On 15 January 2026, the Ministry of Defence introduced the Armed Forces Bill to Parliament, setting out a series of measures intended to strengthen the UK’s ability to respond to crisis and transition to war at pace.
One of the most relevant changes for the UDSS community is the proposed expansion and greater flexibility of the UK’s Strategic Reserve, the pool of former Service personnel and reservists who can be recalled when the nation needs them.
Many UDSS members already serve in the Volunteer Reserves, or are former Regulars whose professional expertise (cyber, intelligence, medicine, engineering, communications, logistics, finance, technology, and leadership) would be central to resilience and mobilisation in any national contingency. These reforms matter not only to individuals, but also to employers, industry, and the wider defence ecosystem that UDSS exists to connect.
In simple terms, the Strategic Reserve includes former Regular Service personnel who retain a recall liability for a set period after leaving full-time service (alongside other recall mechanisms). It exists to ensure Defence can access trained, security-cleared, experienced people quickly particularly in specialist roles that cannot be created overnight.
Reporting around the Bill puts the number of people currently estimated to be liable for recall within the Strategic Reserve at around 95,000.
The MoD’s announcement and supporting Bill materials describe three headline changes designed to widen the pool and make recall more usable in the “grey zone” before a shooting war.
The Bill proposes increasing the maximum age at which some former personnel can be recalled from 55 to 65, expanding access to experienced people whose skills are often most valuable precisely because they combine military credibility with deep civilian sector expertise.
The reforms aim to harmonise how long recall liability applies after leaving service across the Royal Navy, Army and RAF reducing complexity and making mobilisation planning more coherent and predictable.
Perhaps the most significant operational shift is the proposal to allow recall not only for “national danger, great emergency or attack on the UK”, but also for “warlike preparations” enabling earlier mobilisation as part of a transition to war.
This is a practical acknowledgement of how modern conflict unfolds: crisis response may require rapid scaling and specialist reinforcement before a formal national emergency is declared.
Multiple sources reporting on the Bill indicate the changes are intended to come into force from spring 2027.
Crucially, the MoD and media reporting also indicate the new recall arrangements won’t automatically apply to people who have already left the Armed Forces unless they opt in.
UDSS brings together people who sit at the seam between national security and civil capability. The Strategic Reserve reforms are, in effect, a mechanism for drawing more confidently on the UK’s “dual-hatted” talent those who can move between operational and civilian environments.
Lt Gen Paul Griffiths has framed the rationale clearly: Defence needs to be able to draw on the numbers and skills required as threats grow, and the Strategic Reserve holds “a wealth of expertise” across domains including cyber, intelligence, medicine and communications.
For UDSS members, that maps directly onto the lived reality of modern resilience:
Cyber and digital operations that depend on scarce specialist skills
Information and communications where credibility, speed, and coordination matter
Medical and humanitarian capacity in complex civil contingencies
Command-and-control, logistics and mobilisation planning that must scale quickly
Industry-facing expertise that supports rapid procurement, production, and sustainment
If you lead or advise within a business that employs Reservists or former Regulars, the Strategic Reserve proposals are a reminder that national readiness is not only a defence issue it is also a workforce planning issue.
Employers may want to consider:
Role resilience: what happens if a specialist is mobilised with limited notice?
Skill concentration risk: where do you have single points of failure?
Policies and support: do managers understand Reserve obligations and recall liability?
Business continuity: how quickly can you reassign, backfill, or surge capacity?
Done well, supporting service is a net advantage: organisations gain staff with strong leadership, discipline, crisis management experience, and security-mindedness while also contributing directly to national resilience.
The MoD has positioned the UK’s approach as consistent with a wider NATO trend towards strengthening reserve models and drawing more deliberately on civil expertise.
The Bill also reflects lessons from Ukraine’s use of reserves and whole-of-society mobilisation and the MoD notes that in 2024, Reservists made up a significant portion of UK personnel training Ukrainian forces on Operation INTERFLEX.
UDSS exists to help bridge defence, industry, finance, and technology and these Strategic Reserve reforms are exactly where that connection matters.
UDSS can support members and partner organisations by:
convening informed discussion on what the Bill means in practice for mobilisation, industry readiness, and workforce resilience
connecting employers with Reserve-aware policy, planning approaches, and peer learning
helping organisations identify where civil capability can reinforce defence outcomes (and how to do it responsibly, compliantly, and credibly)
If you are a UDSS member who expects to be part of the Strategic Reserve or you employ people who may be now is the moment to treat readiness as a shared responsibility, not a distant contingency.