Defence Contracts and Tenders

UK defence procurement spans equipment, estates, logistics, IT and welfare support bought by the Ministry of Defence and the three armed services. That includes warship and aircraft spares, weapons and ammunition, protective clothing, vehicle repair, explosive ordnance handling, and bulk supply categories such as fasteners, batteries and industrial gases that keep bases and fleets running.

Stotles brings together defence tenders and contracts from 100+ portals into one search, so you do not have to check each portal separately, and you can set alerts for new opportunities across the UK and Ireland.

If you want to search the government portals directly, Find a Tender carries higher-value contracts across the UK and Contracts Finder carries lower-value contracts in England. Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI cover Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Ireland's eTenders covers Irish public bodies, and many councils, NHS bodies and housing associations publish on their own e-tendering portals such as ProContract. The Ministry of Defence also publishes on the Defence Sourcing Portal, and much equipment support runs through long in-service contracts and Ministry of Defence frameworks rather than one-off tenders.

Staff working on defence sites or classified programmes need security clearance, suppliers handling Ministry of Defence information must meet Defence Cyber Protection Partnership requirements, and equipment is often specified against Defence Standards. Tenders usually set minimum insurance cover, check financial standing and ask for evidence of similar contracts at selection stage. Under the Procurement Act 2023, suppliers can be excluded for certain criminal convictions, insolvency or failure to pay tax.

Defence buying runs through a mix of Ministry of Defence frameworks and wider public sector ones. Ministry of Defence agents set up long-running frameworks for spares, repair and overhaul of land equipment such as military vehicles, vehicle engines, camouflage and field equipment. Another agent does the same for logistics commodities such as clothing, footwear and paint.

The Ministry of Defence and the Army also call off from the Crown Commercial Service G-Cloud framework for digital and technology services, for example research and advisory services and software for training programmes.

Yes. Alongside large equipment and platform contracts, defence notices include smaller ones for training, welfare, catering and bulk supply items such as clothing, tools and consumables. These sit well below the scale of a warship or aircraft programme and draw from a wider supplier base than the prime contractors behind the largest MOD programmes.

The Ministry of Defence is the main buyer, with much of its spending channelled through Defence Equipment and Support, its own procurement and support organisation. The Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force also run their own competitions and industry engagement events directly, alongside joint commands covering digital, intelligence and logistics work across all three services.

Read Ministry of Defence equipment plans, Defence Equipment and Support forward pipelines, framework renewal dates and industry engagement events, which show defence work coming due ahead of a notice. On Stotles you can track those signals and the buyers behind them, then follow a notice from pre-tender through to award.

Defence has no single CPV classification, so the codes follow what is being bought, for example 18143000 (Protective gear), 37412241 (Breathing apparatus for diving) and 38633000 (Telescopic sights). Works on defence estates carry the usual building codes such as 45210000 (Building construction work).