Introduction

In the 1998 Strategic Defence Review White Paper, the UK Government made clear its commitment to a strong and healthy UK defence industry, and a commitment to forces equipped with a decisive technological edge in critical capability areas. Towers of Excellence represent an innovative approach to defence technology development. They are built upon a new level of co-operation and interaction between the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the UK’s leading equipment supplier base. They also draw upon the particular strengths of UK academia.

Backdrop

Advanced technology will play a key role in deciding the outcome of future conflicts, a fact recognised by our enemies and allies alike. Early access to advanced technology is essential for the UK Armed Forces to retain a decisive edge over potential opponents. The need to maintain that advantage is reflected in the MOD’s overarching science and technology (S+T) objective:

To ensure the continuing availability of sound technical advice and advanced and affordable technology to support mission-successful defence capabilities.

Experience has shown that for many emerging technologies a high payoff for Defence is best achieved by collaboration within the broader UK science and technology community. Such collaboration means better equipment for the MOD, more competitive products for industry and more opportunity for academia to exploit its ideas.

“Partnering and focus”

In taking forward this policy we must take account of the fact that the defence research budget in the United States is ten or more times that of the UK and about two and a half times as great as that of the whole of the European Union. Figures including both research and development show a broadly similar picture. These ratios imply that we may need to be selective about the technologies we develop. A well-structured policy of collaboration is thus essential to secure best value for expenditure to enable us to focus resources on commonly identified technology development areas. It will also improve risk reduction and pull-through in the MOD’s equipment programme, ensuring that the world class technologies developed within the United Kingdom become embedded in the development and production of future hardware. This policy of Research Partnerships with Industry is being fostered by two new, complementary, Ministry of Defence initiatives - Towers of Excellence (TOEs) and Defence Technology Centres (DTCs).

The Towers of Excellence model is an approach to being selective in a rational way and making the necessary choices in partnership with industry. They are co-operative groupings, led by the Ministry of Defence, which bring together key players in the UK defence industry sector and leading UK academic establishments. They have several key characteristics:

• Towers are generally created at the level of major sub-systems technology.

• The location of Towers must be selected in partnership with defence equipment suppliers, since the ultimate objective is to give them the capacity to supply world-class equipment.

Six priority areas have already been identified:

• guided weapons (for more info see the Guided Weapons Tower of Excellence website www.sbac.co.uk/tower.asp)
• radar
• electro-optic
• sensors
• underwater sensors
• synthetic environments
• COTS/HMI
• Clear mechanisms for technology transfer are needed. These mechanisms should make technology available across the equipment supplier base, to support competition in equipment procurement. A clear agreement is needed for each Tower, between Government, industry and other participants about how the partnership is to work.

Towers of Excellence are a key focus mechanism for directing resources into priority areas of technology research identified by the Ministry of Defence and UK defence industry. They offer new levels of technology pull-through to final product and technology transfer between MOD’s research programme and industry. This will strengthen UK research and industrial capability via technology transfer to defence equipment supply base and co-operation between organisations.

The result will be world class technology embedded in UK military equipment from the outset of its development.

For more information on Towers of Excellence, e-mail the MOD on towersofexcellence@gtnet.gov.uk or check out the website at: http://www.mod.uk/toe .

• Defence Technology Centres were launched in February 2002 to encourage the development of new enabling-level technologies. See http://www.mod.uk/dtc for further details.
• “Commercial off the shelf software“ for use in Human Machine Interface.

Last Updated: 14 Jan 05