Sovereignty, Speed, and Software: Systematic’s perspective three months on from the SDR

When the UK’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR) was released earlier this year, it marked a pivotal shift: warfighting readiness, digital advantage, and integrated forces are now recognised as imperatives rather than aspirations. Three months on, these themes are being translated into tangible requirements, urgent programmes, and new models of collaboration across Europe.

Andrew Graham, Group Senior Vice President for Business Development at Systematic Defence, shares his insight.

 From my perspective, this is both timely and necessary. With three decades in command-and-control and battle management systems, I see a clear opportunity to strengthen Europe’s sovereign capability — and a responsibility to deliver technologies that are resilient, interoperable, and mission-ready. 

At Systematic, our commitment remains firm: effective defence starts with clarity, speed, and coordination. Our role is to provide the software backbone that enables this. 

Strategic Collaboration: Strengthening capability 

One of the most significant developments since the SDR has been the deepening of European defence partnerships. Our collaboration with Helsing is a prime example — combining Systematic’s proven C2 software with Helsing’s advanced drone technology and our combined AI capabilities.

Together, we are delivering:

AI-enhanced decision-making

Secure, sovereign software solutions

Resilience against external dependencies

This isn’t just about technological edge; it’s about ensuring Europe can own and control its defence technology stack. Sovereignty in software and data is now as critical as sovereignty in platforms and weapons — and must be treated as such

Data Sovereignty: A European Principle with Global Impact

We are deeply committed to data sovereignty — an issue I know our customers remain deeply concerned about. Our values mean that we ensure customers will always retain full control over their data, whether hosted on-premise, in private cloud, or sovereign cloud environments.

And this principle is one with increasing global relevance. Many non-European customers now place the same emphasis on data ownership and control. For us, sovereignty goes beyond compliance — it’s about trust, transparency, and operational integrity and as the world shifts to a more defensive posture this is a critical value we will retain.

Adapting to a Shifting Geopolitical Landscape: Scalability and speed

Events in Ukraine, NATO’s evolving posture, and global power shifts are accelerating defence requirements as shown by the SDR. At Systematic, we’ve responded by fast-tracking developments in our roadmap — such as our new Targeting capability within the Fires product.

We’re also integrating enhanced AI capabilities — including large language models — embedding cloud-native functionality, and strengthening cyber resilience. A key part of our roadmap is improving coalition interoperability through continuous alignment with NATO Federated Mission Network (FMN) spirals, which encompasses a broad range of interoperability requirements.

This reflects the reality of modern operations: multi-domain by design, and all scalable across land, air, maritime, and joint forces. The demand is for agility — and we know that open, modular, software-driven solutions are key to delivering it.

A common question is whether software can scale at the pace operations demand. Our answer, backed by experience, is yes. We stay ahead of market developments and work hard to remain at the point of relevance. We’ve consistently scaled from small deployments to national infrastructures — always ensuring mission agility and maintaining continuous alignment with NATO Federated Mission Network (FMN) spirals to support coalition interoperability.

Conclusion: None of this is achieved in isolation

None of this is achieved in isolation. Our legacy — four decades of delivering world-class C4ISR software — is built on close collaboration with our customers. We pride ourselves on being agile, responsive, and mission-driven, and we value those relationships.

As Europe sharpens its defence posture, our confidence in the contribution we can make has only grown. The UK’s SDR was the start of a new chapter. Three months on, the direction is clear: sovereignty, scalability, and speed of integration will shape the future. As we develop SitaWare to evolve in step with the demands of modern defence, Systematic is ready to deliver exactly that.