3rd September 2026
Britain is trying to do something rather unusual with its Armed Forces.
After spending much of the past two decades reducing the number of soldiers, sailors and airmen and women, it is now trying to build a military capable of dealing with a much more dangerous world. But it is not simply planning to reverse all those cuts and return to the size of the Armed Forces of 10 or 20 years ago.
Instead, the Government is betting heavily on technology.
Drones, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, advanced sensors, electronic warfare, lasers and long-range precision weapons are all becoming central to Britain's plans for the future battlefield.
The idea is straightforward enough. If Britain cannot afford to maintain the manpower it once had, perhaps it can make every person in uniform considerably more effective by giving them access to technology that previous generations could hardly have imagined.
That sounds attractive.
But there is a much bigger question behind it.
Can technology really make up for decades of cuts in military manpower?
The battlefield has already changed
The war in Ukraine has demonstrated just how quickly modern warfare is changing.
The traditional image of tanks, artillery and infantry advancing across a battlefield has been supplemented by thousands of relatively cheap drones constantly watching, identifying and attacking targets. A soldier may be under observation almost from the moment they leave cover.
What makes this particularly significant is the economics.
A drone costing perhaps a few thousand pounds can potentially damage or destroy equipment worth millions. An expensive missile can destroy a cheap drone, but if an enemy launches hundreds or thousands of drones, using high-value missiles against every one of them quickly becomes an expensive proposition.
That is why Britain is now looking for different answers.
The newly announced Project PANOPTES competition is a good example. The Ministry of Defence is looking for an integrated system capable of detecting, tracking and defeating drone threats while reducing the need to fire expensive conventional ammunition at relatively cheap targets. The competition is backed initially by £5 million.
At first glance, £5 million is almost insignificant when compared with Britain's overall defence budget.
But the technology being sought could eventually be much more important than the initial investment suggests.
It is part of a fundamental change in the way Britain thinks about protecting its forces.
The drone is becoming part of the military formation
Britain is not simply buying drones to give soldiers better eyes over the battlefield.
It is looking at ways of making autonomous systems an integral part of military operations.
One of the most interesting examples is Project NYX, under which the Army is developing uncrewed aircraft that could operate alongside Apache attack helicopters. Instead of sending a helicopter into an area on its own, the concept is that it could be accompanied by autonomous aircraft capable of gathering information and carrying out missions while keeping the human crew further away from danger.
That changes the role of the person in the cockpit.
The pilot is no longer necessarily just flying one aircraft and making decisions from inside it. The pilot could increasingly become a commander of several machines, with artificial intelligence helping those machines navigate, identify objects and respond to changing circumstances.
That is a very different battlefield from the one Britain prepared for during much of the Cold War.
And it is not simply theoretical. The Ministry of Defence has already been putting contracts and development programmes behind the idea, with major companies and smaller technology firms involved in developing autonomous systems.
Artificial intelligence could be the biggest change of all
Drones are relatively easy to understand. Artificial intelligence is more difficult because its impact could eventually reach almost every part of military operations.
A modern military can collect an enormous amount of information from satellites, aircraft, drones, ships, radar and troops on the ground. The problem is no longer simply obtaining information. It is making sense of it quickly enough.
An AI system can potentially examine thousands of images and pieces of information far faster than a human intelligence analyst. It can help identify patterns, track objects and highlight potential threats.
That could give a military commander something that has always been desperately valuable in war.
Time.
If Britain can identify an enemy's movement several minutes before the enemy expects to be detected, those minutes could make the difference between survival and destruction.
But there is an obvious danger.
AI is only as good as the information it receives and the system that has been designed to interpret it. A battlefield is full of deception, misinformation, camouflage and unexpected events.
The idea that an algorithm can simply replace human judgement therefore needs to be treated with considerable caution.
Technology can help people make decisions.
Whether it can safely make all the decisions itself is another matter.
