Delivering Capability Faster: How modular design aligns with New Zealand’s Defence Industry Strategy
- John Gell
- Oct 9
- 3 min read
The release of New Zealand’s Defence Industry Strategy 2025 marks a decisive evolution in how Defence and industry will collaborate to deliver capability. It shifts the focus from traditional, sequential acquisition to an agile, partnership-based approach - one that prizes adaptability, resilience and speed of delivery.
Over the next four years, the NZ Government has committed more than $12 billion to Defence capability and infrastructure. An increase of $9 billion on baseline funding. By the early 2030s, Defence spending will exceed 2 percent of GDP, doubling New Zealand’s current investment level. This uplift is not simply financial; it’s structural. The Defence Industry Strategy makes clear that achieving capability outcomes will rely on co-development with local industry and a procurement system that can act faster and smarter.
A Strategy Built on “Understand, Partner, Act”
The strategy’s three pillars - understand, partner, and act - set out how Defence intends to work with industry. It calls for deeper knowledge of New Zealand’s industrial base, tighter collaboration with innovators, and streamlined procurement to bring systems into service faster.
This mirrors the philosophy underpinning modular mission systems. Modular architectures make Defence’s investment pipeline visible and adaptable. They invite early engagement from smaller technology firms and enable capabilities to be integrated, tested and fielded incrementally rather than through single, monolithic projects.
Modular Systems and the Capability Management Framework
The Capability Management Framework (CMF) already provides Defence with a structured process for managing capability through its life cycle - from concept and definition through to in-service operation and disposal. Within that framework, the Engineering Change Proposal (ECP) process is the mechanism that allows approved modifications, technology insertions, or system upgrades to be assessed, validated, and implemented.
Modular systems are inherently compatible with this process. Each module can be treated as a discrete capability element - complete with its own configuration baseline, test certification and change documentation. When new mission requirements emerge, Defence can raise an ECP for a specific module rather than an entire platform. This reduces administrative overhead, shortens approval cycles and ensures configuration control without disrupting operational availability.
In practice, modularity transforms the CMF from a linear workflow into a dynamic loop: the fleet or system remains continuously upgradable, with engineering changes managed through the existing governance structure. It allows Defence to apply the minimum viable capability (MVC) concept described in the strategy - delivering what is needed now, then evolving capability through controlled, data-backed increments.
Strengthening Sovereign Resilience
With more than 800 New Zealand suppliers contributing to the national defence industrial base, modular frameworks create common interfaces that enable those firms to collaborate across projects and domains. They make it possible for local manufacturers, electronics integrators, and software developers to contribute interoperable components under the same engineering standards used by Defence.
That interoperability underpins sovereign resilience. It localises sustainment, reduces reliance on long supply chains and ensures critical systems can be adapted or repaired in-country under existing ECP procedures. Exactly the kind of flexibility the Strategy identifies as vital for national security.
Interoperability Across the Tasman
The Defence Industry Strategy also emphasises closer alignment with Australia’s Defence Industry Development Strategy and the Closer Defence Relations agreement. Modular designs directly support that intent. Common containerised interfaces and open data standards make it possible for both nations’ forces to share mission modules, sustainment practices and engineering change documentation seamlessly through their respective CMFs.
A Shared Vision
Ultimately, the Defence Industry Strategy 2025 is about tempo: how rapidly capability can be delivered, sustained and improved. Modular design, supported by the proven CMF + ECP ecosystem, gives New Zealand a way to achieve that tempo responsibly and sustainably. It aligns engineering discipline with operational agility, enabling Defence to deliver capability faster, with resilience and in partnership with Kiwi industry.
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