The UK defence sector is entering a period of significant disruption. As geopolitical instability grows and the government pursues ambitious industrial reforms, your organisation faces mounting domestic pressures. From strike action to strained manufacturer–workforce relations, these challenges pose material risks to your programme delivery and strategic readiness.

In this article, we explore how geopolitical instability, strike action risks and supply chain disruption could affect your business operations, and how you can navigate this disruption.

Structural weaknesses exposed

Systemic pressures have heightened contractual, regulatory, and programme‑delivery risks. Even before recent industrial tensions, the UK supply chain was under strain. Long lead times, limited surge capacity, insufficient visibility across multi‑tier suppliers and over‑reliance on single‑source vendors have all been highlighted as critical weaknesses.

Global logistics instability, including maritime rerouting following security incidents, continues to undermine your ability to secure reliable imported components. With Red Sea container traffic remaining considerably lower than normal, you face persistent delays and rising transport costs across the sector.

Continuity threatened by strike action

Industrial action has emerged as a major threat to your business operations.

At Leonardo, more than 3,000 workers across multiple UK sites voted for coordinated walkouts after rejecting below‑inflation pay offers, with strikes threatening to halt production of critical electronics and helicopter systems. Analysts have warned that these disruptions could affect key MoD programmes, including military aircraft systems and frontline helicopter support.

Similarly, at Airbus, thousands of UK workers approved strike action (subsequently called off), which would have affected the Broughton and Filton sites – central to wing production for commercial aircraft and the A400M military transport plane. Resulting delays could have had cascading effects across the wider European aerospace and defence supply chain.

The growth of operational risk

The pressures you face extend beyond workforce issues. Recent assessments show growing tension across the network of manufacturers and suppliers underpinning major defence programmes. Capacity imbalances, production bottlenecks and heightened interdependencies are creating a more adversarial contracting environment.

Prime contractors are increasingly imposing tighter deadlines, stricter performance requirements and firmer risk‑allocation clauses, while smaller or capacity‑constrained suppliers push back, citing commodity volatility, logistics uncertainty and the need for more flexible commercial terms.

Disruption from all directions

Activism is becoming an additional source of disruption. Government ministers have warned that protests at defence and aerospace facilities, including criminal damage, site incursions and staff intimidation, pose growing operational and reputational risks.

Groups such as Palestine Action have already caused localised disruption and increased security costs for targeted companies. Large‑scale coordinated actions aimed at shutting down events, such as those seen at the 2025 DSEI arms fair, are expected to continue. These movements, spanning pro‑Palestinian, climate and anti‑militarisation groups, increase both planning uncertainty and security burden for defence-sector participants, whilst simultaneously demanding the proactive use of injunctions.

Ambition meets reality in government reform

The Defence Industrial Strategy (as discussed in our earlier article) sets out an ambitious reform agenda, including:

• A more collaborative industry partnership model
• The largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War
• Accelerated procurement processes with time‑to‑contract targets
• A five‑year acquisition pipeline to enhance planning certainty
• Parallel war‑gaming exercises designed to stress‑test the UK’s defence supply chain.

Success will depend on stabilising the relationships between manufacturers, suppliers and workforces on which the sector ultimately relies.

How we can help you

We can support you to turn today’s fragmented defence landscape into strategic opportunity. We advise investors, OEMs and suppliers on navigating procurement reform and ensuring that transactions, joint ventures and supply‑chain collaborations remain compliant with national security screening, subsidy control and competition law.

By structuring agreements that balance operational deliverables with commercial certainty, we can help secure programme performance, mitigate regulatory and execution risk, and position you for long‑term, resilient value creation. In navigating disruption, we can provide rapid, practical support if you’re facing strike action or on‑site protests, including obtaining urgent injunctions to protect your staff, assets and operational continuity.

For further information, please contact James Crayton or Della Heptinstall.