The export potential of equipment is both an aspiration of the UK defence industry and linked to the development of affordable, lower risk products for the MoD.
Many industry participants commented to the Review team that the acceptability of a piece of equipment to the UK Armed Forces is a key issue in determining whether or not other countries are interested in acquiring particular equipments. Equally well, some commented that the costs of some capabilities fielded by the UK forces were prohibitive for other, smaller countries.
In areas where an "80% solution" is a viable option for the UK forces, the potential export market may be that much larger, and the overheads and development costs of the defence industry covered by greater throughput. There is thus an alignment between the interests of the UK Armed Forces and industry to achieve "good enough" answers to equipment needs that have greater export potential, provided perverse incentives within the UK system can be overcome.
Consideration about how well a particular piece of equipment might fare in the export market is a key issue right back at the design stage in some countries, such as France. Yet this is not considered strongly as a priority in the UK. While the importance of the defence industrial base has been better recognised in recent years it is still questionable as to whether export considerations feature strongly enough in UK thinking.