You can become a supplier to the Ministry of Defence in two ways. You can bid for MOD contracts directly, or you can sell to the prime contractors who deliver MOD work, and to tier 1 suppliers (the firms that sell straight to those primes).
The MOD's own guide to becoming a supplier calls bidding for published contracts the most direct way in. It also says every advertised MOD contract goes on the Defence Sourcing Portal.
The direct route is the smaller one for SMEs. The MOD spends around £5bn a year with SMEs. About 25% of that is awarded directly, and about 75% reaches smaller firms through the supply chain, according to the MOD SME Action Plan.
So treat MOD supplier entry as two separate jobs. The formal job is registration, frameworks and bids. The commercial job is getting known by the category, supply chain and program people at the primes before they have a gap to fill. The portal covers the first job. Outbound covers the second. This guide gives you a decision rule for each.
What are the routes into MOD supply?
There are two ways to sell, plus support routes that help you use them.
Bid directly. Every advertised MOD contract is on the Defence Sourcing Portal, and many high-value ones also appear on Find a Tender, the cross-government tender site. For some contracts you first have to join a framework or a dynamic market. These are pre-approved supplier pools. Some stay open permanently. Others close and only reopen later, so check the window before you plan a bid.
Sell through a prime. The MOD names a small group of strategic suppliers, and its guide has a section on contracting through a prime supplier. On this route the prime is your customer.
Use the support routes. The same guide points to several sources of help:
- Commercial X
- UK Defence Innovation
- The UKDE Export Faculty, for defence exporters
- Defence Office for Small Business Growth
These help you understand the system and meet people. None of them places an order.
Here is the decision rule for the first two routes:
| Lead with direct MOD bids when | Lead with prime and tier 1 entry when |
|---|---|
| You can deliver a complete requirement on your own | You make a part, a service or a capability that sits inside a bigger program |
| Your category is advertised regularly, or a framework you qualify for is open | Your fit depends on one platform, site or program that a prime runs |
| You have bid writing capacity and can wait on tender timetables | You want a first order and a track record before you bid alone |
| You already hold public sector references | Your references come from commercial work or from another prime's supply chain |
Most smaller companies end up running both: registered and watching tenders, while working on the primes in parallel. Your own history decides which one leads.
My rule is to start with your own customers before you pick a route. I look at who paid you over the past year, then find out who actually approved each order. Suppose the honest answer is two subcontract orders from one prime's site. Then the prime route already has a head start, and the next places to look are other programs at that prime and at similar primes.
What does the MOD SME spend target mean for suppliers?
The SME Action Plan commits the MOD to lifting what it spends with smaller firms by 50% by summer 2028, which adds £2.5 billion on top of the current baseline. The MOD says it already works with around 12,000 SMEs through its supply chain.
The plan defines an SME as a company with fewer than 250 staff and either turnover no higher than £44 million or total assets on the balance sheet no higher than £38 million.
Read the target next to the 25/75 split. The plan does not promise that the split will hold. If it does hold, most of the extra £2.5 billion would arrive as orders from primes and tier 1s, not as direct MOD contracts. That changes where a smaller supplier should spend its sales hours.
The government is also signaling that access should get easier. The Defence Investment campaign page makes three points:
- The government wants selling goods and services into the MOD to be simpler.
- The SME Action Plan will include a new commercial pathway designed for smaller businesses.
- Small defence firms are promised a new Defence Office for Small Business Growth, meant to help them reach public funding and private investors.
The Defence Investment Plan adds the money side. The MOD and HM Treasury published it on 30 June 2026, and it puts £298bn behind defence across four years.
The official statistics are the reality check. In 2024/25 the MOD Core Department paid £40.6 billion to suppliers, excluding foreign military sales. 45% of those payments went through non-competitive sourcing, according to the MOD trade, industry and contracts statistics for 2025. The same year it placed £21.4 billion of new contracts, and 49% were awarded non-competitively.
Nearly half of those new contracts had no open competition, so a newcomer had no tender to answer. A target is not an order. Don't plan your year around a number nobody has promised you.
Where do you register for defence opportunities?
