HERMES International Secure Communications

In January 2021, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MOD) Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) required support to design, build, deploy and support a communications platform. This platform would enable developments and increased collaboration between the UK and its international partners across government and industry.

With existing MOD platforms unable to fulfil the complex requirements due to the international nature of the platform, FCDO Services was commissioned to deliver the new HERMES platform.

Creating the platform

After beginning discovery activity in January 2021, the FCDO Services team progressed rapidly through discovery, design, build and deployment activities with the first HERMES sites deployed and operational in November 2022.

From discovery, build and assurance, our team engaged and consulted with National Security Authorities, including UK NACE, ensuring that close collaborative relationships can be forged between the UK and its international partners.

Improving capability

The HERMES platform enables individuals to communicate and collaborate internationally across the higher tier. High security assurance is implemented throughout, protecting information between groups of users.

Since delivering initial operating capacity in December 2022, a multi-year agreement was reached for the delivery of HERMES to continue supporting the GCAP and the wider MOD. This will build capability to support wider priorities for secure communications and engagement with international partners.

Supporting international deployment

To support the international deployment of HERMES, FCDO Services utilised our regional support network to provide in-country assistance by UK security cleared personnel. Our secure King’s Messenger services also contributed, ensuring deployed components were delivered securely from the UK to their final destinations.

FCDO Services is continuing to support the development of additional capability and provides live service management from our Global Support Centre.

Embracing challenges

The initial design and build phase of the HERMES platform was completed during the Covid pandemic. Due to the classification of the platform all work was required to be conducted from FCDO Services secure facilities.

Beyond Covid pandemic restrictions, security was a challenge for our teams. Due to differences in the implementation of security policy across UK Government departments and international partners, aligning solutions to ensure the successful delivery of capability was a challenge. Through early and continuous engagement with key stakeholders, our team overcame these challenges, leading to the successful assurance and deployment of the platform.

Enhancing future collaboration

HERMES has significantly decreased the time taken to share secure information between international partners. This has enabled GCAP to collaborate securely and more closely on a global scale reducing the time and cost to deliver the next generation combat air platform.

Throughout 2023, enhancements to information sharing and collaboration services have allowed the GCAP to ensure secure collaboration in reduced timelines.

FCDO Services is now engaging additional MOD partners to extend the benefits of the HERMES platform. This is intended to reduce the need to contract, design and deploy bespoke platforms from scratch when a requirement is identified. By extending this platform, FCDO Services can reuse assured design patterns and common technical teams to deliver capability in reduced timelines and at a lower cost.

Quote from customer

“For a programme like GCAP, where timely sharing of sensitive information internationally is key, the HERMES system has already delivered major benefits – securely moving engineering information between industry partners has been reduced from 3 weeks to 2 hours and will allow a huge improvement in our productivity.” - FCAS Head of Delivery, Ministry of Defence