DSEI 2025: preparation, deterrence and a global Britain

Show floor at DSEI 2023, Excel, London. Credit: Clarion

Alot has happened in the last year as the geopolitical scene continues to deteriorate. Theatres of war are either intensifying or emerging around the world from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Subsaharan Africa, among many other regions. 

New challenges are also unravelling in the battlespace, prompting innovation and scalability in the global defence industry. Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), for example, have changed the way forces operate at each level of warfare. 

Pulling all of this together, the organisers behind the biennial Defence Security Equipment International (DSEI) are mobilising to meet coalitionary concerns at the London exhibition taking place at the Excel between 9-12 September 2025. 

“The world has changed immeasurably,” Gary Waterfall, former RAF Air Vice Marshall and now senior military adviser at DSEI 25, told Global Defence Technology in an exclusive interview, “and that’s one of our difficulties as we try and look two years ahead to see where we’re going to be.” 

However, this time around, the gathering is planned to be larger in capacity and attendance. With the extension at the Excel centre being used for DSEI 25, the event has sold the total equivalent floor space used in the last edition – with approximately one year still to go.

Moreover, some 20% of customers are new, and 30 international pavilions are booked to date with Czechia and Luxembourg joining as participants for the first time. The growth of the exhibition indicates that forces are coming together, with DSEI a global melting pot for engagement and interoperability for the sake of protecting shared strategic level values. 

Gary Waterfall: When we set this we didn’t know where we would be at the end of 2024, let alone where we’re going to be in September 2025. The theme is deliberately quite broad because within that broadness you can narrow it down into an area that’s appropriate and that’s pertinent. We need to be very careful that in setting our theme, we don't go down a narrow lens. 

Everything I’m hearing, everything I’m seeing, places the tack that preparing the Future Force is exactly the right theme to have because it talks about the future force of today getting better with what they’ve got. 

The nature of warfare in Ukraine has iterated lots and lots of times in the relatively brief time in the history of warfare that this conflict has gone on. Look most recently in the Middle East. Look at the ability of weaponising handheld devices, how does that change communication channels? What has that done in the nature of conflict?  

So, it’s as much about preparing the future today by harnessing that as it is looking at where the geopolitical tensions are. 

We’re really aware of what’s going on with Russia and Ukraine, and what technology areas all of the potential alarm bells are signalling. In five years in time, how do we get ourselves prepared in that future force? We do it through interoperability and integration – not just nationally, but multinationally, and that, again, speaks volumes to DSEI. 

That’s why the US pavilion, covering Canada and the US is the biggest it will ever have been. That’s why we’re having nations that don’t sit as part of Nato, wanting to come and exhibit at DSEI. 

Gary Waterfall: It is. We’ve got nations that are coming to DSEI that haven’t come previously or have come with a light touch, and what they’ve seen is that they need to find out what is going on. What are the latest advances? What is the latest UK thinking, and what are we doing? 

Events such as DSEI 25 do not go unnoticed on the world stage, generally, by those people that are not allowed to come. They’ll all sit and they’ll monitor and they’ll see what is going on… it becomes really powerful, and far stronger than the thousands of people that will be there just for those four days. 

It performs a really effective and powerful deterrence. Think about Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine. [The Russian President Vladimir Putin] did not expect to have the resistance that he has seen, not just from Ukraine, but from those people who hold values dear. He now sees more and more people and countries and allies and partners gather behind it, and DSEI is part of this. 

I mean, look at Finland and Sweden in Nato – that was unthinkable three or four years ago, and now it’s reality. 

Gary Waterfall: ​​​​​​​The Defence Review is going to report at some stage next year, before DSEI. Defence historically has been guilty of wanting 110% or 120% of a capability, and only when it’s good enough will it be taken into service. Do you know what? I’d take double the quantity at 80% of the capability, because mass is coming back into play. Now it’s about mass, and to get affordable mass you have to compromise elements of exquisite capability.

Look at the fact that today, as we speak, there are UK Storm Shadow [cruise missiles] flying on Ukrainian aircraft. One of my previous jobs was doing operational test and evaluation. I know how difficult it is to integrate a complex weapon onto a platform. They have done it because they have accepted risk, and that’s something, again, that we need to do. We’ve got a lot to learn from Ukraine. 

I cannot predict the outcome of the Defence Review. I think it will point at the dangers that we face in the world. It’s not going to talk about programmes. I don’t think it’s going to talk [about] the threats that face us, and this is what we need to do in a priority order to address some of these threats, and here is the money that we’re allocating to it – we’ve done that in competition with health, education, pensions, etc. So that’s what you’ve got. So, no blank checkbook, not really a rebalancing, I think a real understanding of the threat and what we should do about it. 

Gary Waterfall: Whether the speaker chooses to be very candid is really up to them. And I know some of the great successes last time were when you had the most candid speaker who can talk about where they’re vulnerable, the key capabilities that they’re short of, or where they need to do some more research.  

I know you only have to go after the session to look at the queue of people that are going up, just to dig down to that next level to see how beneficial it is. And it is the only time you’re going to get the whole of UK defence under one platform, standing on the stage and being honest about what they think they’re good at and what they want to get better. 

Australia could be one of the main beneficiaries of this dramatic increase in demand, where private companies and local governments alike are eager to expand the country’s nascent rare earths production. In 2021, Australia produced the fourth-most rare earths in the world. It’s total annual production of 19,958 tonnes remains significantly less than the mammoth 152,407 tonnes produced by China, but a dramatic improvement over the 1,995 tonnes produced domestically in 2011.

The dominance of China in the rare earths space has also encouraged other countries, notably the US, to look further afield for rare earth deposits to diversify their supply of the increasingly vital minerals. With the US eager to ringfence rare earth production within its allies as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, including potentially allowing the Department of Defense to invest in Australian rare earths, there could be an unexpected windfall for Australian rare earths producers.