The main portal is the Defence Sourcing Portal at www.contracts.mod.uk. The MOD guidance on portals and bidding tips says it covers all public opportunities worth more than £10,000. Registration is one-time and asks for three things:
- Your company registration
- A DUNS number from Dun & Bradstreet
- Cyber Essentials certification
The defence opportunities you can watch are spread across a few places:
| Where | What it carries | Who should watch it |
|---|---|---|
| Defence Sourcing Portal | All advertised MOD contracts, public opportunities over £10,000 | Any company that wants to bid directly |
| Find a Tender | The cross-government site where the MOD posts many of its high-value contracts | Companies going after larger direct awards |
| R-Cloud | The Dstl portal for contract research | Research-led firms with early-stage technology |
| Frameworks and dynamic markets | Pre-approved supplier pools that some bids require | Companies whose category is bought through one |
Once you are registered, you can see advertised work, and you have the basics a buyer checks before taking you seriously.
Registration does not tell you who at a prime manages your category. It does not put you in a conversation before a requirement is written. The same portals guidance notes that SMEs often use the portals as the starting point for a business development plan, rather than to bid directly. Everything below is about building that plan.
Who is the real decision-maker at a defence prime?
At a prime, the person who decides whether your company gets a first order is rarely a generic buyer. It is usually someone who owns a piece of spend or delivery:
- A category manager or category lead for the commodity you sell
- A supply chain manager or head of supply chain for a specific site
- A program manager or program director who needs a capability delivered on time
- An engineering lead who has to approve a new source for a part or subsystem
To find which of these matters for you, start from evidence. When I build a list for a client, I start with their past projects and work out who actually made the call on each one. Then I target the real titles used in that niche, never a catch-all "manager".
The title word alone tells you little. A bare "Manager", "Assistant" or "Associate" with no function attached comes off my lists. A title like "Category Manager, Electronics" at a prime's site tells you almost everything you need.
UK job titles may use the British spelling, so search both "program" and "programme" in Sales Navigator or in your boolean string.
After past clients come the lookalikes. In defence, the lookalike is often another program at the same prime, or a similar program run by a different prime.
This is why an account map beats a broad list. A list of every prime with one contact each is close to useless. A map of three prime sites, with the category, supply chain and program people at each one, gives you nine named people to write to.
| Buyer route | Who usually decides | Right first action |
|---|---|---|
| Direct MOD tender | MOD commercial team, against published evaluation criteria | Register, watch the portal and bid only where you fit the requirement |
| Prime, category spend | Category manager or lead for your commodity | Show similar parts or services you already deliver and ask what the category is short of |
| Prime, site supply chain | Supply chain manager or head of supply chain at that site | Ask for a short conversation about lead times and second sources |
| Prime, program | Program manager or program director | Tie your proof to a program like theirs |
| Tier 1 subsystem supplier | Supply chain or engineering lead for that subsystem | Name the subsystem and the closest work you have done to it |
Why does outbound matter if the portal already exists?
The portal publishes requirements. It does not reach the people who manage categories, supply chains and programs at the primes. Outbound fills that gap. It starts a conversation with the right person before an opportunity is public, or when it would be hard to find at all.
Those people sit on the supply chain side, where about 75% of SME spend arrives.
So measure the first months by conversations started with the right people, not by calls booked. Calls come out of conversations, and contracts come out of calls.
Outbound sits next to procurement and replaces none of it. You still register, and you still bid when a direct requirement fits.
Take a small engineering supplier whose parts already reach one prime's site through a second-tier subcontract. It is an illustration, not a client.
- Start from the paperwork you already have. List every prime, site and program your parts or services ended up in, past and current, and who approved each order. Those buyers come first.
- Map three lookalike accounts. That prime's site, one other program at the same prime, and one similar program at a second prime. At each, find the category lead for machined parts, the site supply chain manager and the program manager.
- Open on LinkedIn without a pitch. Connect with a note that names the kind of work you have delivered near their program.
- Follow up with proof. Put the work you have already delivered for primes and any result you can show into the message, along with your Defence Sourcing Portal registration and your Cyber Essentials certificate, so the reader has nothing basic left to check. Who sends it also matters: I have seen one company get a 2% reply rate and another 7.5% on an identical message.
- Ask a small question. For example: are they looking at second sources for machined parts on that program this year? A yes, a no or "talk to my colleague" all move the account forward.
How should defence suppliers sequence LinkedIn and email?
One or two messages never carry it, so plan a minimum of 5 to 6 touches across both channels.
Open on LinkedIn, then let email follow, and leave real time between messages. See how the two channels hand over to each other in running LinkedIn and email as one outreach sequence.
Then plan for the qualification cycle. Many defence supplier decisions involve engineering approval, quality checks and a program timetable, so the first call opens the qualification process rather than closing a sale.
Deals in this space are usually big, and big deals take time, so a quiet first month is not a dead market. A first call can land within 30 days of launch. Expect the contract itself to land months after that first call, because B2B cycles run 6, 9 or even 12 months.
