The UK MoD's 1998 'Strategic Defence Review' and its 2003 white paper, 'Delivering Security in a Changing World', recognised that the environment in which today's armed forces operate, has changed significantly since the end of the cold war. The main observation highlighted the restructuring of the UK armed forces to be able to meet the threats of 'international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and weak and failing states'. Those meant evolving the forces to light, responsive and agile.
How this is to be achieved was summarised in three main themes:
- Effectiveness - improving the effectiveness of systems rather than the number of systems involved
- Technology - exploiting the latest technology to enhance capability and improve the information flow
- Efficiency - ensuring that the procurement of future capability, and its integration with existing legacy systems, is done in the most cost effective way so to enable the MoD to fund simultaneous theatres of operation.
Outlined below are some of the key initiatives that are already underway to support these transformation themes:
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