Spearheading a new era of digital defence Client Conversations

After being introduced to the military environment at a young age through his father, who was a reservist dentist in the Medical Corps, Colonel Richard Alston was destined to join the Royal Marines. He first applied after completing his A-levels before deciding the time wasn’t right, then re-applied and joined after university before leaving for further study and to gain experience in other areas.

But the third time was the charm, leading to stints in Afghanistan commanding small bands of determined men, training reservists, and protecting the national nuclear capability before specialising in communications. Fast forward to today where Rich is focused on strategy work in specialist areas of defence, specifically around digital skills and information exploitation through Defence Digital.

This primarily involves two complementary strands of work: designing the future defence workforce and looking at how digitalisation (specifically through the use of data) can help deliver the insights needed to ensure more effective national strategic interventions.

Rich explains: “In a defence context, we can still make improvements that will enable us to provide a coherent deterrence capability across the spectrum of conflict. I’m focused on understanding how UK defence can better mobilise its people in order to deliver digital advantage in the modern battlespace.”

New ways of thinking

It’s widely accepted within defence that, with the world changing and the character of warfare continuing to evolve, the defence ecosystem needs to digitise in order to keep pace. Most importantly, it needs to do so in revolutionary – as well as evolutionary – ways.

At a basic level, digitising to gain advantage is typically thought of in terms of speeding up or improving existing operations. While there’s utility in this, it misses the revolutionary possibilities of digitalisation. This is what will enable defence to start operating in different ways – to be more agile, move around adversaries, identify areas of weakness, and enable defence leaders to fully leverage the UK’s strengths. 

At the core of this is data. For example, technologies such as AI-based large language models can allow analysts to interact with data at a deeper level, tackle problems in new ways and answer questions they never thought were important – in turn enhancing military operations.

“Getting more out of data fundamentally changes the processes around intelligence and planning. We must get much cleverer in how we arrange ourselves around data, rather than just using software to do the same things more efficiently. This will involve some deep thinking about how digitalisation will fundamentally change the way the military conducts its business.”

Of course, achieving this isn’t easy. It requires a culture and mindset shift in terms of how defence approaches digital transformation, i.e. digitisation vs digitalisation. Rich explains: “If we want to get to the stage where we’re harnessing the benefits of digitalisation as opposed to just digitising, then we need people to think differently. Changing our collective mindset is the fundamental first step.”

A basic example of this is considering what constitutes a weapon in today’s world. The natural reaction is to think of guns and heavy machinery. But, if we adopt a mindset of effect and consequence, a piece of code deployed within the context of an offensive cyber activity could easily be considered a weapon. Similarly, the greatest weapon could be removing the need to carry out any kinetic activity at all. For example, through data analytics that enables a nation to shift and shape the defence environment rather than react to adversaries.

This brings us to the importance of people and Richard’s work to improve the military’s skills pool through the ‘Digital Skills 4 Defence’ programme. Not only must the recruitment pipeline be agile enough to attract people who have the right technical skills, but defence must be prepared to re-evaluate what it means to be a solider in the digital age.

A different type of soldier

When we think about what it means to fight in a globally connected and digitised world, it becomes apparent that there’s a need for a new type of operator that may look nothing like the traditional view of a soldier. Digital experts joining the military today will have a different set of skills, with less of a focus on the traits that have typically been prioritised, such as physical strength.

Mobilising cognitive diversity and wider technical skills would allow militaries to work in new ways and have wider impacts. Rather than side-lining digital talent into support roles, there are myriad opportunities to exploit their skills as long as the military is prepared to think a bit laterally about how they are employed.

“If we don’t embrace different types of people, we’ll miss out on important skills that can make a meaningful difference on the battlefield. We must recognise the potential in digital talent and reconceive our traditional values around military operations and kinetic activity.”

The challenge, as Richard explains, is creating the right framework to support that talent. “At the moment, we don’t really have a way of capturing diverse talent because we try to squeeze it into an existing box. We must accept that the original box is still necessary, but we also need to add some new ones for people who offer something different. This requires a cultural change that embraces new values and traditions.”

The good news is that Rich is already seeing signs of positive change. He gave the example of a specific operational team that consisted of soldiers in the typical sense working alongside people who had joined the military through specialist reserves. These digital specialists “looked like they’d walked out of Google’s offices”, but were playing key roles in military operations.

While this is just one example, Rich believes reinforcing these small pockets of success will be the key to driving widespread change and broadening the aperture of what it means to be a soldier within the context of digital warfare.

“Defence leaders are focused on mission success, so when they see things working well at the front end they will jump on them quickly. This type of organisational change needs to happen from the ground up. It’s not an easy thing to do, but there are some blinding shafts of light coming through. Some of the teams are doing remarkable things.”

Supporting digital talent

Once we’ve recognised that there’s room for different types of soldiers, the next piece of the puzzle is empowering them in their specialist military roles. This starts with the training and induction these ‘non-traditional’ recruits receive.

Out of necessity, the military is generally very procedural, so trains people in a particular way. The problem is that new recruits can end up with a linear view of the nature of military activity, driven by the focus on meeting physical standards. Baseline entry requirements such as achieving a minimum Bleep Test score, or mandatory weapons training simply may not be relevant for soldiers in specialist digital roles.

As Rich says, “the focus should be on the skills operators working in the digital space require to do their jobs. Do they need to be able to run five miles? Do they even need to know how to fire a weapon? It would be wasteful and inefficient to train them in skills that aren’t relevant, so let’s cut them out and give ourselves access to a wider talent pool.”

Establishing new internal pathways for non-traditional recruits is also essential. For example, one option is to create a new digital profession within the military to house individuals recruited for their IT skills, experience and passion.  This will open up opportunities for military service to a broad pool of people who currently don’t have a natural place in our model, yet have so much to offer. People with disabilities, neurodiverse individuals and those who want to serve but don’t instinctively ‘gel’ with the adventurous, outdoor vibe would not just be welcome, but actively sought to provide the talent Defence needs. A professional digital cadre would enable their military experience to be specific to their role as technical specialists.

The Medical Corps is a good use case. When doctors join the military from industry (the NHS trains them) they don’t need to complete a full year or more commissioning course. Instead, they complete a short commissioning course and a special-to-arm entry course. Defence accepts their technical skill and adds the right amount of military induction to bring them fully into the military in their specialism. The medical services then enjoy a close relationship with external medical providers, which underpins through-life learning and the generation of formal qualifications. There is a healthy flow of people and knowledge between the military and the NHS that has demonstrably added huge value to both. There’s no reason why this approach couldn’t be adapted for digital and applied to the relationship the military has with digital industry.

“This approach would allow us to be really innovative about how we exploit a wider talent base – people who wouldn’t traditionally have been able to join the military because they can’t, or don’t want to operate in the field. We just need to be really explicit that people in this digital military branch will be a different type of soldier; recruited, trained and deployed in a different way.”

This provides a way to get a greater number of brains invested in the problem of keeping Britain and our allies safe, secure and prosperous in an increasingly complex and challenging world. As Rich says, “Defence offers the opportunity to be involved in complex, exciting and meaningful challenges in a far more diverse way than we have provided before".

Ultimately, it all comes to back to the need to think differently about what warfighting is in the 21st century and what is required to gain an advantage over adversaries. The context in which kinetic capabilities are deployed and the activities that go around them are evolving. This era of digital defence will require a new type of solider. Colonel Rich Alston’s mission is to build the infrastructure and support systems that let them thrive.

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