Roke launches collaboration initiative to advance defence interoperability

Above: Roke’s Innovation Team
Image copyright Chemring 

The Works with Roke initiative aims to provide a structured way for organisations and Roke to demonstrate how their respective technologies integrate with one another, align supply chains and contribute to a broader defence ecosystem. The initiative formalises and seeks to expand on, the existing widespread integration of Roke technologies within other organisations’ products and vice-versa. A ‘Works with Roke’ badge will allow partners to clearly signal that their products have been tested and proven to interoperate.

Recent agreements between the UK and international partners have underlined the importance of joint development, integrated supply chains and shared innovation to meet evolving threats. By making interoperability more visible and repeatable, Roke aims to reduce barriers to collaboration and help new innovations reach the front line faster. 

Works with Roke will directly address growing demand to avoid vendor lock-in and ensure technologies are designed and proven to work together. This will in turn help to de-risk investment decisions for government and industry alike. For customers, the label provides confidence that integrated solutions will function as intended, improving operations while reducing cost and complexity.

The launch comes at a time when the UK Government is calling for closer collaboration between industry, innovators and allies to strengthen national security. The UK’s Defence Industrial Strategy places partnerships and innovation at the centre of a more resilient and responsive defence sector.

Matt Albans, CTO at Roke said: “Other sectors have shown what’s possible when you make collaboration the default. In telecoms, in cloud, in advanced manufacturing – organisations build around shared standards and open ecosystems.

“Defence hasn’t always worked that way and it’s holding us back. There has been a new push for diversity and resilience, which means avoiding vendor lock-in. We need to move faster from concept to deployment and that means working together earlier and more openly. ‘Works with Roke’ is our call to industry to step forward, integrate, collaborate and help deliver capability at pace for the UK and its allies.”

James Kinsman, CTO at Overview said: “Interoperability is no longer a ‘nice to have’ in defence, it’s fundamental to delivering capability at pace and with confidence. Works with Roke builds on existing open standards and provides a practical framework for engineers and architects on both sides to prove integration early, reduce technical risk and avoid closed, proprietary approaches. From a technical leadership perspective, that openness and clarity is exactly what’s needed to accelerate innovation while maintaining robustness and security.”