Page 10 - Five Forces of Americanisation Richard Hooke 04072025 final post SDR1

The UK Defence Industry in the 21 Century
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The Five Forces of Americanisation

As well as driving defence companies overseas, the overall assumption that “industry” would operate
efficiently and effectively, based on sound, logical commercial principles and practice has been found
by UK Parliamentary reviews over the last two years to be both misguided and damaging. The evidence
demonstrates that businesses operating within “industry” take many different forms in today’s global
markets. As the 2025 SDR has commented, “Private-sector interest in the defence sector is growing”
but, in addition to the appeal of a global defence market with the certainty of significant and
consistent future growth, this has been stimulated by the emergence of a business culture attuned to
short timescales and a commoditised, transactional attitude to ownership. Informed by a more
muscular use of debt and creating opportunities for realising significant one-off financial gains, this
approach appears aligned with the transactional nature of an emerging new US foreign policy.
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Coercive Dealmaking , supported, as necessary, with military power, is being used to reinforce the
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rapid shift in US emphasis from Idealism to a new, broader definition of Realism .
Learning from case studies and using analytical techniques commonly available to bankers, investors
and other financiers, it can be demonstrated that government can, indeed must, effectively manage
or guide the sustainment and development of its DIB. Such techniques provide the means to act with
foresight and take preventative action, to maintain effective oversight and identify both positive and
negative trends in its industrial capabilities, to encourage sound corporate governance and to
encourage growth.

As the UK attempts to balance its relationships with both a more strident USA and an EU galvanised
into action to “Re-arm”, there appears to be the potential for the UK to become the bridge that
continues to connect the USA and Europe, much as it did in the aftermath of World War II. It now
seems clear that a robust and efficient UK defence industry has to be a major component of such a
broad role. However, without informed and disciplined engagement across government, the
continuing transfer of the UK DIB to US and other overseas buyers – essentially the future of Britain’s
defence industry - will continue to be decided by business leaders and financiers: not by elected
governments.

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Notes
1. Stockholm Peace Research Institute (“SIPRI”) Yearbook, 2024
2. “Vance on Europe: 'I worry about the threat from within'”
“US Vice-President JD Vance criticised European leaders over
free speech and democracy at the Munich
Security Conference, telling world leaders "there is a new sheriff in town", referring to US President Donald
Trump.
“Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Honcharenko, who is currently at the conference, says the only thing that can be said
about Vance's speech is "the total humiliation of all European leaders". "People in the room are shocked,"
th
he says in a post on X.” (BBC World Service, 14 February, 2025)
3. John Hamre (CSIS President and CEO, and Langone Chair in American Leadership) was elected president and
CEO of CSIS in January 2000. Before joining CSIS, he served as the 26th U.S. deputy secretary of defense.
Prior to holding that post, he was the under secretary of defense (comptroller) from 1993 to 1997. As
comptroller, Dr. Hamre was the principal assistant to the secretary of defense for the preparation,
presentation, and execution of the defense budget and management improvement programs. In 2007,
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates appointed Dr. Hamre to serve as chairman of the Defense Policy Board,
and he served in that capacity for four secretaries of defense. (Center for Strategic & International, Studies
(“CSIS”) Washington DC, USA)
4. White paper for European defence - Readiness 2030
The white paper paves the way for a true European defence union in which EU countries will remain in the
driving seat for defence whilst benefitting from the added value offered by being in the EU.

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07/07/2025 Richard Hooke 2025