Defence supply is highly tuned to the industrial age. While this has serviced the needs of large-scale production and long-term capacity to produce materials and equipment, there are signs that this structure of defence production is beginning to crumble under the strain of technological progress, accelerated adaptation on the modern battlefield and exigent demand for scale. This working paper investigates how digital technologies and new market dynamics are bypassing traditional defence intermediaries, examining the shift from research and development lead by legacy defence contractors to smaller, agile firms and non-traditional players leveraging emerging technologies, and how tangled national defence value chains are being challenged micro-production. The paper argues that the defence industry is at a moment of sea change in the digital revolution, and yet the defence procurement system is still designed around the assumptions of a defence supply ecosystem that is long past.
