Journal
For this latest tranche of PACE AIR hardware heading to the UK Ministry of Defence, the answer to both was yes. At a time when global technology supply chains are under acute strain and lead times fluctuate wildly, hitting that baseline took rigorous planning around constraints rather than hoping to bypass them.
As a UK sovereign SME, we design in-house, manufacture using local partners and assemble in the UK. Our choice to source from British partners is deliberate. It builds resilience when global routes fracture, ensures our supply chain is transparently audited, and keeps our partners close. While local sourcing doesn't automatically shield anyone from market pressures, having longstanding, collaborative relationships with our suppliers means we can tackle those challenges together and manage costs effectively before they impact the customer.
After successfully delivering a complex project during a period of unprecedented market disruption, we invited the MoD team to our Westcott facility.
The goal wasn't just to hand over hardware. We wanted to celebrate a successful outcome, recognise the contributions of our team and UK supply-chain partners, and demonstrate what an agile UK SME can achieve when challenges arise.
Beyond showcasing the completed systems, we wanted to give the customer complete confidence in the processes behind them — from manufacturing and quality assurance through to FAKTRI, our in-house automated build and deployment platform that helps ensure repeatable, high-quality outcomes.
Just as importantly, we wanted to understand what comes next. By listening to the challenges facing defence and discussing future requirements, we gained valuable insight into how we can continue to support the MoD beyond this project, because successful delivery is not the end of the relationship. It's the foundation for the next challenge.
Those conversations also highlighted how closely our capabilities map to the wider architectures driving modern defence. Whether through our work touching frameworks like ASGARD, Sense Defence Effect (SDE), Zodiac, CWIX, or FMN, the core challenge remains identical: delivering assured, deployable compute to the point of need and ensuring it interoperates seamlessly with allies.
Jon Sillito, SO1 Coalition within National Armaments Digital & Data (NA-D&D), spent that time in direct conversation with our engineering team. We genuinely value these discussions. Having our engineers directly involved means we can listen to client use cases, ideas, and feedback and figure out what we can do from our side to assist.
“We are extremely pleased with the outcome of the delivery. It was completed on schedule, reflecting excellent planning, disciplined execution, and a strong commitment to stakeholder outcomes.”
"May I also say that to deliver the quantity of equipment that Antillion did, on time and within cost, was seriously impressive, noting the pressures of rising IT costs and within the context of acute supply chain issues. This was to support carefully programmed army outputs, where delays to delivery would have meant delaying or not conducting critical force validation activity to be held at readiness for operations."
Jon Sillito, SO1 Coalition within National Armaments Digital & Data (NA-D&D)
Staying Connected Delivering on time and on budget is critical, but the value goes beyond the initial handover. Maintaining a genuinely connected relationship with our customers ensures we truly understand their operational reality, and that kind of close collaboration is what helps us build a more thoughtful, effective product
We look forward to keeping those conversations going.
Designed with purpose. Built for the edge.
