Briefing Note: Strategic Defence Review 2025 (Training and Simulation Focus)

This briefing note is on the recently published Strategic Defence Review (SDR 2025) with particular focus on training and simulation.

Headlines:

• Strategic Defence Review 2025 mandates a fundamental overhaul of Defence pedagogy. NATO standards will now form the core benchmark; to ensuring interoperability.
• A philosophy of managed risk replaces “safety at all costs” culture, permitting experimentation before implementation and exploitation.
• A unified virtual environment and mandatory ‘synthetic wraps’ is aimed at transform training into a persistent, scalable activity independent of live platforms.
• Defence’s skills doctrine is focussed to promotes leadership, digital expertise and commercial acuity across regulars, reserves, civil servants as well as industry partners.
• Recruitment modernises through short form commitments and rapid induction camps.
• A whole force career education, training pathway underpins long term professional growth.
• Timeline obligations concentrate effort between November 2025 and December 2026, creating a compressed period for delivery.
• Digital twins and predictive modelling move simulation beyond the classroom, accelerating acquisition and enabling spiral upgrades.

Table ‑1 shows SDR 2025 Training and simulation Themes, the direction and the timeline.

IMPACT Analysis

Using the core factors of the #IMPACT theory[1] and data from 2024 as a baseline we can draw some strategic insights into the training and simulation themes of SDR 2025.

Figure 0‑1 show the top level IMPACT analysis of the training and simulation aspects of SDR 2025 

Asymmetric Maturity

Innovation, Interactional, Financial and Brand factors display mid-range maturity, whereas Environmental, Systemic and Risk & Resilience remain lagging. Radar chart (figure 0-1) confirms shortfalls for Systemic and Risk & Resilience, lesser shortfall for Environmental factors.

Governance Gap

Systemic factors present the widest shortfall. Policy rewrite and career education pathways, qualify as critical path items; any delay jeopardises overall convergence. Defence will probably be looking to achieve this by the application of AI, in order to reduce time scale of delivery. Imbedding into the organisations however will probably take a little longer.

Synthetic transformation acts as keystone intervention

Adoption of a defence wide virtual training environment yields simultaneous uplift across Innovation, Environmental, Risk & Resilience and Financial factors. Investment priority ranking therefore should favours synthetic programmes. In English, this becomes a priority as it enables the other areas. But this only becomes useful once you employ a theory of organisational performance, my assumption is the Defence will be looking to implement European Framework of Quality Management (EFQM)[2] wildly used across Europe and NATO countries.

Environmental dividend relies on live to synthetic substitution

Carbon reduction target can only succeed once synthetic systems share of the live, virtual balance reaches at least 50 % by end 2027; current share averages 20–30 % across services. Fuel saving audit cycle subsequently remains essential.

Resilience remains under exercised

Recent red team missile defence simulation exposed homeland security gaps, confirming the Risk & Resilience gap. Quarterly adversarial simulations plus ring fenced fund should remain mandatory.

Financial efficiency linked to outcome-based contracts

Zero based budgeting and outcome linked supplier payments expected to strength Financial factors while protecting readiness outputs. In other words, outcome-based contracts drive money efficiency while guarding readiness. Nice theory but difficult to implement and will form part of a contractual negotiation strategy. Prims will attempt to flow the risk down to subs. 

Reputation hinges on transparency

Absence of timely data or missing milestones could erode public confidence despite operational improvements. See probability analysis.

Compressed schedule demands disciplined sequencing

2025–27 window leaves little slack; procurement and policy milestones must complete on schedule to avoid cascade delays across dependent factors.

Wider Sector Implications

Economic Trajectory

Nominal spending grew from £42.4bn in 2020/21 to £59.8bn forecast for 2025/26, representing average annual growth of 7.0 %.
Defence expenditure already equals 2.3 % of GDP (2024) and Government pledges raise that figure to 2.5 % by 2027.
Exports supplied an additional £14.5bn in 2023, highest figure since 2013.
The broader industrial base contributed £10 - 12bn gross value added each year, with 48 % concentrated in South-East and South-West regions.

Public data show a £7.9bn funding gap across nuclear programmes over the next decade

Geopolitical and Alliance Posture

NATO burden-sharing negotiators signal a probable rise toward 3.5 % of GDP by 2035, implying an extra £40bn annually.

A pending EU defence-industrial accord could unlock a €150bn fund for UK primes, while exchanging fisheries concessions.

Technological Modernisation

IMPACT Innovation coefficient aligns with SDR pledges:

Synthetic training and a unified virtual environment remain the keystone intervention already highlighted by the analysis, driving concurrent gains in Innovation, Environmental, Financial and Resilience dimensions.

Human Capital

Recruitment: SDR commitment raises full-time strength to 76,000 and expands cadets by 30 % by 2030.
Accommodation: £1.5bn housing uplift plus purchase of 36,000 homes.

Skills: Auditor-tracked career education pathway anchors foundational skills framework across Services, Civil Service and industry. This one is interesting for a couple of reasons, it looks like Gov is going to try and a line some its training requirements across all departments, allowing them to use academia and educational facilities to deliver at scale, fundamental skills in leadership, finance/commercial, cyber, digital/AI and data have been highlighted. With organisation expect to deliver the bits (yet to be identified) that make them organisational specific or classified. For this to be achievable the organisation first has to have a detailed understanding of what its training requirement actual is. 

Probability Analysis

Figure 0.2 below shows a 3-point probability analysis for each of the training and simulation themes and their related milestones of SDR 2025 being achieved. Historical data was used for weighting and as supporting evidence. 

Figure 0‑1 Show an assessment of the probability of Defence delivering the identified milestones.

Highest confidence: NATO centred alignment and the administrative task of submitting the novel entry-route plan.
Moderate confidence:  Skills-framework rollout, training-policy rewrite, simulation procurement clause.

Lowest confidence: System wide virtual environment and people-policy overhaul, reflecting historic project delays and governance drag.

Disclaimer:

Please note that parts of this post were assisted by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool. The AI has been used to generate certain content and provide information synthesis. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, the AI's contributions are based on its training data and algorithms and should be considered as supplementary information.

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[2] The IMPACT Theory can be used in conjunction with the EFQM Model to provide a more granular, internal-performance diagnostic that strengthens EFQM’s broader strategic and stakeholder-focused assessment. Integrating both frameworks allows organisations to bridge the macro-level excellence model of EFQM with the micro-level operational coherence of IMPACT.

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[1] The IMPACT theory and model is a proprietary organisational performance theory and model developed by Metier Solutions