Winning Our Defence Skills Battle

“All political power comes out of the barrel of a gun”, Chinese Communist Leader Mao Zedong famously declared. Based on recent events, it’s a statement that could have come out of the mouth of President Trump, leader of the most powerful military in the world. With the USA now prioritising its own global defence interests above all else, the UK has to bite the bullet and shore up its military capabilities, which means amongst other things addressing the chronic skills shortages in our defence industries and armed forces. The government is grasping the nettle, with the announcement late last year of a major policy package, including the creation of a new network of Defence Technical Excellence Colleges.

I never imagined I’d be writing this. My mother was a lifetime Quaker attender and a passionate pacifist. I was brought up, like many of my generation, to have faith in the international institutions built after the Second World War with the aim of preventing another descent into global conflict. But all this was based on an assumption that the USA was not only powerful militarily, but wedded to the promotion of democracy, legality, and international cooperation. That assumption – perhaps always based more on hope than reality - is now in ruins, and if the Trump administration follows through on its threats to annex Greenland, the illusion will have been fully dispelled.

It’s a feature of lifelong learning that we have to be prepared to unlearn things we previously took for granted, and learn to adapt to new realities. As a nation, we need to re-learn how to defend our values, interests, and way of life, as America drags us back to the era of gunboat diplomacy. Given the huge rifts in the USA’s internal politics, there is no guarantee that more Trump-like figures won’t be elected in the future, and we can’t afford to gamble on the return of less hawkish Presidents. In any case, we will still have to contend with a heavily armed Russia and China for the foreseeable future. So, we need to look in a clear-eyed way at what needs to be done.

Apart from the combat skills at the core of armed forces training, defence skills fall into three broad categories: craft skills, such as electrical engineering and welding; specialist STEM skills including aerospace and nuclear engineering; and skills in new and emerging technologies, such as digital and cyber. In many ways, the shortfall in these areas is a reflection of the general problem of an education system unable to generate enough STEM skills to meet the needs of modern industry.

Many have argued that the problem is compounded by the image of the defence industries, seen as rigid, hierarchical, and secretive. Gen Z, we are told, is looking for careers in more flexible, relaxed, socially responsible occupations where employees aren’t treated just as cogs in a machine. In addition, the prospect of contributing to the development of destructive and lethal technologies is a turn-off for many young people who embrace non-aggressive, humane values.

I’m not sure how true this is. Some evidence points this way, mainly in the form of results of surveys, but these are almost all designed to explore the aspirations of those who are seeking professional careers in an almost completely peaceful country, not to explore attitudes to self-defence, deterrence, or war against an aggressor. Many young people in towns and cities routinely carry weapons in self-defence. Colleges up and down the country train students aspiring to uniformed services, as do many universities. The armed services are regularly in the top five for taking on apprentices, with over 30,000 enrolled in 2024/25, 75% of them 16-24. I suspect there’s a sizeable pool of young people who would consider a defence industry career if it was communicated to them in the right way.

Bids are open until near the end of February to become one of the five Defence Technical Excellence FE Colleges. The range of skills needed to be delivered and the requirement to have existing partnerships with the armed forces or with defence industry companies, will mean only a handful of colleges are in a position to make a success of it, but they are all sure to be top class colleges, with a track-record of responsiveness and achievement. The hope is that offering opportunities in the normal learning environment of a General FE College will attract many more young people and begin to make the public face of the UK’s defence industries softer and more approachable.

The Defence Technical Excellence Colleges are just one strand in a set of measures, including doubling the number of armed forces apprentices, extra targeted funding for universities, the launch of a Defence Universities Alliance to boost research, and a careers education campaign targeted at schools.

The extra resources are very welcome, but success will depend on how well the initiatives are implemented on the ground. With this in mind our next report, on the Derby Nuclear Skills Academy, to be published at the end of January, couldn’t be more timely. The report explores in depth the success factors behind this ground-breaking initiative between Derby University and Rolls-Royce Nuclear Submarines manufacturing division, built around apprenticeship provision on a large scale.

They say attack is the best form of defence. That sounds too much like the Trump doctrine to me. I think defence is the best form of defence, and defence skills are its backbone.