Army: Research

(asked on 29th November 2021) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how much and what proportion of his Department's £6.6 billion research and development budget will be spent on the army.


Answered by
Jeremy Quin Portrait
Jeremy Quin
This question was answered on 2nd December 2021

Over the four-year period (2021-2024) of the Spending Review, the Army has been allocated a Research & Development (R&D) budget totalling £729 million. This represents 11% of Defence's £6.6 billion R&D budget. However, it is important to note that R&D is often commissioned centrally to provide support to multiple Front Line Commands (FLCs) or that funding allocated to other FLCs provides Defence-wide benefits to more than one Service.

One example is the centrally commissioned Science and Technology programme, that has commissioned new projects on Artificial Intelligence (£59 million), Machine Speed Command and Control (£23 million), Digital Battlespace (£22 million) and Novel Electronics and Computing (£8 million), all of which will generate benefits for the Army if realised. Another example is the £150 million Gamechanger project on Directed Energy Weapons commissioned by Defence Innovation. This will provide a number of demonstrators including Ground Based Air Defence and Counter-UAS, projects that again if successful would provide benefit to the Army.

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