Give outbound at least 3 months before you judge it. One B2B tech client of ours went from zero qualified sales meetings to 40+ a month inside 90 days. Getting it fully working takes about 6 months on average. See the lag between activity and revenue in the first three months.
When should a reply turn into a call? When the person confirms they own the category, site or program you contacted them about, and that they have a need or a timetable you can name. A booked call with someone who cannot approve a new source is a polite chat. For how to hold that line, see what a qualified meeting should mean in your contract.
What should you check before you contact a defence buyer?
Work through this list before any outreach starts.
- Portal basics in place. Defence Sourcing Portal registration, a DUNS number and Cyber Essentials, so the first background check finds no gaps. Def Stan 05-138 Issue 4 applies to MOD suppliers and their subcontract suppliers on MOD contracts. Its controls require Cyber Essentials at every Cyber Risk Profile level and Cyber Essentials Plus at the higher ones.
- One capability for one buyer type. Lead with the work your past defence customers actually paid for.
- An account map built from your history. Start with the primes, sites and programs your work has already reached, then add lookalike programs. Building a B2B lead list worth sending to covers the method.
- Real titles only. Category, supply chain, program and engineering leads, searched in both spellings of "program", with bare generic titles removed.
- Clean contact data. Build lists from LinkedIn Sales Navigator and data providers such as Apollo, UpLead, ZoomInfo and RocketReach rather than scraped sources. I check every address before a campaign starts and hold bounces under 0.5%. If you would rather hand that work over, see our cold email agency service.
- Proof inside the message. Name the similar parts or services you already deliver, in the message itself.
- Someone free to take the calls. Name the person who will sit on the calls before you start, because booked calls that nobody takes are wasted.
Which route should a new defence supplier choose first?
Find your row and start there.
| Your situation | Lead with | Run alongside |
|---|---|---|
| No defence work yet, commercial references only | Prime and tier 1 entry, driven by outbound | Portal registration, so you look ready when a buyer checks |
| Some subcontract history with one or two primes | Outbound to those primes and their lookalike programs | Portal watching for direct work in your category |
| You can deliver a whole requirement and your category is advertised regularly | Direct MOD bids | Outbound to primes for the supply chain share you would otherwise miss |
| Research-led, early-stage technology | R-Cloud and the innovation routes | Conversations with program and engineering leads at primes |
Register on the portal once, spend your hours where the supply chain money is, and bid directly only when a requirement clearly fits.
Keep the prime conversations going in the months when nothing is advertised.
If you are a new MOD or prime supplier unsure which route to take first, book a call and I will happily talk through your options.
Questions founders ask about defence supply
How long does it take to become a supplier to the MOD?
There is no fixed timeline, because supplier status comes in stages rather than as one approval. Portal registration is a one-time step once your company registration, DUNS number and Cyber Essentials are in place. Plan cash flow on the assumption that the first months earn approvals and conversations before they earn revenue.
How do I get onto a prime's approved supplier list?
Each prime runs its own supplier approval process, and the steps differ between them. Ask your contact which form their vendor management team uses and request it early. Expect questions about finances, insurance, quality management and data handling, though the exact list varies. Attach certificates rather than promising them, keep one folder you can resend, and find out who signs off approval.
Do defence primes need security clearance from new suppliers?
Some do, depending on the program. Work that touches classified information can require personnel vetting for staff and, on sensitive contracts, facility-level security arrangements. GOV.UK defines List X contractors as UK companies on government contracts that require them to hold classified information. In plain terms, these are the firms cleared to handle secret material.
Below that line, Def Stan 05-138 Issue 4 still asks suppliers to set and apply a policy for BPSS and National Security Vetting checks as appropriate. Ask the prime or the contracting authority how clearance is started for your scope, because it usually depends on a genuine contract need. Ask early, so the timetable allows for vetting.
What should I do if a prime rejects my supplier application?
Ask for the specific reason, in writing if possible, and treat it as a gap list. Possible reasons include a missing certification, a capacity concern or no current requirement in your category. Fix what you can, note the date and the person who gave the feedback, and agree when to reapply. Send that person a short update every few months.
Do export controls apply to small defence suppliers?
They can, even if you never ship abroad yourself. Parts, software or technical drawings designed for military use may be controlled, and sharing technical data with an overseas colleague of a prime can count as an export.
GOV.UK's export control guidance says you need an export license to transfer controlled technology to anyone outside the UK, and it counts intangible forms such as emails. Ask the prime's trade compliance team how they classify similar items before you quote, and take advice if you are unsure.