Capability is not sovereignty: a conversation on control, cost, and credibility in defence

Sovereign capability is politically and strategically necessary but, at times, operationally mishandled.

As a phrase, sovereign capability is gaining significant attention across defence and policy circles. Christopher Salmon (clearBorder’s Chief Executive and former adviser to UK Cabinet Ministers on trade and border policy) has spent years working at the intersection of defence, regulation, and procurement. He makes clear that its meaning – and its limits – are often more complex than the language might suggest.

“It is a bit of a buzzword,” he says candidly. “But the central concept isn’t new. What’s changed is the context. We’re no longer thinking in a ‘post-war’ environment. Increasingly, people are talking in ‘pre-war’ terms. That changes how seriously you take questions of control.”

At its simplest, sovereign capability is intuitive. “It’s the technology you can use,” he explains, “without being restricted by somebody else.” 

The challenge for aerospace, defence, and other sector leaders – in a fragmenting geopolitical world – is that simplicity rarely survives contact with reality.

An illusion of control?

“Sovereign capability is not an absolute concept,” he says. “You’re not either sovereign capable or not sovereign capable. The more of the chain you control, the better. But you’re never going to control all of it.

“People can slip into quite comforting language,” he continues. “We’ll build this, we’ll own that, we’ll be sovereign. But the reality is much more constrained.”

In practice, capability and control are not the same thing. “You can own a system,” he says, “you can operate it, you can deploy it. But if there are restrictions on how you use it, modify it, or transfer it, then your sovereignty is already conditional.”

Programmes such as AUKUS (and SSN-AUKUS submarines) illustrate this clearly: advanced capability can be delivered through alliance, while still operating within layers of shared control, regulatory constraint, and partner alignment.

That conditionality is often overlooked at boardroom level, where strategic narratives can run ahead of operational detail.

“There’s always been a desire for states to control their advantage,” he adds. “That hasn’t changed. What changes is what counts as strategic, and who controls it.”

And, sometimes, the issue is less about advanced technology than it is about something far more fundamental. “It’s a question of capacity. It doesn’t matter how clever your system is if you can’t produce it at scale. If you’ve only got a million shells and you’re firing a million a week, you’ve got a problem very quickly.”

The compliance infrastructure behind sovereignty

“People often think of sovereign capability in terms of hardware,” Christopher says. “In practice, it’s governed by legal and regulatory frameworks, just as much as anything else.”

Export controls, licensing regimes, national security interventions… these are not peripheral considerations. They define the boundaries of what is possible.

Frameworks such as ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations), for example, can extend control well beyond national borders. “You can buy something, integrate it, make it part of your system,” Christopher says. “But if it’s subject to external control, then the permission structure doesn’t sit with you.”

In the UK, mechanisms such as the National Security and Investment (NSI) Act reinforce this further, embedding government oversight directly into transactions, ownership structures, and strategic supply chains. 

This is where sovereign capability becomes less about ownership and more about good governance.

For smaller organisations, this can show up as uncertainty. “Maybe they know they’re dealing with something sensitive,” he notes. “They know it’s dual-use, say, or regulated, or restricted. But they don’t always have the infrastructure to manage that properly.”

For larger defence organisations, the stakes are higher – and more strategic.

“The question becomes: do we build around something that gives us capability now, but constrains us later? Or do we invest in something that gives us more freedom of action long term?”

That is not a compliance question. It’s a strategic one.

Cost that doesn’t sit on the balance sheet

Because sovereign capability is often overestimated in principle, it is frequently undercosted in practice.

“Organisations will model the upfront cost,” Christopher says. “They won’t always model the downstream constraints.”

And those constraints don’t always appear immediately. “They show up later,” he explains. “When you try to sell something and can’t. When you try to redeploy something and need permission. When your supply chain turns out to be more fragile than you thought.”

In some cases, the issue is visibility. “Control lists change. Sanctions change. The environment shifts,” he says. “You may not even realise that something you’re dependent upon has become restricted.”

In others, it is structural. “If you’re reliant on a particular component, or a particular material, or a particular jurisdiction,” he says, “then you are exposed. Whether you planned for that or not.”

That kind of dependency is an expensive knot to untie. “The market will find alternatives,” he notes. “But it won’t be quick. And it won’t be cheap.”

And then there’s the cost of reaction. “I think a lot of organisations are still responding to events,” he says. “The world is moving faster than they are. That’s where the real risk sits.” Not in the headline capability, but in the constraints beneath it.

Because – by the time a constraint becomes visible – it is, often, already embedded.

What the strongest organisations do differently

Despite this complexity, sovereign capability is not an abstract problem, but a management discipline, and it requires a paradigm shift in how organisations conceptualise their operating environment.

“The first thing is foresight,” he says. “You have to look ahead. You can’t just react.”

“For a long time, businesses were forging ahead happily. New technology, new markets, new opportunities. Geopolitics was kind of in the background,” he explains. “That’s changed. Politics is now a much bigger part of business decision-making.”

The implication is that supply chains, compliance, and geopolitical exposure all need to be treated as core operational concerns.

“You manage your finances carefully. You need to manage your international supply chains in the same way. It’s more important to make sure they can hold up under pressure.”

And it requires accepting that uncertainty is here to stay. “Doubt and ambiguity are part of the international system now,” he adds. “You have to plan for it.”

Sovereignty as a managed condition

The conversation around sovereign capability is not going away – if anything, it’s becoming more important – but, as Christopher makes clear, it needs to be understood on more realistic terms.

“There’s no country in the world that doesn’t need to trade,” he says. “You’re always going to be dependent on something.” In the modern world, that renders ‘real’ sovereignty as something conditional.

“Essentially, it’s about how much of the chain you control,” he says. “And what that allows you to do.”

For defence leaders, the question isn’t  “are we sovereign?” – but:

• Where are we constrained?

• Where are we exposed?

• And where does control actually sit?

Because sovereignty is something that has to be built, tested, and managed – continuously. As Christopher puts it, “the more of it you can genuinely hold onto… the better.”

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