Guidance

How Defence Works: the defence operating model

A description of the organisational structure of Defence and how its organisations work together.

Documents

Details

How Defence Works explains how defence is structured and governed, how key decisions are taken, and how 7 core activities (policy, strategy, planning, governance, generate, enable, and operate) are carried out by 18 organisations and 16 key business functions, working together to deliver 3 defence outputs (defence policy, military capability, and military operations).

This publication replaces the December 2015 edition of How Defence Works.

Updates to this page

Published 7 April 2015
Last updated 23 September 2020 + show all updates
  1. Added the new version of the How Defence works and updated the details on the page.

  2. Addition of information stating that a fully revised version of ‘How Defence Works’ is in development and will be available from Spring 2020.

  3. Updated to version 4.2.

  4. First published.

Sign up for emails or print this page