The Agile Heavyweight: A New Role for Defence Primes

JFC Fuller – the man behind the plan – sought to replace WWI’s grinding attritional warfare with an incisive combined arms thrust that would paralyse the enemy from within. Such a brazen operation would need cultural buy-in at the strategic level and, tactically, 5,000 extra tanks to spearhead the assault. 

“Fast forward 100 years and land’s contribution to NATO deterrence requires a similarly ambitious modernisation,” Samy Mehsen, Thales’ Land Senior Account Director, comments. “NATO is facing its own ‘Fuller gap’. A chasm exists between the skill, will and strategies of allied nations and the means of putting these into practice. Now, as then, the doctrine for rapid lethality and deterrence shouldn’t ever be constrained by industrial inertia or incapacity.”

Hence the British Army’s pivot to its 20-40-40 doctrine. Compelled recently by Gen. Sir Roly Walker to ‘accelerate modernisation’ and ‘pull the future into the present’^[1], the Army is bolstering its capabilities beyond heavy armour to stay ahead of the threat by including those assets that are easy to integrate, quick to produce and fast to replace. 

“If the British Army is changing how it fights, then the role of the prime must adapt, too,” Samy continues. “It’s no longer enough for industry to provide the tank, the shells, the mortars. We must foster the industrial resilience required to help the Army achieve its ambitions.”

“That means ever-closer collaboration with – and between – a wide range of partners, of every size and scale, to take designs and produce them at scale. To that end, we’re proud of the ongoing work we’re doing in the UK with SMEs like Schiebel on Project NYX and supply chain partners to deliver STORM 2 to customers.”

The Foundation of Mass and Resilience

One of the most arresting images to surface from exercise Spring Storm 2026 contrasts a bucolic, buttercup-laden field with a dust-choked trail of battle tanks. Such survivable, long-term, exquisite capabilities – making up 20% of the Army’s doctrine – remain the bedrock of land’s contribution to NATO deterrence. 

“But deterrence is hollow if forces can’t be quickly mobilised and sustained,” Samy says. Exercises like Rhino Storm 26, during which 1,400 UK troops were sent to Germany to test rapid mass deployment, polish his point. “Having capabilities is only step one; sustaining them is step two. The frontline may win the first battle, but the supply chain wins the campaign.”

Architecting such industrial resilience requires laying a foundation that runs far deeper than any single vehicle or platform. If the frontline force is the visible structure, the prime must provide the load-bearing scaffolding beneath it: deep industry stability, secure supply chains, scalable volume and the relevant integration expertise to ensure home-grown solutions can work with those across the NATO Alliance.

Samy continues: “Thales is taking action to provide the necessary infrastructure to make an ‘always on, always ready’ model possible. Production lines at Thales’ Belfast facility, for instance, are running hot. We’ve quadrupled capacity for missile systems to support a significant increase in deterrence demands, with the second-order benefit of putting sovereign skills to work.” 

The Pillars of Agility and Scalability

If 20% of the Army’s doctrine is anchored in traditional rules of engagement, then the remaining 80% is built for the relentless speed of new-age conflict. After all, you can’t combat a two-week innovation cycle – as on the front lines of Ukraine – with a ten-year procurement programme.

“UGVs, UAVs, One-Way Attack and FPV drones – these are the sort of capabilities that define today’s battlefield, so it was imperative that they be designed into the Army’s new doctrine,” Samy says. “Often, these assets are only as good as their ability to talk to their operators, to base, and to each other. Primes like Thales prove their value by connecting systems, bits and bytes so that frontline innovation actually scales rather than remaining an isolated prototype.”

“Before that, though, it’s a case of making sure this innovation actually makes it to the front line in the first place,” Samy continues. “So we get to work, seeing just how far and how fast we can turn a customer need into an operational reality. Storm 2 springs to mind, a piece of work we're doing with one of our customers. Initially conceived as a Counter-IED capability, we worked closely with them to transform it into a C-UAS capability in a matter of weeks. Now we're working with partners to get this kit delivered as fast as possible.”

Cutting costs through cross-domain adaptation

UK MoD increasingly has to do more with what it’s already got, through greater use of open systems, capable of rapidly integrating the changes required to evolve as the threat continually changes. Availability of capability has never been more important, requiring resilient supply chains capable of delivering at the speed and mass required

“NATO wants mass, lethality and speed,” Samy comments. “MoD needs this within a finite, highly scrutinised budget. It has to reuse assets in order to make the most of existing investments. The 20-40-40 model works because MoD – with the help of industry – can port capability across domains rather than reinventing the wheel each time, shaving pounds off development costs and years off the procurement cycle.”

Samy continues: “Take Project Nyx. Thales didn’t start from scratch to develop a new drone capability for the British Army. We drew directly from investment already made in the Royal Navy programme to offer an uncrewed rotary wing capability for operating alongside Apache helicopters, providing  a solution faster and cheaper than traditional procurement allows.”

“Then there’s the Lightweight Multirole Missile, also known as Martlet for the Royal Navy. It’s a proven and versatile system utilised by the British Armed Forces across land, sea and air – a force-capability mosaic which simply makes sense. Land forces get a proven, integrated capability while MoD benefits from economies of scale in the supply chain.”

Closing the Fuller Gap

Speaking at the Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research, CGS’s measured tones belied the urgency of the stark warning he received from his Ukrainian counterpart:

‘The Russians aren’t looking at your frontlines. They’ve priced that in. They will not take you seriously until your factories start producing more than they can do.’

The entire deterrence question suddenly becomes one of capacity over capability, demanding an industrial base capable of three things simultaneously: structural resilience at scale, networked agility across a modernised supply chain and uncompromising cost-efficiency that sustains political will over time.

“Primes are poised for this new era of constant competition,” Samy says. “By providing the architectural foundation for mass, the connective tissue for SME innovation and the cross-domain expertise to maximise existing MoD investments, we make sure that the Army's ambitions are not just theoretically possible, but industrially and fiscally viable today.”

^[1] General Sir Roly Walker, Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research keynote, 2026.