During his first visit to Ethiopia and at a time when a new drought is hitting 13 million people, Minister Wharton visited the Tigray region to see the lifesaving impact of UK aid and how ongoing support is building resilience and helping recovery from last year’s El Nino induced drought.

Earlier this year, the UK increased much needed support to Ethiopia to provide around 800,000 people with lifesaving clean water, food and emergency nutrition to malnourished children.

Minister Wharton also visited Endabaguna refugee reception centre in Northern Ethiopia where he met vulnerable families and children benefiting from UK support. Ethiopia is one of the largest host nations of refugees – with over 800,000 people having crossed the border – with the majority fleeing humanitarian crises in neighbouring South Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea.

International Development Minister James Wharton said:

“Millions of people are living in desperate conditions as extreme drought in Ethiopia and worsening humanitarian crises in neighbouring countries are forcing people from their homes, threatening lives and global security.

“I have seen first-hand how UK aid is providing lifesaving support to vulnerable communities in Ethiopia, as well as refugees, and making a real difference to those who need it most.

“At the same time, we are helping to boost economic development and private sector investment to create jobs and increase stability in the longer term which is firmly in Ethiopia and the UK’s interests.”

In the capital Addis Ababa, Minister Wharton met with workers at a British manufacturing firm Pittards who have benefited from UK aid supported skills training to increase productivity, and met with a local entrepreneur whose leather making business has benefited from UK help.

He emphasised how the UK is strengthening its focus on economic development as a long term solution to povert. This follows on from a visit by the International Development Secretary Priti Patel to Ethiopia earlier this year where she launched DFID’s first Economic Development Strategy at Hawassa industrial park, where UK aid is helping to transform the local economy by creating around 60,000 new jobs.

Over the last five years, UK aid in Ethiopia has:

• prevented 4.2 million people from going hungry
• put 2.5 million children through primary school
• provided 4.9 million people with access to water and sanitation and
• enabled 500,000 more women to use modern methods of family planning.

A team of nearly 30 UK troops has left the UK for Southern Europe to join NATO’s Kosovo Force, helping to maintain safety, security and freedom of movement.

The year-long deployment will bolster the mission’s capability, following a request from NATO for further support to KFOR by allies. Its particular role will be to support KFOR’s ability to carry out intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. The UK team will be based in the KFOR headquarters in Pristina.

KFOR began as a peacekeeping force in the late 1990s. Now it has evolved into a smaller, more flexible body of around 4,200 troops, acting as one of the main security providers in Kosovo. Troops are contributed by some 30 countries, including Germany, Italy, Turkey, Poland and the US, as well as the UK.

At the NATO Summit in Warsaw last year, Allies reaffirmed that KFOR would continue to contribute to a safe and secure environment in Kosovo. It will also continue to adapt. As the Warsaw communiqué made clear, changes to the Alliance’s troop presence reflect conditions in the country. The force’s overall goal is to enable self-sufficient security in Kosovo.

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said:

This deployment of troops demonstrates how we remain committed to supporting security and stability in the Western Balkans region. NATO remains a cornerstone of our defence and by defending the security of Europe we strengthen our security at home.

This deployment follows support the UK provided in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2015 to the EU Force (EUFOR).

As the Prime Minister has announced the UK will be increasing its engagement in the Western Balkans, including through our hosting of the 2018 Western Balkans Summit.

The UK has more than 3,000 military personnel deployed on operations around the world, clearly demonstrating Britain’s global Defence footprint. The UK continues to meet NATO’s target of spending 2% of GDP on Defence, backed by a Defence budget that will rise every year for the rest of this decade.

On the 29th anniversary of the Anfal, Saddam Hussein’s brutal campaign against the Kurdish people in Iraq, our thoughts remain with the victims, their families and those who lost loved ones.

Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis were slaughtered and thousands more were maimed and expelled from their homes. That this campaign was conceived, sanctioned and executed by a state against its own people is beyond comprehension and is a stark warning of what happens when evil is left unchecked.

Iraq’s people are now forced to confront a new evil, in the form of Daesh and I pay tribute to their bravery and sacrifice as they move closer to defeating Daesh militarily.

The UK continues to support the people of Iraq in building a better future and Iraq must ensure that their new chapter is one where all of Iraq’s communities have a stake in a more stable and prosperous Iraq.

