Inspiring tech innovation in the Armed Forces

Grant Powell MBCS recently spoke to Shaun Acar MBCS, Project Engineer Royal Signals, to find out about the journey that led him from Malta to a project engineering role in the British Army, and how his self taught automation solution cut a two week task down to minutes. Shaun also reflects on the future of defence innovation and how he views winning the Churchill Medal not as a personal accolade, but as a means to inspire others to follow in his footsteps.

Please introduce yourself and tell me a bit about your career to date.

I’m Shaun Acar. I’m originally from Malta but moved to the UK at 16 and joined the British Army at 17. This was a really big decision for me, and for my family, especially after my dad’s own difficult experiences in the Turkish army. He was very sceptical at first, but once he saw the career and development opportunities here, he fully supported me. I originally planned to join REME as a mechanic, having worked in a race car garage with my uncle. But I’d always been interested in tech and did well at school, so I decided to pursue the Signals instead. During training, particularly the programming and cyber elements, I found I had a real aptitude for it.

I later performed well in cyber competitions and ended up being picked up by 13 Signal Regiment, where I began working on Falcon Anchor Point — essentially Level 3 engineering support for network setup and stability. That role eventually led me into project engineering, where my focus is now on developing tools and solutions that modernise and improve the way we work.

Your automation reduced a two week manual process to under 15 minutes! What were the biggest technical challenges?

One of the main challenges was that the tools I would normally use for something like this weren’t available due to classification restrictions. I had access to Python, but I couldn’t install the libraries I needed, so I had to find another route. PowerShell was available, so I decided to learn it from scratch. That was painful at times, especially while doing my normal job in a heavily understaffed team. I was supporting live systems all day, then squeezing in development work whenever we were waiting on end users or had a quiet period.

The other challenge was ensuring the script could handle the complexity of the mapping process. Manually it involved building groups, sub groups and sensors — something that took people around two weeks to complete. Getting PowerShell to automate all of that reliably took a lot of trial, error and rebuilding from first principles.

Even though I was writing the script, you can’t finish anything like this alone — whether it’s someone helping you think through a problem or looking at open source examples online to see how others approached similar challenges, I view it as a team effort.

How did you ensure your automated solution was resilient, secure and trustworthy enough for use in a defence environment?

Security was always the top priority. This tool is internal and only used by us, but I still built in extensive error checking so that if someone entered incorrect information, the entire process would automatically stop before anything changed.

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Crucially, nothing goes live until the user completes a final manual step. That human element is essential in defence, especially in mission critical environments. Automation can get you 95% of the way, but a human should always make the final call.

The system also runs entirely within a single isolated server environment, which removes additional points of vulnerability. Everything stays contained.

Your work has freed up engineers to focus on higher value tasks. Where do you see the greatest opportunities for further automation or modernisation across defence comms systems?

Time is the most valuable resource in defence. Anything that reduces repetitive, time consuming tasks will help teams focus on mission critical work and reduce burnout. Even simple things, like automating ways to track stock or validate that data is correct in the background, can save hours. Some of these systems already exist, but they can always be modernised or improved.

Now that I’m in a project based role, my focus is on finding these small but meaningful improvements. I also hope that more people start thinking ‘I’ve spotted a problem, I wonder if I can fix it?’, because having that mindset alone can lead to huge gains.

How important is it to you to inspire others to innovate, and what changes would you like to see to better support innovation within the military?

It’s very important. I’ve already had friends ask how I did it and how they could start doing the same. The military is full of people with brilliant minds, and I want to inspire them to seize every opportunity. If you’ve spotted a problem or a way to make something better, speak to someone. Pitch the idea. Ask whether you and a couple of colleagues could try to build something small. Even suggesting an idea is powerful.

Culturally, I’d love to see more open channels for bottom up ideas, not just innovations coming from specialists. Anyone can learn, especially with today’s resources. You can study an open source project line by line and understand exactly how it works. Even if you’re not in a technical role, your idea could make life easier for the next generation.

Finally, the Churchill Medal recognises exceptional engineering innovation within the Armed Forces. What does receiving this honour mean to you, and how does it reflect the importance of technical problem solving in modern defence operations?

Honestly, I never thought I’d achieve something like this. In my eyes the medal is worth millions because of the people who’ve received it before me and what they’ve done. I try to use it not as something to chase, but as a motivation piece — a way of showing that defence engineering is advancing, and that one person’s idea can genuinely make a difference. The fact that it’s awarded once a year shows that innovation is happening across the Armed Forces all the time.

My message to others is simple: don’t chase the award. Focus on solving problems. If something comes from it, great, but even the smallest improvement can save someone considerable manual work, help to improve morale, and make operational life easier. That’s the real achievement.