Britain is also developing weapons that don't need traditional ammunition
Perhaps the most striking example of where defence technology is heading is Britain's DragonFire laser programme.
The Royal Navy and the Ministry of Defence have been testing a high-powered laser capable of engaging drones and other aerial threats. Unlike a conventional missile, the laser does not require a physical projectile to be fired towards the target.
That has potentially enormous implications.
Missiles have to be manufactured, transported, stored and eventually replaced. A laser essentially uses electrical power as its ammunition.
If the technology can be made sufficiently reliable and powerful, it could offer a much cheaper way of dealing with some types of incoming threats.
And that is increasingly important in a world where an enemy might launch large numbers of relatively inexpensive drones.
Britain has already demonstrated DragonFire against high-speed drones at the Ministry of Defence's Hebrides Range.
So this is not simply something being discussed in a laboratory.
It is moving towards becoming part of the military capability Britain actually deploys.
But this is where the numbers of personnel become important
We recently looked at the decline in Britain's Armed Forces over the past 10 and 20 years.
That decline creates a problem that technology alone cannot necessarily solve.
Britain can buy a sophisticated drone, but someone still has to operate the system.
Someone has to maintain it.
Someone has to repair it.
Someone has to understand what it is telling them.
Someone has to protect the communications network that controls it.
And someone has to make decisions when the technology fails.
The same applies to a laser weapon.
It may not require a missile every time it fires, but it still requires engineers, technicians, operators, power systems and maintenance.
The more sophisticated military equipment becomes, the more dependent it can become on people with highly specialised skills.
That creates an interesting paradox.
Britain is trying to use technology to compensate for having fewer military personnel, while the technology itself creates a requirement for a different type of highly trained personnel.
A smaller Army could become a much more dangerous Army
That does not mean the Government's strategy is wrong.
Quite the opposite.
There is a powerful argument that Britain does not need to recreate the military of 2006.
Modern technology could make a smaller force considerably more effective.
Imagine a British soldier equipped with access to real-time drone imagery, satellite information, AI-assisted intelligence, autonomous reconnaissance systems and precision weapons.
That individual could potentially have a level of battlefield awareness and firepower that would have required an entire unit in previous generations.
This is why the Government's ambition to make the Army substantially more lethal through technology is so important.
The objective is not necessarily to have more soldiers.
It is to make the soldiers Britain has much more capable.
But there is a point at which technology cannot substitute for manpower.
A drone cannot occupy a town.
AI cannot repair a bridge.
A laser cannot deliver ammunition.
An autonomous vehicle cannot necessarily replace the judgement of an experienced commander.
And when casualties begin to occur, technology cannot produce replacement soldiers overnight.
The Ukraine lesson is therefore complicated
Ukraine has demonstrated the enormous importance of drones and technology.
But it has also demonstrated something else.
Wars consume enormous quantities of equipment and ammunition.
Drones are destroyed.
Artillery barrels wear out.
Vehicles are damaged.
Missiles are fired.
Electronic systems are jammed.
People are wounded and killed.
The side that can keep producing replacements has a huge advantage.
That is why Britain's decision to increase ammunition production is every bit as important as its investment in artificial intelligence.
A high-tech military still needs an industrial base capable of supplying it.
This could create opportunities well beyond the traditional defence industry
There is another side to this transformation that could be particularly interesting for Scotland and the Highlands.
For generations, defence procurement was dominated by a relatively small number of enormous companies. Building a warship or fighter aircraft was something only very large organisations could realistically undertake.
That is changing.
The new defence environment needs software developers, electronics specialists, robotics companies, artificial intelligence expertise, sensor manufacturers and businesses capable of producing relatively small but highly specialised components.
That creates a potential opening for smaller companies.
The UK Government has recognised this and is actively encouraging smaller technology businesses to become involved in defence innovation.
The £50 million Scotland Defence Growth Deal announced earlier this year is part of that wider attempt to expand Scotland's defence industrial capability.
