Additive manufacturing has become a key pillar of the UK Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) strategy to strengthen Britain’s warfighting edge. This was reflected at TCT 3Sixty 2025, Britain’s largest 3D printing trade show.
As the Birmingham NEC’s Hall 3 opened to the show floor last week, the MoD’s AM-focused Project TAMPA convened in an adjacent conference space for its second working group meeting of the year. The TCT Insights stage also featured presentations and panel discussions from MoD experts and defense primes, including Leonardo and Thales.
Additive Manufacturing Advantage: Aerospace, Space and Defense returns on July 10th. Reserve your free ticket now.
Speaking at the TCT show, Wing Commander Jon McMahon offered insights into the MoD’s vision for advanced manufacturing. The MoD Defence Support Innovation Team’s Deputy Team Leader characterized 3D printing as a vital tool for diversifying defense supply chains in a “factory to foxhole” approach. Project TAMPA, he added, is critical to winning “hearts and minds,” converting skeptics, and increasing AM adoption in the defense sector.
According to the former RAF Flight Simulator Technician, Project TAMPA can deliver £118 million in benefits for a cost of £6–7 million over the next five years. He also highlighted its role in improving equipment uptime on the battlefield, describing expeditionary 3D printers as “another tool in our arsenal” to get critical military equipment “back in the fight.”
Ultimately, McMahon emphasized that building trust and forging new partnerships between Defense and industry is critical to enhancing Britain’s warfighting capabilities. Success, he argued, will depend not only on proving technical capability but on embedding a fully digital, agile supply chain that can meet operational needs at speed and scale.
The MoD’s additive manufacturing strategy
Earlier this year, the MoD published its first Defence Advanced Manufacturing Strategy, which prioritizes 3D printing as a key technology to be “embraced” in the UK’s defense supply chain.
More recently, the Government released the 2025 Strategic Defence Review. Without explicitly mentioning 3D printing, it highlights the need to enhance warfighting readiness through advanced manufacturing. The plan includes a £1.5 billion investment in an ‘always-on’ munitions pipeline, £400 million in funding for British companies. It also features a commitment to produce 7,000 new long-range weapons, up to 12 new nuclear-powered attack submarines, and continued support for the 3D printing-enabled GCAP programme.
These initiatives aim to create a diversified supply chain built around a network of facilities that combine advanced and conventional manufacturing. “Advanced manufacturing isn’t a silver bullet,” McMahon acknowledged. “It will not be the answer to every problem.” However, the MoD’s “factory to foxhole” strategy spans every level of defence of the defense ecosystem, from supplying spare parts on the front lines to building next-generation nuclear submarines.
In submarine production, 3D printing has become critical, unlocking the fabrication of components that conventional methods cannot produce. As McMahon noted, additive manufacturing delivers a “game-changing” operational advantage by cutting lead times and boosting resilience. Indeed, existing supply networks and obsolescent parts can leave combat equipment sidelined for months. Additive manufacturing offers a way to bypass those bottlenecks.
This value is shifting procurement thinking towards a mindset not seen since the Cold War. “For the last 30 years, we’ve been a bottom-line focused organisation,” McMahon said. “We are now trying to change that mindset: to think less about cost, and more about value.”
Diversifying the supply chain beyond a handful of suppliers increases resilience, reducing susceptibility to cyberattacks. It also helps accelerate development times and improve the sustainability of critical materials.
For example, British engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce has partnered with the MoD to convert retired Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado fighter jet parts into new metal feedstock. The project, dubbed Tornado 2 Tempest, aims to build a circular material supply chain.
Defence officials are exploring whether this recycled metal can be atomized into powder for use in Britain’s Tempest next-generation fighter jet. Additive manufacturing already plays a key role in Tempest’s development. BAE Systems, developing the new fighter jet under the Global Combat Air (GCAP), aims to 3D print 30% of the aircraft’s parts. Tempest’s supersonic demonstrator already includes structural components produced with additive manufacturing.
How is 3D printing used in the British military?
In the field, expeditionary 3D printers keep British forces battle-ready longer by delivering spare parts faster and closer to the point of need. These parts do not need to be top-tier, certified components, just “enough to get us back in the fight for the next two or three rounds of battle,” as McMahon put it. He described this operational capability as “invaluable” for soldiers on the front line.
Given these advantages, additive manufacturing is quickly gaining traction within the British military. What began with individual units experimenting with desktop FDM 3D printers has grown into an integrated capability across forces operating on land, sea, and in the air.
In the Army, McMahon pointed to the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers’ 5 and 9 Battalions, which are deploying additive manufacturing to produce parts in support of Ukraine.
Last year, 9 Theatre Support Battalion (9 REME) took part in Additive Manufacturing Village 2024, a European Defence Agency showcase held in Belgium. British troops collaborated with Ukrainian counterparts to 3D print 133 functional parts at the event. Of these, 20 were made from metal. They also created technical data packs (TDPs) containing the digital information needed to 3D print 70 different spare parts.
2024 also saw 9 REME deploy its additive manufacturing capabilities during Exercise Steadfast Defender, NATO’s largest military exercise since the Cold War. 9 REME personnel operated an XSPEE3D metal cold-spray 3D printer from Australian firm SPEE3D. They produced several spare parts, including jerry can caps, communication brackets, and engine bay mounts for aging vehicles.
During a separate panel discussion at TCT 3Sixty, Richard Hamber, the MoD’s Innovation AdM Lead, revealed that the British Army’s Special Air Service (SAS) uses 3D printing to support its covert operations. Details are limited, but Hamber confirmed that the SAS 3D prints “completely unique” polymer parts at its Stirling Lines garrison in Hereford.
