Defence sector students get £80m government funding

An £80m investment by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) aims to give students the skills to design the fighter jets, drones and cyber security systems of the future.

The money was announced by defence minister Luke Pollard at the University of Portsmouth, where he said students learning defence-critical subjects were doing "cutting edge" work.

He said £50m would pay for about 2,400 places at universities and colleges over six years in the fields of engineering and computer science.

A further £30m is going towards building new teaching facilities and equipment over the next decade.

Pollard told the BBC: "We're investing more of our growing defence budget with British companies, but for them to be a success, and for us to get the equipment that we need, we need more skills.

"That means investing in universities to provide more student places on the courses that will provide the engineering, the cyber, the space, and the robotic skills that defence needs to produce the war-fighting and war-winning equipment that we need in the future."

He added: "It's about putting more skills into the area so we can see more people get good well paid jobs, but importantly contribute to our national defence as well."

Universities and colleges will bid for funding to create the extra places.

Portsmouth University has its own space mission incubator, extreme environments lab, and robotics lab.

Vice Chancellor Graham Galbraith said: "It's a really exciting opportunity and I think for a long time the defence industries have found it quite difficult in terms of the skills pipeline, so this is a huge boost at a time when we need the very best people to be working in the defence industries."

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