“Engage with the operational problem”: how software innovation can boost UK defence

Brought to you in partnership with OBSS

For more than two decades, OBSS has engineered mission-critical software for complex defence programmes, with much of its experience centred on command and control (C2) systems delivered alongside Turkish primes and across NATO-aligned environments. As the company expands its UK presence, it aims to bring this engineering experience to UK primes facing growing demand for faster, interoperable and software-defined capability.

According to Şen, “software has become one of the major decision factors in modern warfare”, with a majority of the platforms operated by the world’s leading armed forces constrained less by hardware and more by the speed of software spiral upgrades.

This view underpins OBSS’s approach to the UK defence and national security market following the publication of the long-awaited Defence Investment Plan on 30 June which, Şen said, showed the country is looking to “buy and deliver capability with a clear move towards outcome-oriented models and a greater role for technology-enabled delivery”.

“That shift is now reaching the point where UK programmes are structured around it, and it plays directly into what we built OBSS to do.”

This “structural shift”, he said, now favours development and engineering providers willing to take responsibility across the entire software life cycle, creating a perfect opportunity for OBSS as a “C2 software engineering partner to defence contractors, with over 20 years of embedded engineering experience with Turkish primes, NATO facility security clearance, and key industry accreditations already in place”.

Embedding defence collaboration

Headquartered in Istanbul, with an established and growing presence in London, OBSS’s entry into the UK market is reflective of deepening ties between the two countries and follows Türkiye’s £8 billion decision to purchase 20 British-manufactured Typhoon combat jets in October 2025.

“The Turkish and UK ecosystems are becoming increasingly aligned to the kind of engineering capability OBSS brings. This is a market entry timed to leverage capability that already exists, in a partnership and policy context that supports it,” Şen said.

As one of NATO’s fastest-moving defence innovators, Türkiye has become a specialist in software-intensive capability. “Introduce this to the UK, one of the world’s strongest defence ecosystems, and it is clear how these complementary strengths can create opportunities together”, he added.

“With NATO leaders having convened in Ankara in July, and NATO and industry gathering in İzmir for NATO Edge in November, the strategic importance of the UK-Türkiye relationship is only becoming more visible. Record volumes of private capital are being drawn into European defence, and the number of new market entrants is rising alongside it. That is a healthy signal for the sector, but it also means maturity across the ecosystem now varies widely.”

OBSS believes its experience and dual UK-Türkiye presence positions it to support this growing relationship. As a mature player, versed in complex, multi-year capability delivery within high-assurance environments, the company already sits inside a similar ecosystem, with embedded engineering relationships with Turkish primes.

“OBSS offers that dual footprint, backed by a delivery record to guarantee as deep a collaboration as possible in practice, not just in principle. UK primes get delivery capability rooted in both markets, with continued investment in the UK,” Şen explained, highlighting the company’s capacity to build and manage relationships which attract talent, capital and international collaboration.

“That is what turns two strong markets into one delivery partnership,” he said. “The opportunity allows UK primes to draw on operationally proven C2 engineering capability that already exists in the Turkish defence ecosystem, rather than building an equivalent capability from scratch. That is where OBSS can be a trusted engineering partner, not only in the UK-Türkiye context but across NATO more broadly.”

Technology partner requirements

Successful UK defence partners must be able to contribute across mission-critical software delivery with clear engineering accountability, reduce integration risk and improve delivery confidence across a programme, rather than sitting at its advisory edges, Şen advised.

“Today, the substantial majority of OBSS’s defence capability is centred on C2 software engineering, supported by adjacent mission-critical engineering capabilities. The next phase is UK growth and bringing the same standard of delivery to programmes here,” he explained.

“The best technology partners engage with the operational problem itself, not just with the written requirement, which can change once a programme is in the field. Partners who understand this can adapt without waiting for a formal change request every time reality moves faster than the paperwork.”

According to Şen, C2 systems across air, land and joint operations must work effectively within coalition and NATO-aligned environments, requiring engineering architectures to remain interoperable as programmes evolve and new capabilities are introduced.

“This is where experience matters. NATO STANAG-aligned engineering and a proven track record of multi-domain coordination count for more than any single-point solution,” he said, referencing OBSS’s work on Network Enabled Capability (NEC), a flagship network-enabled C2 programme connecting command posts, vehicles, weapons and soldiers across national and NATO exercises.

