From Defence Ready to Prime Ready: Closing the Execution Gap

At the recent Indian Ocean Defence & Security Summit, one observation stayed with me: there is no shortage of willingness across Australia’s defence industry to support the ambitious 2026 National Defence Strategy. OEMs and SMEs are actively looking to contribute, whether through naval shipbuilding acquisition programs, Regional Maintenance Centres, or Major Service Provider-led delivery. Yet despite this alignment, a persistent gap remains between the willingness to engage and the ability to do so.

To be “Prime Ready”, an OEM or SME needs the governance, security, quality, cyber, export-control and assurance arrangements required to participate confidently in Defence supply chains. Often, capability is not the constraint to access; the constraint is the complexity, duplication and timing of the system.

Why becoming Prime Ready is difficult for OEMs and SMEs

Becoming Prime Ready is not a single step. It is a journey through a system that, in practice, is complex, layered and often difficult to sequence. It involves navigating DISP accreditation, export controls, cyber and quality frameworks, and multiple prequalification processes across primes, RMCs and MSPs. Each of these elements is necessary in its own right. But taken together, they create a system that is difficult to understand as a whole and challenging to operate efficiently, particularly for OEMs and SMEs that are simultaneously trying to run and grow their businesses.

This is where the distinction between being Defence ready and being Prime Ready matters. Being Defence ready means having a capability that is relevant to Defence priorities, aligned to sovereign industrial needs, and credible enough for Defence or industry to engage with. Being Prime Ready goes further: it means that capability is positioned, assured, governed and sequenced so that primes, RMCs and MSPs can confidently bring OEMs and SMEs into their programs at the right time.

The cost of not being Prime Ready

The cost of not being Prime Ready can be significant. It can mean missing early engagement windows, being excluded from supply chain formation, duplicating assurance effort across multiple engagements, or investing late in security, cyber, quality and export-control uplift after the opportunity has already moved on. In some cases, a poorly sequenced readiness effort can create more cost and delay than it avoids.

The challenge is also broader than major acquisition programs. Prime contractors are locking in supply chains early in long-duration programs. RMCs are establishing sustainment models that require responsive, compliant and locally capable suppliers. MSPs are acting as delivery integrators, often needing agile OEM and SME capability while still operating within strict governance and assurance requirements. For industry participants, these are not separate pathways. They are connected routes into Defence work, each with different expectations, timelines and entry points. From a national perspective, they should present as a coherent and accessible ecosystem.

Structured collaboration frameworks such as ISO 44001 and ISO/TS 44007:2025 are useful because they provide a disciplined way to govern how organisations work together. In this context, the value is not just relationship management. It is the ability to make pathways between primes, RMCs and MSPs easier to understand, navigate and reuse, reducing the need for OEMs and SMEs to prove the same fundamentals repeatedly for each new engagement.

The system is not starting from zero. Defence’s Global Supply Chain Program already supports primes to identify, assess and qualify Australian industry, while platforms such as ICN Gateway help make supplier capability more visible. These initiatives improve visibility and access to opportunities, but visibility is not the same as readiness, and assessment is not the same as execution support. Many capable OEMs and SMEs are still identified or encouraged, but not supported through the practical steps required to become Prime Ready in time for live opportunities.

Better collaboration will help, but it is unlikely to be enough on its own. What is needed is more deliberate orchestration of the pathway: practical, consistent and timely support that helps OEMs and SMEs become Prime Ready, and one that is properly sequenced, focused on execution, and recognised across multiple Defence engagements.

To realise the intent of the National Defence Strategy, the pathway to Prime Ready needs to be easier to navigate and better supported in practice.

Simplify the system

Simplification is the most visible part of the problem. Defence, primes, RMCs and MSPs have an opportunity to better align prequalification and assurance frameworks, reduce duplication across onboarding processes, and provide clearer staged pathways that allow OEMs and SMEs to build maturity over time rather than being expected to meet end-state compliance upfront.

Transparency is equally important. OEMs and SMEs need to understand what is required, in what sequence, and how progression from capable supplier to Prime Ready partner occurs in practice. Long-term signals, whether through pipeline visibility or enduring agreements, are also critical in giving them the confidence to invest in capability uplift.

However, even a well-aligned system will fall short if OEMs and SMEs are still left to navigate it alone.

Support practical execution

Many OEMs and SMEs are navigating Defence-specific requirements such as DISP accreditation or export controls for the first time. These are not trivial processes, and assessment timelines can materially delay participation in a program. Because supply chains, sustainment models and MSP-led delivery frameworks are often set early, readiness that arrives late may be of limited value.

Clearer guidance and practical support are therefore just as important as simpler frameworks. OEMs and SMEs need help understanding where they sit, what to prioritise and how to sequence their efforts. Common readiness checklists, staged uplift plans for DISP, cyber, quality and export-control requirements, reusable assurance evidence, shared onboarding evidence and clearer sequencing advice would all help capable organisations build readiness once and apply it across many engagements.

The challenge is already recognised at the strategic level. The 2026 National Defence Strategy acknowledges that sovereign industrial capability is a national security requirement and that speed to capability matters. However, that recognition has not yet translated into a practical, system-level pathway that helps OEMs and SMEs move from Defence ready to Prime Ready. The gap is no longer awareness; it is execution.

The next step: orchestrate the ecosystem

The next step is not another discussion about collaboration; it is coordinated action that helps OEMs and SMEs become Prime Ready in practice. That means providing support that is practical, consistent, timely and reusable across Defence engagements, rather than asking capable organisations to start again with each new opportunity.

The willingness is already there. The capability is already there. The task now is to turn Defence ready organisations into Prime Ready partners by making the pathway easier to access, easier to navigate and faster to execute. If Australia wants sovereign capability to be available when it is needed, Prime Ready should become a pathway the system helps enable, not one each organisation has to work out alone.

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David Swan

Director

David has 30 years’ experience in operations and project delivery in government and defence industry sectors. David’s 23 years in Royal Australian Navy culminated in senior roles in Engineering and as a Director overseeing the establishment of a new organisation and of the contracts necessary to support the introduction of Navy assets into service. 

His expertise includes strategy development and execution, the design and implementation of engineering, regulatory and asset management business models and the design and realisation of complex change programs. David excels in designing and delivering pragmatic solutions which, along with his honest and open approach, always exceeds stakeholder expectations.