The conversation around sovereign defence capability usually starts with headline programmes and billion-pound contracts. That’s understandable, but it doesn’t really reflect how these platforms hold together in service.

A large part of the resilience sits much further down the supply chain. By the time a vehicle reaches the frontline, its performance has already been shaped by tier two and tier three suppliers working on the less visible but critical components.

Think steering systems, suspension parts, precision machining and driveline elements. These are all essential to whether a platform performs in demanding conditions or fails when it matters most.

That matters more as the British Army moves away from its long-standing Land Rover fleet through the Land Mobility Programme, which will gradually replace thousands of vehicles over the coming years.

Simultaneously, there’s also a growing acceptance across industry that full reshoring isn’t realistic anymore. The Defence Committee notes that: “The UK’s defence industrial base is not yet configured for sustained collective defence. It faces challenges in capacity, skills, innovation, procurement, and financing.”

The supply chains are too specialised, too international and too interlinked. So instead, building sovereign capability requires strong UK suppliers, supported by selective nearshoring across Europe where it makes sense.

Beneath the surface

In defence procurement, sovereign capability is often reduced to where a platform is finally assembled. But operational sovereignty is something much broader than that, it’s not about putting a Union Jack sticker on the finished vehicle.

What really matters is whether the UK can maintain, repair, upgrade and sustain equipment without being exposed to fragile overseas supply chains when conditions are uncertain.

OEMs lead the headline programmes, and the smaller specialist manufacturers support by keeping everything working. They bring the engineering depth, the process knowledge and the flexibility to adapt when requirements change — and in defence, they often do.

That becomes especially clear in mobility platforms. Steering and suspension systems are pushed hard in service with heavy loads, rough terrain, constant vibration and harsh environments. When something fails there, it stops being a manufacturing issue and becomes an operational one very quickly.

The Land Mobility Programme highlights just how complex this balance is. It’s designed to replace a wide mix of legacy vehicles with fewer, common platforms, improving interoperability and reducing the maintenance burden across the fleet.

What’s more, the recent unveiling of Rheinmetall’s proposed UK tactical vehicle for the Land Mobility Programme highlighted that around 50 per cent of vehicle components would be sourced from British SMEs. While the exact percentage will vary across programmes, the direction of travel is that strong sovereign capability cannot exist without strong local suppliers.

Reshoring and nearshoring

For years, defence manufacturing conversations centred around reshoring everything back to the UK. In practice, that was always unlikely.

Modern vehicle systems rely on highly specialised manufacturing expertise distributed across multiple countries. Some suppliers have built up decades of highly specialised engineering knowledge that simply can’t be recreated overnight elsewhere.

Because of that, the industry is now heading towards a more balanced model of keeping critical capability in the UK, while working with trusted partners in nearby European countries.

It’s less about ideology and more about practicality. The pandemic shown how exposed global supply chains can be, and since then, geopolitical uncertainty and rising defence demand across Europe have only added pressure, from production bottlenecks to transport delays.

Nearshoring helps ease some of those risks, while still giving access to the specialist engineering skills the sector relies on. That’s largely why the UK defence industry is moving further in this direction.

Just look at the UK’s Collaborative All-Terrain Vehicle programme with Sweden and Germany. This is one example of how modern NATO programmes are being delivered through shared industrial participation, combining UK manufacturing with European integration and wider allied supply chains.

However, that’s not to say nearshoring reduces the importance of British suppliers. If anything, it increases it. As programmes become more collaborative, OEMs need dependable local engineering partners capable of integrating into multinational supply chains while still meeting UK operational requirements.

Not just procurement exercises

One of the biggest misconceptions in defence manufacturing is that resilience can simply be procured through contracts. Resilient supply chains are built over time through relationships, engineering trust and shared operational understanding, often across multiple countries and tiers of suppliers.

The most successful defence programmes tend to involve long-standing collaboration between OEMs and specialist suppliers. That’s because defence manufacturing has always worked differently to mainstream automotive production, for instance.

Volumes are lower, requirements evolve constantly and platforms often stay in service for decades. That means OEMs rely heavily on specialist suppliers who can respond quickly, adapt designs and provide long-term engineering support long after initial production ends.

However, much of this ecosystem operates with a degree of secrecy. This limits visibility across the wider supply chain and means many tier two and tier three suppliers are rarely recognised inside the sector, let alone outside of it.

Yet the UK defence industry is already seeing what strong domestic supply chains can deliver with a mix of nearshoring and reshoring approaches. For instance, the first British-built Boxer vehicles entering Army service are supporting hundreds of jobs directly and around 1,000 roles across the wider UK supply chain, with some initial UK Boxer production currently underway in Germany.

Those numbers underline that sovereign capability is created by manufacturers working together across tier one, tier two and tier three levels, domestically and with regional allies. As the Land Mobility Programme progresses, the same principle will apply again for future programmes.

Pailton Engineering designs and manufactures steering parts and suspension components for military vehicles. Visit Pailton.com for more information.