Streeting in Washington: UK wants defence contracts in two years, citing RAVEN missile built in four months

UK Defence Secretary Wes Streeting used a speech in Washington on 15 October to argue that Britain and the United States should pool defence innovation and production, and that NATO members should stop treating national, European and American industrial policies as rivals. The Ministry of Defence published the text of the address, delivered at the Center for Strategic and International Studies under the title “The Future of U.S.-UK Defence Cooperation”.

Procurement targets

Streeting said the old procurement model of “lengthy specs, tortuous legal compliance, and endless form-filling” is obsolete. The UK has set itself targets of cutting the time from concept to contract for new platforms from six years to two, adapting existing platforms from three years to one, and buying everything else in under three months. The government’s Project Safari, which opens military test ranges to smaller firms, is part of the same push, as covered in UK launches Project Safari with QinetiQ to open military test ranges to small firms.

As examples he cited two Ukraine-related programmes. For the RAVEN ground-launched missile system, industry was given a two-sentence operational requirement, and the system was designed, developed and delivered in four months. The total cost of the first eight systems, he said, was less than $25 million. British small firms also took one-way attack drone designs from paper to flight in three months, with systems reaching the Ukrainian front line within a year.

Lessons from Ukraine

Streeting said Ukraine has “changed the character of conflict forever”, citing a $650 drone that can destroy a $4 million tank and uncrewed boats costing a quarter of a million dollars that sink warships worth $65 million. He also said the UK now has access to combat data from Avengers Lab, a Ukrainian military AI platform that converts frontline data into algorithms for situational awareness and target identification, and that British universities, researchers and technology firms are using it to co-develop AI capabilities. He described the relationship as having gone from “training the Ukrainians to being trained by the Ukrainians”.

Industry and the NATO share of the burden

On industry, Streeting said the UK’s active foreign military sales portfolio with the United States exceeds $11 billion, and that British industry produces about 15 percent of each F-35 through more than 100 Tier-1 suppliers supporting over 20,000 jobs. He said AUKUS matches US investment in its submarine industrial base with British investment in the UK defence nuclear enterprise.

He urged European counterparts to avoid pitting “Buy British against Made in Europe against America First”, saying the answer should be “an ‘and also’ where all of us benefit”. He added that the UK is proudly backing Britain by buying British, including from US companies invested in the country.

Addressing frustration in Washington about European reliance on American military power, Streeting said “much of that frustration is justified” and that President Donald Trump has made the issue “impossible for Europe to ignore”. He said Britain is stepping up because its own security requires it, not because it was told to. As evidence he listed the UK as the only European ally to commit its nuclear deterrent in full to NATO, more than 1,000 British personnel in NATO command posts, command of Joint Forces Command Norfolk and of the maritime and special operations components of the Allied Reaction Force, and work with European allies on NATO’s next generation of long-range strike capabilities. He repeated the UK commitment to spend 3.5 percent of GDP on defence by 2035.

The speech follows the launch of the DSEI UK 2027 exhibition, where British defence leaders pressed the same themes of speed and readiness, covered in DSEI UK 2027 launched with a warning: allies have “until the end of 2030, at best” to be ready.