“The outcome here was a shared operational picture that enabled commanders to coordinate multiple units through a single trusted view, reducing the need for manual coordination between separate systems and enabling faster, more informed operational decisions across coalition environments.”

But Şen also warned of a “genuine skills gap” in a sector where increasingly complex defence programmes demand growing numbers of engineers capable of working across software, architecture, DevSecOps and mission-critical delivery.

“OBSS complements UK defence programmes with engineering teams experienced in delivering complex software programmes across the full life cycle. We bring genuine heritage in interoperability as a design principle, built through years of scaling engineering delivery inside a NATO-aligned environment.

“Those are lessons we’ve learned through delivering complex programmes, and we’re looking forward to bringing that experience into partnership with UK primes,” he stated.

Software delivery challenges

But delivery of software into defence programmes is not without its challenges, Şen conceded.

“I can speak from our experience operating across NATO programmes and what we are learning as we engage with the UK market. Integration complexity is the most common recurring challenge: pulling together air, electronic warfare [EW], battlefield management and intelligence data into a single C2 picture, often on legacy foundations that cannot be replaced overnight.

“The second challenge is balancing pace with assurance. Programmes are under pressure to modernise quickly, but every change still passes through security clearance, governance and operational risk requirements that cannot be rushed,” he warned, citing OBSS’s support to NATO’s INTEL-FS2 modernisation programme inside a classified software factory, holding the alliance’s Secret and National Secret clearance.

“This automated testing framework maintained zero regression defects and every NATO delivery checkpoint was met across the three-year programme,” Şen said. “This is a real example of balancing pace with assurance.”

Additional challenges include trust, he continued, warning that the defence market is a “risk-averse” sector in which primes are reluctant to hand meaningful work to partners they have not tested over time.

“Long-term relationships are how that risk gets managed,” Şen said. When OBSS first entered the defence market in Türkiye, “we invested time in understanding the prime’s delivery environment and the customer’s operational challenges before any commercial engagement. That relationship is what eventually led to OBSS’s first project, and to a decade-long partnership.”

Offering AI-enabled engineering and delivery

OBSS’s “AI-native” approach means that AI is integrated across the engineering life cycle from the outset, within a governed and traceable delivery model.

In practice, this approach can support simulation and digital twins during design and testing, DevSecOps pipelines, and data integration and decision support, bringing together processed radar, EW and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) inputs to support a trusted common operational picture, Şen said.

“This matters more now than it did five years ago. The clearest lesson from Europe is that the capability advantage no longer sits with the side that fields the best system. It sits with the side that can modify a fielded system fastest. Integrating AI into engineering and delivery can help compress those cycles without giving up the assurance the capability depends on.

“OBSS is focused on structured, governed and production-grade engineering, with every output traceable, assured and accountable, because in operational conditions decisions must be explainable rather than simply trusted,” he added.

“That is a design requirement from the start rather than something demonstrated after the fact. This approach supports the speed and delivery confidence required for mission-critical software.

And according to Şen, the successful adoption of AI into defence programmes can be measured by reliability and predictability.

“You are aiming for faster, higher-confidence delivery cycles and reduced integration risk across multi-domain programmes, without compromising the assurance or governance that defence environments require,” he said.

“This means programme leads and engineers can trust transparent and explainable capability. That trust is what turns a pilot project into an operational capability,” Şen continued, highlighting how effective AI adoption helps provide end users with optimal levels of confidence in the information provided to them.

“Rather than automating isolated tasks, AI is integrated into engineering life-cycle processes to strengthen design decisions, accelerate verification and improve delivery confidence without compromising programme governance,” he said.

“In practice, the emphasis is on decision support rather than autonomous decision-making. AI helps fuse and correlate multi-domain sensor data to give operators a clearer common tactical picture, but the human stays firmly in the loop for mission-critical judgment.”

Future defence technology

Turning to the future, Şen predicts that the next five years will see defence platforms becoming increasingly software-defined and coalition-aligned.

“The demand for NATO-aligned engineering and interoperable software will continue to grow. AI will complete its shift from pilot projects to embedded, governed engineering practice inside defence primes.

“It is also where we see the sector heading next. AI is increasingly being embedded within training, simulation and selected EW applications as part of governed engineering and delivery processes,” he continued.

And in terms of OBSS itself, Şen has a clear vision of the company’s goal of becoming a trusted partner for UK defence programmes where reliability, engineering discipline and long-term delivery matter most.

Find out more about the capabilities OBSS can bring to UK defence.