Amentum Sharpens Focus on UK Defense Objectives

The disparate imperatives to field hypersonic missiles and to support allies and partners such as Poland and Ukraine with mission readiness are prime examples of the immense challenges facing the UK military. Both are projects in which engineering and support specialist Amentum is partnered with the country’s Ministry of Defence (MOD) as it strives to meet both short- and longer-term objectives such as sovereign capability and supply-chain resilience as part of a fundamental reboot of its defense technology priorities.

In the first instance, Amentum is providing project management capacity that Amentum vice president for UK defense Justin Goldberg said is beyond the MOD’s internal resources. As the industry mission partner on the £1 billion Hypersonic Technologies and Capability Development Framework, the company provides engineering, program management, and technical integration expertise. That work falls under AUKUS, the trilateral security partnership that also includes the U.S. and Australia.

As a “project delivery partner,” Amentum deploys engineers to develop early designs for future systems, defining the scope of work that is then contracted out. The company then helps officials hold those manufacturers to account for meeting project objectives.

Cost control is part of the remit, with governments like that of the UK under great pressure to raise defense spending while minimizing the impact on other public services. “For example, when the MOD was negotiating the next tranche of the [Boeing] Apache helicopter program, we helped them to save over £200 million ($264 million) on support costs over a 30-year period,” Goldberg said, explaining Amentum’s role as something of a “bad cop” alongside defense officials in negotiations with suppliers.

Defense Cost Savings

According to Illy Andrews, Amentum’s vice president for defense and asset solutions, the company serves as a technology-agnostic solutions provider. “We have supported some of the UK’s most critical and complex defense programs, including those classified as ‘for UK eyes only,’ and have created around £2 billion in savings,” she told AIN.

In addition to introducing military technology into service and supporting existing aircraft such as the UK’s F-35 fighters, Amentum’s work extends to the logistics needed to ensure defensive readiness and resilience against threats such as those posed by Russia along NATO’s eastern flank. The company has supplied materials and repaired damaged equipment for Ukraine’s military through a remote distribution center in southeast Poland.

Andrews told AIN that Amentum’s logistics specialists are helping partners to move beyond the standard “just-in-time” approach. Working with partners including GXO, Maersk, and Accenture, Amentum has formed the Torus Defence Supply Chain alliance to better respond to the need to deliver military hardware and materials when needed and to scale up supply lines.

“We are trying to look ahead to how we can better manage supply disruption [resulting from conflicts], using technology such as a digital backbone and artificial intelligence,” she explained. “We are very focused on deterrence but also resilience in the sense of if something [adverse] happens, what does recovery look like, and there are certainly lessons from Ukraine here.”

Though Amentum is U.S.-based, its UK operation is mindful of the need for the country to have independent, sovereign capability that does not hinge on U.S. government approval. Backing up its commitment to autonomy, the company employs more than 6,000 people, more than 500 of them former British service personnel, and plans to add a further 3,000 over the next four years.