Tomorrow, the United Kingdom will host the NATO Industrial Advisory Group (NIAG) Plenary for the first time this century. This is a landmark moment for UK defence and industry.
President Zelensky warned NATO that ‘Ukraine’s today is Europe’s tomorrow’. Therefore, as NATO’s industrial voice and conscience, NIAG has a clear responsibility: to ensure the industrial lessons of Ukraine are understood and acted upon.
Four years of war have exposed a fundamental reality. The greatest risks to military plans do not always lie on the battlefield; they often lie behind it: in production lines, supply chains, industrial capacity and the speed at which innovation can be translated into operational advantage.
What once unfolded over years must now be delivered in months, weeks or even days. Munitions consumption, equipment attrition and technological adaptation have occurred at a scale and pace few Western defence systems were designed to sustain. The assumptions that shaped defence planning in the post-Cold War era are no longer valid.
The lesson is clear: there is no military readiness without industrial readiness, and no national resilience without industrial resilience. If we are to maintain a credible deterrent posture, governments, armed forces, industry and academia must work together to build a defence enterprise that is both ready and resilient. As NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg observed in 2023, ‘Without industry there is no deterrence, no defence and no security’. Industry has a critical role to play in demonstrating that NATO is not only militarily credible but also industrially durable.
The UK NIAG is determined to play a role in driving this transformation, representing industry – large and small, traditional and non-traditional. the UK, and by extension NATO, possesses one of the world’s most capable defence industrial ecosystems, spanning major prime contractors, mid-tier suppliers, innovative SMEs, dual-use technology firms and world-leading research institutions. UK industry is therefore a full-spectrum partner in deterrence and possess a breadth of capability that is itself a strategic advantage, despite the current unwelcome turmoil and uncertainty surrounding the Government’s Defence Investment Plan.
But no nation can generate the necessary scale alone, and no company can deliver resilience in isolation. NATO’s strength has always rested on collective effort. The same principle now applies to industrial capability. The future of deterrence depends upon trusted partnerships that connect governments, armed forces and industries across the Alliance.
That is why NIAG has such an important role to play. Acting as NATO’s industrial experts, it helps bridge the gap between political ambition and industrial delivery. It provides a mechanism through which industry can inform capability requirements, identify barriers to delivery and help align Alliance demand with the capacity to produce at scale.
The Portsmouth Plenary arrives at a pivotal moment. Under the theme ‘Ready and Resilient Together’, the Plenary brings together government ministers and officials, military leaders and senior industrialists not simply to discuss challenges, but to help accelerate solutions. Prior to the Plenary sessions, the UK Industry Day is an opportunity to demonstrate how innovation can be fielded faster, how partnerships within industry and with the military is strengthened, and how interoperable capability can be delivered more effectively across all five operational domains.
The Portsmouth Plenary serves as an anchor for the 2026 NATO Summit in Ankara, where Allies will be expected to demonstrate tangible progress in delivering better innovation and increased production, strengthening industrial cooperation and translating defence investment into operational capability. This is the moment to show we are moving beyond rhetoric into action and bridging the ‘say-do’ gap.
To achieve this, we need a renewed NATO-industry partnership, accelerated implementation of the Defence Production Action Plan, improved EU-NATO cooperation, reduced bureaucracy and increased interoperability, streamlined acquisition processes and a more coherent approach to innovation adoption across the Alliance.
Above all we need a ‘clear, concrete and credible plan’ to deliver the 5% spend target no later than 2035 and a better understanding of capability priorities.
The challenge is urgent: we need ‘more forces, more resources and a much stronger industrial base’. NATO possesses the talent, technology, industrial strength to succeed. In our dark and dangerous world, however, readiness is not declared – it is delivered. Resilience is not assumed – it is built. And deterrence is not achieved alone – it is achieved together.
