weaponry.

I believe it is a fundamental responsibility of the science and technology community, and of those of us involved in research and education, to contribute to defence. I understand that there are colleagues who have moral reservations about defence, and in particular about the development of sophisticated military capabilities. I respect these reservations, but I do not share them, I believe they rest on a misunderstanding of the world ‘as it is’. Perhaps you might look to my background and upbringing to understand why I think that might be the case.

Despite the fact that most universities undertake some form of defence research, it is rarely highlighted. The voice advocating for defence and security research is muted, and there is insufficient advocacy from within the research and technology communities (I except here recent work by the Royal Academy of Engineering). It is, however, vital that UK universities grow and sustain their defence capability. It is essential that they maintain deep engagement with our armed forces and with leading-edge defence companies, contributing both to UK prosperity and to the maintenance of sovereign technical capability. We must prepare our students for this work.

This is more important now than ever. The increasingly hazardous global environment in which the UK must position itself to ‘deter, defend, and adapt’ has been clearly set out in the two key speeches delivered in December 2025. These were given by the Chief of the Defence Staff (Sir Richard Knighton) at the annual Royal United Services Institute lecture, and by the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (Blaise Metreweli) in her first public address.

Taken together, they present an account of a UK threat environment defined by persistent confrontation short of war, and renewed state-based aggression. The central organising threat is Russia, whose behaviour is characterised not only by conventional military power and the erosion of European security, but also by sustained hybrid activity against the UK and its allies. This includes cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure, sabotage, espionage, disinformation, coercive leverage, and the probing of NATO’s resolve across multiple domains.

This sits within a wider landscape of instability. Conflict and fragility across the Middle East and parts of Africa generate risks of terrorism, state collapse, migration pressures, and strategic shocks that reverberate beyond their regions of origin, directly affecting UK society. Conflict is no longer bounded by clear distinctions between peace and war, or between military and civilian spheres. Threats increasingly operate across digital, informational, economic, and cognitive domains, exploiting the openness of democratic societies and existing societal divisions. The UK therefore faces not a single discrete danger, but an interlocking web of risks that demand sustained deterrence and national resilience, underpinned by industrial and technological strength.

Ukraine is at the centre of the current security crisis and represents the clearest expression of a wider challenge to the post-Cold War order. Russia’s invasion demonstrates a willingness to use large-scale military force to redraw borders and to sustain conflict over many years, hardening its armed forces and increasing the risks of wider confrontation. The trajectory and eventual outcome of the conflict will shape European stability for a generation. For this reason, continued UK support for Ukraine is not only an act of solidarity with a sovereign state under attack, but a strategic necessity for the protection of UK security and that of our allies.

Accelerating technological change, and in particular rapid advances in artificial intelligence, autonomy, cyber capabilities, and data exploitation, are compressing decision times, lowering barriers to entry for hostile actors, and amplifying the impact of both state and non-state adversaries. We are seeing rapid development in advanced sensing and surveillance, autonomous and robotic platforms, and space and undersea technologies. These are underpinned by advances in materials science, energy and propulsion systems, quantum technologies, and edge and high-performance computing. It is also essential to consider progress in the behavioural sciences and in the study of human performance.

Each of these areas presents significant research challenges to which universities are well placed to contribute. Defence research is better understood not as a catalogue of technologies, but as a response to how conflict now unfolds.

Uncertainty is the dominant condition. Operations are conducted in environments in which data is incomplete, degraded, deliberately manipulated, or absent. The challenge is therefore one of robustness: how systems reason, adapt, and continue to support decision-making when their view of the world is partial and contested. Closely coupled to this is autonomy. The utility of autonomous systems depends on trust. The problem is not automation itself, but the design of systems whose behaviour remains predictable and governable.

These issues become acute at the edge. Defence systems can no longer assume persistent connectivity, abundant power, or secure reach-back to centralised infrastructure. The challenge is to enable sensing, computation, and decision-making to occur when systems are deployed forward, operating under constraint and often in isolation. At the same time, military capability increasingly emerges from integration rather than from individual platforms. Systems are developed by different organisations, yet must operate together as coherent, adaptive wholes across domains and with allies. In the presence of persistent cyber threat and physical exposure, systems must be secure by design, rather than reliant on brittle perimeter defences and controls.

These challenges are compounded by a fundamental mismatch of timescales. Defence platforms endure for decades, whilst software, threats, and tactics evolve far more rapidly. The task is to reconcile this asymmetry and to enable continuous adaptation within systems that must nevertheless remain safe and reliable.

Energy and supply form a further, often under-appreciated, constraint. Power determines range, persistence, and autonomy, while logistics remains a primary vulnerability. The research challenge is to design systems that are energy-aware by construction, that reduce dependency on fragile supply chains, and that treat power not as a background assumption but as a primary design parameter.

The defining challenge is ultimately cognitive rather than computational. Defence systems generate vast volumes of data, yet humans remain the locus of responsibility and judgement. The problem is how to transform data into insight and action without overwhelming those who must act on it. Information advantage collapses when it exceeds human capacity to absorb, interpret, and decide.

Underpinning all of this is the question of assurance. As defence systems become more complex and adaptive, demonstrating that they behave safely, lawfully, and as intended across the full range of operational contexts becomes increasingly difficult. Defence research must therefore contend directly with questions of legitimacy and strategic stability. Technological advantage pursued without regard to ethical, legal, and escalation dynamics is ultimately self-defeating. Ethics and governance cannot be bolted on at the end, but must be embedded within technical design choices from the outset. Defence research thus sits uncomfortably, but necessarily, at the intersection of science, engineering, law, and strategy.

Universities cannot stand at a polite distance from defence and security. Defence research is not an awkward exception to academic purpose, but one of its most serious expressions. Universities should invest, partner, and lead in defence research with the same seriousness we bring to other national priorities.