UK MOD embraces Additive Manufacturing in new defence strategy, targets £110M savings
April 7, 2025
The UK Ministry of Defence has published its first Defence Advanced Manufacturing Strategy, which identifies Additive Manufacturing as crucial to the British military’s strategic roadmap and highlights AM’s role in strengthening supply chain resilience.
The document stresses the urgent need to accelerate Additive Manufacturing adoption across the UK’s defence sector. The MOD has outlined three core initiatives to accomplish this goal: investing to incentivise industry, adapting policies to remove barriers, and integrating Additive Manufacturing into the defence supply chain.
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The key benefits of Additive Manufacturing for defence applications include faster production, reduced lead times, access to obsolete parts, and improved sustainability. The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) identified obsolescence as the primary supply chain challenge affecting military operations in 2021, impacting both legacy and modern platforms. With an inventory exceeding 1.3 million items, the MOD views Additive Manufacturing as a viable solution for producing many obsolete components.
The UK defence leadership believes Additive Manufacturing will significantly improve platform and equipment availability. According to a Defence Innovation Unit (DIU)-commissioned report, producing just 15% of the defence inventory using Additive Manufacturing could yield £110M in savings over the next 15 years, with potential annual net benefits of £35.5M thereafter. According to the new defence strategy, Additive Manufacturing represents the “first step” toward the MOD’s broader adoption of other advanced manufacturing technologies.
Vice Admiral Andy Kyte, Chief of Defence Logistics and Support, shared, “This strategy outlines our intent to embrace AM in new designs, to help resolve obsolescence and to increase our competitive edge through development of expeditious battle damage repair techniques.”
“This exciting technology has been in existence for some time, and defence must now realise the latent benefits it offers, in terms of operational availability, improved supply chain resilience and efficiency,” Kyte continued.
Introducing the MOD’s Defence Advanced Manufacturing Strategy
Conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have worsened supply shortages, limiting access to essential products and raw materials. These global challenges have increased the need for more resilient supply chains. Additionally, reductions in Armed Forces and Civil Service personnel, combined with smaller fleets and ageing equipment, have reduced availability, productivity, and efficiency.
The MOD is adopting Additive Manufacturing to tackle these challenges through its new Advanced Manufacturing initiative. The strategy demonstrates how Additive Manufacturing enables the creation of decentralised networks of qualified suppliers with the aim of reducing lead times, addressing obsolescence issues, and enhancing sustainability. The MOD’s Additive Manufacturing vision rests on four key pillars: design sources, digital thread, certification, and mobile production capabilities that enable parts fabrication near the point of need.
Design sources create additively manufactured parts through two methods: designing new components specifically for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) or reverse engineering existing parts. The digital thread securely transmits sensitive design information from a design library to the Additive Manufacturing machine, while enabling users and manufacturers to send design change requests back to designers. Ensuring cybersecurity and information consistency is crucial. The MOD is exploring the development of a unified, fully integrated digital service to connect with design libraries. The finalised design is certified before being deemed fit for military operations and additively manufactured, sometimes near the frontlines.
These stages will operate within a circular economy that leverages the recyclability and reusability of Additive Manufacturing materials. The British military is currently developing methods to recycle high-end scrap metal into new metal Additive Manufacturing feedstock. For example, British engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce recently partnered with the MOD to convert old Tornado fighter jet components into new additively manufactured jet engines. This initiative, called Tornado 2 Tempest, has successfully produced components for the Orpheus jet engine concept, supporting the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) programme.
Increasing adoption of Additive Manufacturing for defence
The Defence Advanced Manufacturing Strategy outlines the MOD’s strategy for accelerating Additive Manufacturing adoption and development within the UK defence sector.
In order to incentivise industry, additional investment will be used to promote Additive Manufacturing adoption through direct funding and industry partnerships. This initiative will incorporate Additive Manufacturing into existing and future designs as well as digitising strategically important inventory and spare parts. The MOD will also establish clear protocols for securely transferring digital information between industry, MOD units, and Front Line Commands (FLC).
To tackle the removal of constraints, another key pillar of the Additive Manufacturing strategy, the MOD will collaborate with industry partners to establish accessible cross-functional processes that align with updated policies and encourage adoption. It will also create a “knowledge hub” to improve access to essential information. Additionally, the MOD plans to implement new metrics to better track both financial and non-financial benefits of Additive Manufacturing.
The MOD will design and create supply networks, allowing Additive Manufacturing technology to be brought into the defence supply chain. Equipment, training, and consumables will be standardised, making them accessible through regular supply channels to meet industry standards and qualifications.
New partnerships between industrial partners, FLCs, and MOD units will be encouraged with the goal of facilitating rapid learning and build trust through “trusted agent status” in an extended “hub” and “spoke” supply network. Inter-industry partnerships will also be incentivised to enhance resilience and improve Additive Manufacturing capabilities. Additionally, the MOD plans to form a strategic partnership with the UK High Value Manufacturing Catapult to drive efficiencies and benefit the UK industrial base.
These strategic priorities will guide a programme of work, involving the MOD, industry, and the research community. A new governance structure will not be created as the programme will be managed by one of the MOD’s existing steering groups.
Advantages and challenges of Additive Manufacturing in the British Army
The MOD identifies the ability to address inventory shortages caused by technical or commercial obsolescence as the main benefit of AM. The technology can also reduce lead times while enabling a more resilient, agile, and distributed supply network.
Since 2016, the British forces have actively utilised Additive Manufacturing, with various MOD units and FLCs establishing dedicated AM centres for battle damage repair. This work has been largely completed independently, with each unit developing its own Additive Manufacturing processes and digital threads.
According to the MOD, there is currently no requirement for its manufacturing partners to accelerate the adoption of Additive Manufacturing to improve supply chains. The organisation also identified several key challenges that limit AM development in the UK.
For example, the MOD emphasised the need for more agile market routes, especially when sourcing obsolete parts. The organisation suggests creating separate supply chains for additively manufactured components to avoid delays from traditional methods. This is because the benefits of AM, such as faster production and quicker responses, would be lost if the supply process is slowed.
The document also highlights interoperability challenges. Project TAMPA demonstrated that rapid advances in Additive Manufacturing technology and increasing machine versatility can quickly make AM files obsolete. Furthermore, different AM machines often produce varying results even when using identical manufacturing methods, which impacts repeatability. TAMPA also found a lack of comprehensive Additive Manufacturing standards, though ASTM is working to improve access to existing standards.
Additionally, the MOD identified challenges related to through-life support, training, access to consumables, digital thread uncertainties, and high manufacturing costs.
Read the full paper here.
