DSEI 2025: Tiberius Aerospace launches Grail

The defence tech start-up, Tiberius Aerospace, has launched its supply planning tool Grail, ahead of the DSEI UK 2025 exhibition, which is set to be held in London from 9-12 September. 

Grail is designed to provide a transparent and cost-effective supply chain management and production tool. “In the same way that I moved from having a shelf-full of DVDs on my wall, to having a Netflix subscription, Grail takes the case of stockpiles of aging, out of date weapons, and provides a business model which provides the very latest tech, at scale and at speed to the warfighter,” Blythe Crawford, the new director of Grail, and former Air Commodore in the RAF, explained to Calibre Defence via email. 

In essence, Grail is designed to bring a collection of companies together to design components for a complete system. “It is a collaborative cooperative of hundreds of SMEs, spirally developing their own components against a collective blueprint of a new system,” Blythe explained. This is inline with Tiberius Aerospace’s belief that the defence ecosystem and supply chains could be run differently, with less gold plating of systems and reduced costs. 

The company launched its innovative Sceptre artillery munition earlier this year, which is plans to license to MoDs through a subscription model that would allow them to build the munition using a supply chain and manufacturers of their choosing. This was the first step, and the product launch that brought Tiberius Aerospace out of its stealth period. 

Blythe explained that they see Grail as offering a range of benefits. The collective of suppliers (the Grail Alliance), for example, “drives micro economics, driving down price, [and encourages] rapid spiral development, where the collaborative improvements are the 10x of 2x on individual components, and where we deliver mass, federated and resilient production at a lower cost.” In a nutshell, Grail borrows elements and practices from the supply chains of companies like Apple and Samsung. 

It is common for them to practice dual- or multi-sourcing of components, which helps prevent or mitigate supply chain shocks. It also enables the prime, Apple in this case, to negotiate with suppliers to control prices and maintain higher standards more consistently by comparing the components produced by different companies.

“Grail is not just for MoDs to define new tech; primes or SMEs might provide the blueprint for a new system to allow for enhanced manufacture, while still protecting their IP,” Blythe explained. Using Sceptre, the Tiberius Aerospace artillery round as an example, “it is made up of a number of simple components, each of which can be spirally developed by an individual manufacturer to enhance the performance of the overall system. For example, better battery performance, a lighter-weight casing, and improved guidance.”  

Grail also includes a lethality module, which is designed to help manufacturers ensure that their new products are able to defeat identified targets. It “calculates weapon system relative cost and efficiency against target sets in all environments, enabling allied members to objectively assess inventory, investment and system-of-system balance,” the attendant press release explains. Already, close to 100 companies have been vetted and joined the Grail Alliance, it adds. 

If you would like to learn more, Tiberius Aerospace will be discussing Grail and the Grail Alliance during a panel discussion at DSEI called ‘Defence-as-a-Service (DaaS): Continuous innovation – decoupled manufacturing’ on Wednesday, 10th September 2025, at 1500 in the Cyber & Specialist Operations Command keynote forum. 

Calibre comment

Grail does introduce an interesting concept for cooperation and supply chain management into the defence industry. The way that many MoD’s approach procurement can bake complications into a supply chain. For example, a missile may rely on dozens of SMEs to deliver different, highly specialised components, to an integrator. That integrator then assembles the missile, checks it and delivers it to the customer. It is very rare that the integrator produces all of the components used. However, while the integrator will be able to make an MoD its main customer, its suppliers are unlikely to be able to do the same. This means that if defence orders stop, the suppliers will likely seek out other opportunities, which can lead to a loss of skills, machinery, and a general decline of the supply chain. Then, if a need for that missile suddenly emerges, it is unlikely that the supply chain will be able to rapidly produce more. This is largely the result of government spending practices, but better management and the collaborative approach may serve to identify and develop more suppliers and build long-term supply chain resilience. 

By Sam Cranny-Evans, published on September 5, 2025. Credit for the lead image is Tiberius Aerospace, it shows the Grail interface.