BAR are delighted to welcome Bruce Hedley into BAR Associates. Bruce will help lead and drive the business forward at an exciting time for BAR, its clients and the markets they serve. With experience and expertise he understands the part innovation plays in delivering strategic value across an ecosystem.
Bruce brings some unique skills to BAR, particularly shaped by his last posting before leaving the Royal Air Force in March this year, as Director of Joint Warfare within Joint Forces (Strategic) Command. His arrival into that post was coincident with that of the Commander. This enabled significant interaction to shape the strategy for a £5bn organisation of over 20,000 people to address the deficiencies and preserve what was going well. What was new was an approach which embraced exponential technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to enable a different approach to supporting Defences outputs. The core of the strategy was to develop a culture of innovation embracing digital start-up companies, academics and data scientists, and use this innovation for operational enhancement. Concurrently, with his construction and leadership of an innovation hub (the jHub), he helped developed a concept to achieve advantage by binding together all actions with information, and led the delivery of a programme called Information Advantage across Defence. Data was now able to provide greater insight and supporting improved decision making. This different approach to warfare was tested on a multitude of exercises, which he organised and led, resulting in a Defence-wide transition which embraced Information Advantage. So successful was the strategy delivery that the US Secretary of Defence applauded the UK contribution to the global combatant commanders on Exercise Austere Challenge 19. He had designed and delivered a different approach to warfare, which integrated across government, the intelligence services and industry with the traditional Air, Land, Sea, Cyber and Space capabilities to deliver a much more effective influence from an integrated approach.