Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry Luke Pollard MP keynote speech at the Global Air and Space Chiefs' Conference

Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry Luke Pollard MP delivered a keynote speech at the second day of the Global Air and Space Chiefs' Conference in London.

"Colleagues, good to see you all again.

It is a year ago since we came together and I reflected in my remarks at that point about the ever changing and evolving story of air power and importantly, the challenges ahead.

Now, this is a story of constant imagination, invention and adaptation, in which we've had to evolve time and time again to stay ahead of those who threaten our security. And three weeks ago, in large part to the wonderful work that Harv (Sir Harv Smyth, Chief of the Air Staff) and his team did, they managed to publish the Defence Investment Plan. That's a £298 billion down payment over the next four years to deliver our Strategic Defence Review. It has £31 billion earmarked for air and space. It is one era-defining blueprint for a hybrid digitally integrated and AI-enabled air force.

A blueprint that protects the homeland by bringing together 2 commands with our new integrated air, space and missile defence operations centre. A blueprint that delivers 3 gold standard combat air platforms in F-35, Typhoon and Tempest. And that creates high value jobs across all four of our home nations. Now, it also injects £5 billion into UK drone innovation and capabilities. And that's up from £4 billion that we previously announced. It includes autonomous fighter jets, networked with our crewed platforms to improve their effectiveness and survivability. That will make the Royal Air Force Europe's first sixth generation Air Force. six steps that secure a brighter future for our Royal Air Force and soon to be renamed Air and Space Command, as well as a more secure future for the UK, our allies and our partners.

And on a more personal note, for those that have seen me do media interviews on the Defence Investment Plan for the last year, it means I never have to say we're working flat out to deliver it ever again, which will be a joy for everyone that has to listen to me and me for having to say it.

So, when I spoke to you a year ago, I said that realising the benefits of more mass, more lethality in the air was a team sport. And it certainly is today. And it continues to be that shared endeavour. In cockpits and hangars, on drawing boards and production lines, from RAF bases to Ramstein and beyond. And over the last 12 months, thanks to allies, partners, and partners in industry, those teams have stepped up and delivered time and time again, strengthening defence, saving lives and reimagining what is possible. And we've seen that teamwork in the North Atlantic, where our P-8s have increasingly worked more closely with our Norwegian, US, Canadian and German counterparts to counter the Russian threats. On NATO's eastern flank, our Typhoons are flying over Romania and have flown the RAF's first ever air defence sorties over Poland, defending against Russian incursions alongside our allies. And over the last 12 months, the RAF has done much to strengthen the NATO alliance and increase European deterrence.

Now, with HMS Prince of Wales becoming the most advanced fifth generation carrier strike capability, the Alliance has never had something like that under its flag before. That's something that the UK is very proud of. And earlier this month, its F-35s achieved a NATO first, conducting the Alliance's first ever air policing operations launched from a European carrier. And as you may have seen, they've had to deal with some rather angry Russian Bears during that period as well. Now, I make light of it here because among friends and in this sector, we all know the dangers that we are facing and increasingly risky and dangerous times that we all live in. We all understand what's at stake and the skills and bravery that is required to meet that moment. And as a Minister, especially one three years in with a reshuffle only a couple of days away, it allows me to say thank you to all those who have served both in the RAF and in our friendly forces alongside us for their professionalism and their hard work.

And importantly, it's not just those in the air that matter, it's all those on the ground that make the operations in the air possible. Now, moving beyond NATO, because the UK remains NATO-first, but not NATO only, our RAF F-35s conducted over 1,000 joint air exercise sorties as part of our 2025 Carrier Straight Group deployment to the Indo-Pacific. And I thank all of our allies, especially those that are here today, for their assistance and those that hosted us. That was a team that stretched from Portugal to Australia via Qatar, Oman and then the UAE, across India, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines to Korea and Japan with support along the way from Canada, our friends in the US and various additional European allies as well. It was international by design and it was internationally delivered. Thank you.

Some of those teams were reunited earlier this year in the Middle East. as Iran targeted our neighbours, its neighbours in response to the US and Israeli attacks. The RAF flew over 3,000 hours of defensive missions, intercepting over 100 drones and missiles. And again, we thank them, the air crews and the ground crews that supported them for the skills shown and the lives that were saved. I think I want to give a special mention, which is hard to do in the media on our interviews, but for a crowd like this, you'll appreciate it, to our Rivet Joint intelligence gathering teams, particularly those who faced down Russian fire over the Black Sea last September. And in total, across the last 12 months, the RAF has teamed up with 45 other nations for exercises and operations. That's a truly formidable theme and goes to reinforce that the Royal Air Force that we are building and growing is international by design with strong partnerships, and that will continue.

But as Greg (Air Marshall Greg Bagwell) mentioned in the introduction, it's also about how we build our industrial alliances to make them stronger, because there's another team of partners that are vital in there. That's our partners in industry. Now, it's both a cliché and a truism to say that our armed forces are only as strong as the industry that stands behind them. We see that in Ukraine. We know that to be true. But it is also something that many nations are playing catch up on too late, realising that we have to have a closer bond with our industrial friends, both large and small, to deliver the increased capabilities and the innovation that we need, and both domestically and internationally, our industrial cooperation has been making it significantly stronger over the past year.

So, thank you to the team at CGI and many of the supporting SMEs behind our Borealis Space Awareness System that went operational this year, six months ahead of schedule. I wish as a Minister I could say that more frequently, but it was very good that we did there, including our team at Space Flux who have given us our first images from Noctis One, the UK's new military space telescope. Together they've given the UK the sovereign eyes we need to monitor, protect and defend our critical space infrastructure. And we will all see how space has become a domain of growing competition that is central to war fighting.

