Northern Ireland Has What It Takes to Support a Modern Defence Industry

Northern Ireland’s unrivalled engineering credentials, combined with its UK and European-leading technology credentials makes it an increasingly compelling proposition for governments and companies in the growing defence industry.

We are the best performing region in the UK for supply chain excellence, with a reputation for delivering high quality, on demand, on time components and equipment around the world and even throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

With less than 3 per cent of the nation’s population, we are home to 70 per cent of the UK’s SC21 Aerospace & Defence Business Excellence Awards. Securing this accolade is no easy task. To achieve a gold award, a company must register a higher than 99% on-time delivery performance and 99.9% quality performance.

Despite the pandemic, Northern Ireland actually saw an increase in the number of companies attaining this standard during and since - proof of quality and dependability in the face of unprecedented challenge.

We were the first region in the UK to develop a bespoke strategy for aerospace, with Lifting Off in 2014. The strategy was designed to establish the required supply chain structure and develop the region’s capabilities to increase productivity and competitiveness. That plan has paid off. 

Key players operating in the region include Thales, an experienced defence-focused business unit which over the past year has become a vital asset for the UK’s defence supplies. Then there’s the legendary Harland & Wolff (H&W), a heavy engineering firm at the centre of the National Shipbuilding Strategy’s aim of regenerating the shipbuilding sector. Last year it was a key element of the Team Resolute consortium named as the preferred bidder for the £1.6-billion contract to build three Fleet Solid Support (FSS) ships. It will begin by building the bow block of the ship.

Additionally, Spirit AeroSystems, with an aerospace heritage in Northern Ireland stretching back over 100 years continues to deliver innovative solutions across both aerospace and defence.  

Engineering by Spirit in Belfast is playing a crucial role in the creation of the next generation of aircraft. Manufacture of the wings for the CityAirbus NextGen vehicle project will be carried out at Spirit’s facility in Belfast - the former home of the legendary Short Brothers, the first company in the world to make production aeroplanes.

Composite wings for the Airbus A220 aircraft already manufactured at the Belfast site won the 2019 MacRobert Award, the highest honour awarded to an engineering project by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Thanks to our centuries old pioneering spirit and engineering excellence, Northern Ireland is now home to a diverse range of manufacturers and suppliers.

The afore-mentioned giants of industry are supported by a high density of SME suppliers across all elements of the aerospace supply chain, from design and manufacture (world leading capabilities in machining, composites, polymers), to coatings, assembly, certification and testing. This is evidenced by the fact that 91 per cent of Thales Belfast’s local procurement in Northern Ireland is with small to medium enterprises.

The level of proximity and cohesion in the region means that more than 100 firms are within a one-hour drive of each other – making for easy collaboration.

Further bolstering its defence credentials is the region’s cyber security expertise.  With specialist university research centres, innovative start-ups delivering global cyber security solutions and an impressive cluster of international cyber security investors, this expertise is being melded into our precision engineering centres of excellence.

Engineering expertise being actively joined with the region’s cyber security excellence is not going unnoticed with the Royal Air Force (RAF), which has established an innovation node at The Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) to engage the region’s capabilities in the sector.

The centre has also partnered with BAE Systems on video-based semantic analysis of crowd behaviour, while Thales has used CSIT novel Physical Unclonable Functions technology in a demonstrator for electronic component anti-counterfeiting.

Some Northern Ireland-based tech companies that have entered the defence sector include Kinsetsu with intelligent asset tracking systems, Angoka with cutting edge secure machine-to-machine communication technology and KX which has created the world's fastest and most efficient time series database and analytics engine.

The sector is supported by world leading research hubs such as the Northern Ireland Advanced Composites & Engineering Centre (NIACE), the Electronics, Communications and Information Technology Centre (ECIT), and the Northern Ireland Technology Centre (NITC) all in close proximity.

Over the next few years, Northern Ireland will benefit from a £1.3bn package of investment from four City & Growth Deals complemented by private sector and other funding.

These significant deals will help create more global centres of innovation excellence. They will provide opportunities for businesses, both here and outside Northern Ireland to collaborate and tap into the world-leading expertise of our universities.

The centres will help companies create breakthrough technologies, products and services as well as develop the infrastructure and test environments that will allow the next generation of products to be tested and trialled.

For example, a £98m Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Centre (AMIC) project, in partnership with Queen’s University, Ulster University and Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council will provide fresh capabilities for the NI Advanced Composites and Engineering Centre (NIACE). A new 10,500 square metre state-of-the-art factory of the future will give advanced manufacturing and engineering businesses access to the very latest technology, specialist equipment and expertise significantly accelerating levels of innovation and collaboration between industry and researchers.

Taken together – our engineering excellence melding with unrivalled technology credentials - it is clear that Northern Ireland is ideally placed to deliver the goods needed for a modern defence industry.

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