Military procurement is often complicated and spread out across several years. Building up our civil service capacity and experience of handling that level of procurement could improve how we buy new equipment and services elsewhere in the public sector. This could save money in the long run.

We have opportunities to learn lessons from the catalogue of mistakes made by the UK Government/MoD over the last 10-15 years.

Wales’ defence industry is already highly globalised, and we continue to have a fairly strong manufacturing base and track record. 

The Procurement Act 2023 would remain part of Welsh law after independence due to the common law system, so the regulatory/red tape framework would already be in place and largely aligned with England (until we decide to change it, or join the EU).

Even if Wales ends up spending most of its military capital budget with foreign suppliers, we could include contract clauses so that equipment is (at least partially) manufactured locally. This would be similar to the CAF plant at Newport for new trains.

There are emerging types of military equipment – likely to be in high demand – that ought to be straightforward to produce locally, such as smaller drones/UAVs and electronic warfare equipment.

There’s an opportunity to source more services and supplies (i.e. food, accommodation services) locally, leading to greater investment in the Welsh economy.

If Wales joins the EU after independence, we would become a party to the EU’s free trade deals and defence funds. This may make it a bit easier to buy defence equipment from major EU suppliers in Germany, France, Austria and Sweden.

There’s a moral argument that Wales should concentrate on spending money on people and services rather than defence. This would be tied to an idea (likely popular among those from the pacifist tradition) of Wales either having no military at all, or some kind of non-militarised “civil force”.

The Welsh Government are very unlikely to have any senior civil servants with experience of buying military equipment and services. This means that early procurement deals after independence are at risk of being handled poorly if we don’t have a clear process in place.

A lot of our defence equipment spending is likely to be outside Wales, as we can’t build everything ourselves (i.e. lack of shipbuilding capability). The irony is that this could boost Scottish and English manufacturing.

Defence procurement is often difficult based on the UK’s troubled track record. We complain about even small amounts of money being “wasted” in Wales, so if we wasted the kind of money the MoD has over the last few decades, it would cause serious political problems. We would need to get procurement right from the very start.

“Big ticket” military equipment is very expensive (i.e. fighter jets). Capital spending is usually spread across several years (i.e. as part of a 5 to 10-year investment programme). Despite this, if we want Wales to have top-tier equipment, it may divert funding from more routine purchases that are more urgently needed on the ground.

Welsh military suppliers may (but not necessarily would) face additional red tape when selling to the English military; this was looked at in more detail separately. Though this is likely to only be the case for security-sensitive services and equipment.

A bigger defence and security industry would likely make Wales more of a target for spying and sabotage, meaning we would need to redirect more resources towards national security.