Building a stronger, more resilient industry

The UK Defence Industry Growth & Resilience Zone explores sovereign capability, workforce development and aligning with the UK's long-term industrial strategy — what growth and resilience mean in practice. It's framed by defence spend rising from £54bn to almost £80bn a year by 2029 (2.7% of GDP), forecast to support nearly 60,000 extra direct and indirect UK jobs by the end of the decade.

Sessions ask whether capital is flowing fast enough into UK defence, and dig into sovereign capability — what the UK should never outsource, and the trade-off between consolidating and diversifying the supply base. There's a strong focus on scaling SMEs into strategic suppliers against the £2.5bn SME-spend target (a 50% increase by 2028), plus regional clusters backed by £250m of Defence Growth Deals across five regions.

On skills and workforce, expect an honest look at the talent gap, the £182m Technical Excellence Colleges package and the Defence Universities Alliance, and how the National Wealth Fund and British Business Bank are unlocking growth capital for defence SMEs.