Developing AI Capacity and Expertise in UK Defence

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank the Chair of our Committee for his question, and for his work in getting our report to publication. He is right to highlight the gap between what the MOD wants to do and how it plans to achieve it. That runs through our entire report and is something that the MOD needs to get a handle on. I am sure that he would agree that by implementing our recommendations, the Department can move to a position where AI is threaded through the organisation, as opposed to being a niche add-on, or a novelty.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Military history books are full of examples of the difficulty that defence scientists had in selling their revolutionary ideas to military chiefs and civil servants. Given the nebulous nature of artificial intelligence, was the Sub-Committee satisfied that there is a specialist cadre in the Ministry of Defence that is intellectually equipped to make appropriate assessment of schemes that are put forward for new weapons systems?