Scotland already has a substantial defence industry, with more than £2 billion a year of Ministry of Defence spending and almost 12,000 jobs linked to defence activity.
But the interesting question is whether the new money will spread further into parts of Scotland that have traditionally had little involvement in defence manufacturing.
Could the Highlands get a share?
There are already some signs that the capabilities required by the new defence economy exist in the Highlands.
The official Dounreay supplier information, for example, lists Highland Drones among its Category 1 and Category 2 suppliers. There is also Remote Robotics at Littleferry near Golspie, operating in an engineering and technical field that overlaps with some of the technologies increasingly important to defence.
That does not mean either company should automatically be described as a defence contractor.
It does, however, demonstrate that the Highlands is not devoid of the technological expertise that the new defence economy requires.
And there is a potentially much bigger question here.
Could the Highlands become involved in testing, development, engineering and support for some of the new generation of military technologies?
The region has some obvious characteristics that could be useful. It has enormous areas of relatively remote land, extensive coastline and existing scientific and engineering expertise associated with Dounreay and other major projects.
The Hebrides Range is already being used for advanced weapons testing, including DragonFire.
The opportunity therefore exists.
The question is whether Highland businesses are sufficiently connected to the new defence procurement system to take advantage of it.
Technology cannot completely replace people
This is perhaps the most important warning.
It is tempting for politicians to look at a drone and say that one machine can replace a soldier.
Sometimes it can.
But warfare is not a collection of isolated tasks.
It is a system.
If a drone replaces one reconnaissance task, somebody still has to operate the wider network. If an autonomous vehicle transports ammunition, somebody still has to maintain it. If AI identifies an enemy position, somebody still has to decide whether to attack it.
And if Britain ever finds itself involved in a long conventional war, the demands will become much greater.
A sophisticated military needs depth.
It needs enough personnel to operate continuously.
It needs reserves.
It needs replacements.
It needs engineers and technicians.
It needs people who can keep equipment operating after it has been damaged.
Technology can multiply military capability.
But it cannot make the need for people disappear.
Britain is making a very large gamble
The Government is therefore making a fascinating gamble.
It is spending enormous sums to build a military that is smaller than the one Britain had 20 years ago but potentially far more technologically capable.
If the strategy works, Britain could possess a highly effective force capable of achieving considerably more with fewer people.
If it doesn't, Britain could discover that it has spent billions creating sophisticated equipment while still lacking the manpower and industrial capacity required for a prolonged conflict.
That is why the current defence transformation needs to be judged on more than the number of drones purchased or the amount of money spent.
The real question is whether all the pieces work together.
Can Britain recruit enough people with the necessary technical skills?
Can it produce enough ammunition?
Can it protect its communications?
Can it manufacture drones in sufficient numbers?
Can it replace losses quickly?
Can it maintain the equipment?
And can it continue doing all of that if the country is fighting a major war rather than conducting a limited overseas operation?
Those are much harder questions than whether Britain can develop an impressive new weapon.
From fewer soldiers to greater firepower
Britain has spent roughly two decades shrinking its Armed Forces.
It is now trying to compensate by making them much more technologically powerful.
That may ultimately prove to be the right strategy.
But there is a danger in believing that technology makes manpower irrelevant.
The wars of the future may indeed be fought partly by machines.
But behind those machines will still be human beings.
And the country that can combine advanced technology with sufficient trained personnel, industrial capacity and supplies may ultimately have a much greater advantage than the country that simply owns the most sophisticated weapons.
Britain has begun that transformation.
The question is whether it has begun soon enough.
And perhaps the most important question of all is one that will not be answered by the latest drone demonstration or AI experiment.
When the technology meets the reality of a major war, will Britain have enough people and enough industrial capacity behind it to keep the machines fighting?
For industry developers
UKDI seeks counter-Uncrewed Aerial System capabilities for development to deployment