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The British government is offering one of its highest ever pay packages to attract a new armaments chief, as the country tries to fix defence procurement at a critical time for European security.
The newly created post of national armaments director (NAD) will offer a salary of up to £400,000 per year, plus an annual bonus of up to 60 per cent of salary, meaning total package could be £640,000.
That is the same amount earned by the highest paid civil servant in 2022, the most recent year for which the Cabinet Office has published data on “high earners”. Mark Thurston, then-boss of the HS2 rail project, earned £640,000 that year.
The role’s large pay package, which was revealed on Tuesday, reflects the UK’s urgent need to fix its defence procurement process, which has a 10 year budget of almost £300bn, but that UK defence secretary John Healey and several of his predecessors have repeatedly characterised as “broken”.
“The successful candidate will be vital to fixing the broken procurement system . . . The threat we face is growing; this is a serious appointment to spearhead the national arsenal, and to help make Britain secure at home and strong abroad,” Healey said.
The search is being led by the headhunters Korn Ferry. The post’s pay package dwarfs the prime minister’s pay of about £170,000, but is comparable to Nick Elliott’s, chief executive of the Atomic Weapons Establishment, which makes Britain’s nuclear warheads, who was paid £452,000 in 2023.
The salary is still far less than the multimillion pound packages paid to top executives in the private sector, such as Charles Woodburn, chief executive of BAE Systems, who earned £11.7mn in 2024.
The job’s high total potential salary package was a win for Healey, who industry figures said had fought hard to secure support from Treasury for the pay award.
Senior defence officials said it reflected the need to attract serious managerial talent to reduce waste in the UK’s more than £60bn a year defence budget, streamline the Ministry of Defence, and buy more from smaller, cutting edge companies.
These are often more innovative than big defence companies, the so-called “primes”, which the MoD traditionally relies on. The Pentagon has similarly sought to disrupt its procurement process, by setting up a venture capital-type unit called Unit X that is tasked to fund promising technology start-ups.
“The NAD needs to shape the market,” said one senior British official. “Hopefully the NAD won’t be from one of the primes. We need a disrupter, an outsider. We have to revolutionise the way procurement is done.”
Healey has described the role as creating a “FTSE 100 company inside the Ministry of Defence”.
Potential candidates pinpointed by officials include Jeremy Quin, a former investment banker and minister of state for defence procurement under the previous Conservative government. The Labour administration also appointed him to support its strategic defence review’s core team of reviewers.
Various UK defence industry executives have also been sounded out although most would have to take a pay cut. Francis Tusa, editor of Defence Analysis and a British defence expert, is also known to be interested.
The selection process is slated to end in June with Andy Start, current head of MoD procurement, acting as interim NAD until then.
The new role is part of a wider defence shake-up as part of which Healey will centralise control of the military’s four services — the army, navy, air force and strategic command — under the chief of the defence staff, the head of the British military, for the first time.