And it is essential that we have sovereign capabilities. For those that heard my speech a few times ago, I spoke about the importance of all-domain warfare. And at the time that was a phrase that the UK didn't use that much. It is now embedded into each one of our services, each one of our strategies, that we can't do any operation in any domain without the support of all domains.

Now that is also a truism, but if we are to take that at its heart, that means we need a different approach to how we deliver, deploy and interconnect those services as well. that's why we've established a new space systems group under the National Armaments Director to deliver additional capabilities in the space domain that helps enable activities across all domains, including in a UK first, offensive space capabilities that will be operated by six new specialist space squadrons trained at the Defence Space Academy alongside allies and international partners.

Sovereign capability was also the starting point for Tempest, our 6th generation self-combat jet that we are developing alongside our Italian and Japanese partners, as well as the Global Combat Air Programme that is gaining attention further afield. Earlier this month we were delighted to press go on the design and test phase with a £4.6 billion contract awarded to Reading-based Edgewing Consortium that lead this work. That's made-up of BAE Systems, Leonardo and the various partners involved in the Japan Aircraft Industrial Enhancement Company.

BAE and their fast ecosystem of British suppliers have also benefited greatly this year from the legacy capability partnerships with Türkiye Typhoon deal and the Ukraine GRIPEN deal and various F-35 deals set to benefit thousands of UK workers who manufacture between 15% and 37% of those platforms by value. As export campaigns, the UK is also pivoting from campaigning not just on platforms but on components and services, able to reach more markets, support more allies in their work and grow our economy and theirs at the same time.

Now deals and investment that will also galvanise our defence and airspace and industrial base are key to delivering economic growth here. Supported by our new Defence Export Strategy, that will come later this year, that will focus on the whole range of options that British industry are good at, that your air forces also benefit from as well. Demonstrating how collaborative air power spreads capabilities among allies and fuels economic growth in all our communities.

Now, if you haven't read the Defence Investment Plan, it's worth having a read. I kind of made a pitch for people having a read of the Strategic Defence Review before, I'm sure quite a lot of you have,   but the DIP sets out a bigger, bolder vision and a transformation that we haven't seen in peacetime in the UK for a very, very long time. Space and aerospace industries received a huge boost from our defence investment plan and that will fuel those sectors over the coming decades.

So over the next four years alone, £8.6 billion has been allocated to fund the design and testing phase of GCAP. A further £1.1 billion to upgrade and sustain our Typhoon combat force well into the 2040s, and more than £4.5 billion invested in our transporter fleet of A400 Air Voyager and C-17s, and more than £2 billion to lay the ground for our first F-35As that will enable the RAF to join NATO's tactical nuclear mission, providing a long overdue additional rung on our escalation ladder.

The DIP also included £360 million for the full recapitalisation of the jet training system that will ultimately deliver new jets for our Red Arrows. And most eye-catching of all, building on Storm Shroud system that I spoke about last year, we also pressed go on our next phase of autonomous combat air power with our Collaborative Combat Aircraft programme. Now, that will develop autonomous jets here in the UK, providing new levels of lethality and survivability for our crew jets. acting as both guardian angel and an attack dog for our Typhoons, F-35 and future Tempest jets.

Now, maximising our air power in the eye of the storm of future combat, that will be swarming with drones, 6th generation fighter jets and ever-evolving EW capabilities. And today, I'm delighted to reveal that our new autonomous CCA programme will be named Storm Fighter. Storm Fighter will make the RAFs Europe's first 6th generation Air Force. This is an investment alongside the £5 billion which we're investing in drones and other advanced uncrewed systems that will nourish our defence innovation ecosystem.

Meaning more programmes like Project Vanquish, which is a trialing jet-powered drone to serve alongside our F-35Bs currently, putting our partner companies at the leading edge of autonomous combat air power and laying the ground for exports, growth, partnership with friendly nations, more defence jobs and a more resilient defence industrial base. And I think to do that, we also need to learn the right lessons from Ukraine.

Now, there are those that said, we should have gone even further on drones, or even all in replacing crewed aircraft completely. I don't believe that's the right lesson that we should take from Putin's illegal war in Ukraine. Because evidently the UK is not Ukraine. We do not share a land border with Russia. We are a member of NATO and we have security, global interests and responsibilities that require the type of air power that only combat jets and deep strike can deliver. which is why we've been investing in deep strike innovation alongside NATO allies, and steadily building the foundations for the growth we want to see in our aerospace sector, including with our £182 million skills package.

That includes 5 new Defence Technical Excellence Colleges, with two located in the heartlands of our aerospace sector in Yeovil and Blackpool, providing the foundations to deliver on our mission to make the UK the best place in the world to grow a defence business. And defence hasn't invested in skills in the way that it has needed to, but we need to now, because with more of a rising defence budget being spent with companies based in Britain, we need to supply more people into their goals, more young people finding their first career, more graduates, and more mid-career reskilling.

So to riff off an old marketing slogan, the future's bright, the future's Air Force blue, because last year I challenge us all to evolve again, to stay ahead of those who threaten our security. And this year we've delivered the blueprint and investment to accelerate that transformation here in the UK. The RAF was a big winner on the Defence Investment Plan, strengthened by our £27.8 billion investment over the next four years to build Europe's first 6th generation Air Force. Built around 6th generation sovereign Tempest jets, flying alongside autonomous storm fighter combat aircraft and frontier drone technologies developed with allies made in the UK, fuelling growth in our defence and aerospace sectors and galvanising deterrence, alongside our upgraded Typhoon and expanded F-35 fleets, showing the continued importance of air power to deter and defeat as we boost security for the UK, for Europe and our partners around the globe. So whether you're an ally, a partner, a partner in industry, we stand ready to continue to work with you as a team. And I'd welcome your difficult questions now. Thanks very much."