UK Ministry of Defence appoints Anthony Reeves as first Director General Innovation, overseeing 4,800 experts and a £3.7 billion budget

The UK Ministry of Defence has appointed Anthony Reeves as its first Director General Innovation, a new senior post that will run the department’s innovation and research organisations and a multi-billion-pound technology budget, the ministry announced on 28 October.

Mr. Reeves, a former British Army infantry officer who joins from the consultancy Deloitte, will take up the role this autumn after an external competition. He becomes a three-star senior civil servant within National Armaments, one of the ministry’s main groupings, and a member of its Executive Committee.

What the post covers

The Director General will lead the newly designed National Armaments Innovation area, which the ministry says includes some 4,800 experts and scientists. It brings together the Defence Investment Unit, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), the Defence Uncrewed Systems Centre and UK Defence Innovation.

According to the ministry, he will oversee a ring-fenced £1.6 billion defence innovation budget over the next four years, and will support £2.1 billion of investment in core science and technology. Together that is the £3.7 billion science, technology and innovation budget cited in the announcement. The role is meant to speed up the adoption of new technologies, deepen cooperation with industry, academia and other government departments, and make innovation “a core military capability”, in the ministry’s words.

Who is Anthony Reeves

At Deloitte, Mr. Reeves led the firm’s UK and NATO digital defence work, and was National Armaments practice head and global AI leader for defence and security. Before joining Deloitte in 2020 he advised defence organisations on digital transformation at Microsoft, and led defence and national security programmes at PA Consulting and Detica.

His earlier career included delivering communications, networks and information capabilities for military operations, as well as operational deployments as an infantry officer in the British Army in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo and Sierra Leone. He sits on the board of the AI Institute UK.

What the ministry said

National Armaments Director Rupert Pearce said the appointment “marks a gear shift for UK Defence as we place innovation at the heart of the way we maintain war-fighting readiness”, and linked it to learning “the lessons of Ukraine to deter our adversaries”. Mr. Reeves said innovation in defence “must be about mindset before toolset”, and promised to bring new technologies into military service “at pace”.

The announcement did not give a start date beyond “this autumn”. For related UK-led work on uncrewed systems with partners, see our report UK to lead three AUKUS undersea sensor payloads for uncrewed submarines, due across the three navies from 2027. The details above come from the ministry’s own announcement (MOD appoints its first Director General Innovation).