The MoD Wants British. But Not Told Us How British.

The Army is preparing to spend around £900m on 3,000 new vehicles to replace its ageing Land Rover fleet. Almost none of the companies bidding actually build their proposed vehicle in Britain. One has offered a ‘best of British’ option built on a Toyota. Another is basing its bid on a vehicle assembled in France, though the manufacturer says the finished product will be 70 per cent British by content. A third is adapting a Mercedes-Benz. Only one bidder is designing and manufacturing the whole thing on home soil.
This is happening just as the Ministry of Defence has pledged to ‘buy British by default’, weighting procurement decisions towards companies that can demonstrate a genuine, long-term British presence.

The difficulty is twofold: what does ‘British’ mean in a defence contract and how should it be scored in a procurement?

Enter Britwashing

Like greenwashing, where companies claim products are more environmentally friendly than they actually are, we now have ‘Britwashing’ where military equipment is being claimed as British, when that isn’t always strictly the case.

One defence industry source recently put it bluntly in an article in the Daily Telegraph: ‘Some firms think all they need to do is slap a British flag on their stuff, or add ‘UK’ to the end of their name.’

If Britishness is important then the government, spending our hard-earned taxpayers’ money, should know exactly how ‘British’ new equipment is. And make their expectations clear to vendors. I’ll come back to that.

Let’s consider for a moment whether buying 100% British is practical. Spoiler alert: Probably not.

Full British self-sufficiency isn’t coming back any time soon

The UK’s ability to build defence equipment entirely from domestic components, with domestic labour, on domestic production lines has been eroded for decades. Not through any single failure, but through years of budget pressure that saw more expensive, home-grown capability traded for cheaper off-the-shelf alternatives from outside the UK.

The Challenger 3 tank programme is a case in point. It was hailed as the first ‘fully British’ tank built in over 20 years. In reality, it’s produced by a German-controlled company, uses a German-made main gun and carries Israeli-made active protection. BAE had the barrel-forging capability that would have kept that part of the job in Britain but the government at the time decided it wasn’t worth keeping onshore. Rebuilding it now, through German firm Rheinmetall’s investment in its Shropshire factory, is a genuine win for UK jobs and skills. It’s also proof that capability, can be brought back (albeit with outside help).

But building up the capability to be more self-sufficient is costly. It can easily double production costs. It also takes time to establish and, while it does, there is a significant risk to quality as new skills, processes and equipment become fully effective. This too costs money.

Best of breed should not be dismissed

Whilst France insists on sovereign capability across its military, sometimes the best solution isn’t the most British (or French) one, but a collaboration with the best specialists and component suppliers from allied countries is. German manufacturer Renk is the world’s leading supplier of tank gearboxes because it’s simply better at making them than anyone else. Leonardo’s laser targeting and guidance systems, made at its Edinburgh site, are a global benchmark.

So maybe the right question isn’t how British can this equipment be? It’s how British do we want it to be?

Since Britishness is largely measurable, why isn’t it scored?

Under the UK’s ‘most advantageous tender’ procurement model, the relative weight given to technical merit versus cost is published in every tender document. Bidders know exactly how much each element counts before they submit. It is now common to see aspects of UK industrial strategy in defence procurements, generally focused on the number of UK jobs created or workers up-skilled. But beyond an assured supply chain it is all a bit vague when it comes to manufacturing. The weighting of the genuinely UK manufactured element of any procurement is rarely (that we have seen) stated within the technical ‘envelope’.

We do not see, for example, that the stretch aspiration is for there to be 70% demonstrably UK-produced components, but that 50% would be acceptable (scoring fewer marks), and anything less than 39% would score a zero and potentially exclude the bidder from the competition.

If the MOD wants to ‘buy British by default’, we think they should make this clear in the requirements and reflect it in the scoring criteria: ‘Buy British-enough by design’ if you will. This also allows for vendors to reflect the value for money and ‘best of breed’ in the non-British components so that, overall, we equip our warfighters with equipment that works right from the start and has longevity, accuracy and other qualities of excellence. But the MOD will be making a properly informed decision based on real evidence.

Does Britishness even matter?

• If we want to bring more manufacturing back to the UK, then yes
• If we want to be a bit prouder of being British and this is a way of achieving it – then also yes.

It requires genuine investment in skills and manufacturing capacity and can’t be achieved overnight. But Rheinmetall’s investment in its Telford gun-barrel facility and UK companies like Cambridge Aerospace and Isembard show it can be done.

But if we do want to be Britbuilt rather than Britwashed, then we need to be clear about exactly what this means in procurements with clear definitions and weightings without losing quality solutions.

About the Author

Richard Haldenby is CEO of Salentis International and a defence sector specialist with over 40 years of military experience. He brings considerable experience of implementing good practice in capture and bidding in companies of all sizes. Richard joined Salentis as a writer in 2017 and now leads the Salentis team across three continents.

Article published: September 2026