In the Royal Air Force, 71 Inspection and Repair (IR) Squadron runs multiple metal 3D printers out of RAF Wittering to readily fabricate aerospace parts. Operating under Project Warhol, the RAF’s AM initiative, 71 IR Squadron possesses Wayland Additive Calibur3 NeuBeam, Renishaw RenAM 500 metal LPBF, and Stratasys Fortus 450 FDM 3D printers, along with a Nikon HTX 540 CT scanner. According to McMahon, these systems are used to rapidly produce parts to conduct repairs, testing, and trials.
Meanwhile, the MoD’s Submarine Delivery Agency is 3D printing parts for the next generation class of Dreadnought submarines. Some of these components are also being retrofitted into the existing Astute-class submarines. According to the MoD’s Advanced Manufacturing Strategy, additive manufacturing is also being leveraged to support the SDA’s In Service Submarines (ISS) and Ship Submersible Nuclear (Attack) (SSN(A)) programmes.
Elsewhere, the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) is using 3D printing to produce complex parts. Similarly, the MoD’s Defense Equipment & Support (DE&S) Defence Electronics and Components Agency (DECA) uses 3D printing to make prototypes.
Industry partnerships are central to increasing adoption across the defense ecosystem. The MoD is working closely with the High Value Manufacturing Catapult to develop strategic alliances and stimulate demand signals to guide UK industry.
International collaboration is gathering pace, with the 2025 Defence Review setting out the UK’s new ‘NATO First’ ambition. The MoD is actively involved in several NATO additive manufacturing (AM) initiatives. One initiative, led by McMahon since last year, brings together 12 member nations to explore partnerships and advance NATO’s AM capabilities. Sweden is the first member nation to fully share details of its AM efforts. According to McMahon, these closely align with the UK’s factory-to-foxhole vision.
Further interoperability testing is underway. The ongoing Coalition Warrior Interoperability Exercise (CWIX) includes an AM thread, testing NATO’s Rapid E digital repository for securely storing and sharing AM data packs.
Project TAMPA: Winning “hearts and minds” in manufacturing
Behind the British military’s 3D printing efforts is Project TAMPA. Launched in 2021, this MoD initiative seeks to accelerate the adoption of additive manufacturing within the UK’s defense supply chain.
“Project Tampa is a change programme, not a technology programme,” explained McMahon. He highlighted the pressing need to “change the hearts and minds” of 3D printing skeptics within the supply chain.
Structured in four spirals of increasing complexity, Project Tampa is designed to turn additive manufacturing from an experimental capability into “business as usual.” Its early results show the approach is working.
In Spiral One, MoD suppliers Babcock, NP Aerospace, Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land (RBSL), Thales, and AMFG developed non-safety critical parts to demonstrate that additive manufacturing can support real-world defence applications. One of which, an L118 light gun towing eye shaft, is now an officially demandable inventory item.
Developed by Babcock, the 3D printable part has been approved for use in combat operations and can be ordered through Babcock’s Material Availability Service. “It’s not just a science experiment,” McMahon stressed. “It’s delivering operational effect.”
Spiral Two, currently 50% complete, focuses on safety-critical components. This includes 3D printed Challenger 2 and Challenger 3 tank components developed by RBSL. These parts face stricter certification demands but are on track to enter service.
Spiral Three aims to prove that parts can be manufactured equivalently across an international supply chain, with efforts across the UK and the US. The awardees include Babcock, NP Aerospace, RBSL, and Thales. The United States Department of Defense (DOD) is running a parallel program called Allied Additive Manufacturing Interoperability (AAMI).
Looking ahead, McMahon confirmed that Project TAMPA will not continue after spiral 4. The ultimate goal is not to develop more demonstration parts, but to establish a procurement and governance system that allows parts to be delivered to the MoD at scale. The programme’s final phase will create a pre-competed framework enabling companies to bring parts directly into defence without bureaucratic hurdles.
Collaboration is key to Tampa’s philosophy. Every level of the project’s governance, from working groups to executive committees, has an industry co-chair with authority to influence decisions. “This is not defence telling industry what we want,” said McMahon. “This is defence asking industry, how do we do this better?”
One critical factor is accelerating certification. It took 18 months from Spiral One’s start to having a certified part in inventory. The biggest hurdle, McMahon admitted, was not the certification process itself, but overcoming scepticism inside the MoD.
A breakthrough came when the Certification Working Group appointed an airworthiness expert as co-chair, bringing experience in both National Aviation Authority (NAA) and defence certification. “Because he understands the process, we can use him to unlock skeptics when they say, ‘We don’t understand this,’” McMahon explained.
The RAF Wing Commander likened this shift to the acceptance of composite materials decades ago. “Thirty or forty years ago, when we were dealing with carbons and Kevlars and fibreglass composites, people didn’t understand it,” McMahon explained. “There was material science to overcome then. There’s less material science to AM.”
Therefore, for the MoD, the future of 3D printing hinges less on technology and more on mindset. Its latest hearts and minds campaign won’t be waged on the battlefield, but on the factory floor.
Join our Additive Manufacturing Advantage (AMAA) event on July 10th, where AM leaders from Aerospace, Space, and Defense come together to share mission-critical insights. Online and free to attend. Secure your spot now.
Who won the 2024 3D Printing Industry Awards?
Subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry newsletter to keep up with the latest 3D printing news.
You can also follow us on LinkedIn, and subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry Youtube channel to access more exclusive content.
Featured image shows Wing Commander Jon McMahon speaking at TCT 3Sixty 2025. Photo by 3D Printing Industry.