On the third anniversary of the abduction of the Chibok school girls, Foreign Office Minister Tobias Ellwood and International Development Minister James Wharton said:

As part of the MOD’s Innovation Initiative, £3 million has been invested through the Defence and Security Accelerator in the next stage of the Innovation Autonomy Challenge. Focusing on the challenging “last mile” of support, this Challenge aims to find innovative new ways of resupplying troops on the front line, and will be led by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl).

To reduce the risk to troops and improve efficiency, the UK aims to develop autonomous systems for unmanned delivery of combat supplies, drawing on the rapid progress of the private sector in the development of delivery drones and automated deliveries.

Minister for Defence Procurement, Harriett Baldwin said:

Making sure we use the latest technology to keep our personnel safe and have the kit they need is a key part of our £800 million innovation fund. We’re challenging industry and academia to work with us to design ground-breaking autonomous systems that will get supplies to the front line.

Our investment in innovative solutions demonstrates how the Government’s £178 billion equipment plan, supported by a rising Defence budget, will ensure that the UK maintains its military advantage in an increasingly dangerous world.

The Innovation Initiative and £800M Defence Innovation Fund aim to transform Defence to encourage imagination, ingenuity and entrepreneurship. From laser weapons to autonomous vehicles, the MOD is working with small firms, academics, industry, and the new Defence Advisory Panel to find Twenty-first century solutions to defence challenges.

Funding will made available in two tranches, up to £1.5m to develop initial platforms and technology concepts. At least £1.5 million more will then be released to build and test a smaller number of demonstrators, which can then be included in joint UK/US trials from October 2018.

The Challenge is the latest stage in Defence’s investment in unmanned and autonomous systems: In February, the Defence Secretary [announced]( the launch of a two year £8 million second phase of research and development with Leonardo Helicopters, exploring the future of unmanned air systems.

The competition runs until 21 June 2017 and further details of the competition can be found on the competition website.

The Dstl lead for the Innovation Autonomy Challenge Peter Stockel said:

We are particularly keen to reach out and encourage organisations that might not have worked with the defence and security sector before, such as those developing commercial driverless vehicles, drone delivery services and robotic agriculture, to get involved with the challenge and help us rapidly advance the way we deliver tactical military logistics.

The Innovation Autonomy challenge is part of the UK and US’s collaborative approach to innovation announced by Defence Secretary, Sir Michael Fallon, and former US Defense Secretary Ash Carter in 2015. The funding for this competition is focused on:

• Airborne and ground-based unmanned systems to collect, transport and deliver supplies across challenging terrain.
• Technology to enable those systems to operate more autonomously in the contested military environment.
• Technology to autonomously manage logistics supply and demand in the tactical environment.

Defence and Industry Working Together

One of the aims of the Innovation Initiative is to streamline Defence’s work with industry from SME’s to multinationals: making clear what Defence needs from business, but also being open to imaginative and disruptive proposals from any source.

Most recently, over 200 Soldiers, Royal Marines and RAF, including personnel from the US Army, have been putting innovative kit through its paces on Salisbury Plain in the Army Warfighting Experiment 17 (AWE 17). Businesses of all sizes were invited to submit solutions to a range of ‘problems’ set by the AWE team. 72 products – from a tiny surveillance drone to a self-sterilizing water bottle – were selected for testing.

One developer taking part in the experiment produced a two-part lift and pulley system designed to take vital minutes off of the time it takes to get a casualty out of a damaged vehicle and to medical aid. The inventor of the system, Paul Bateman, an ex-soldier of 22 years’ service, now runs his one man business.

Paul said:

“The AWE has given me a unique opportunity to get my product tested in the field.”

Cutting-edge kit is no use unless our troops can use it when and where they need it. To make sure they can, the Minister for Defence Procurement, Harriett Baldwin, formally opened a huge state-of-the-art £83 million MOD logistics centre in Shropshire, which will streamline distribution and storage, delivering savings of around £500 million by 2028.

Beyond the physical battlefield, but at the heart of security, Dstl has also launched the Data Science Challenge, which will bring the brightest minds in data science—not just those in the defence and security sector—together to solve real-world problems, and is sponsored by Dstl, the Government Office for Science, the Secret Intelligence Service and MI5.