Sovereign spatial data is the missing layer in Defence digital transformation
Defence cannot rely on consumer cloud for the digital twins of its estate, its training environments, or its forward sites. UK-and-EU sovereign capture is the unlock.
Defence cannot rely on consumer cloud for the digital twins of its estate, its training environments, or its forward sites. UK-and-EU sovereign capture is the unlock.
Most enterprise digital twin platforms are built on US hyperscaler infrastructure, with US-headquartered ownership, and assume that the data on them can move freely across borders. For commercial real estate that is a workable compromise. For Defence it is not.
Defence spatial data — the inside of a barracks, the layout of a logistics node, the route through a training area, the configuration of a forward operating base — is sensitive at minimum and frequently classified. The same goes for the sensor and IoT feeds that overlay it. Routing any of that through US-jurisdiction infrastructure introduces compliance friction at best and exposes capability at worst. The CLOUD Act, ITAR adjacencies and the practical reality of vendor support routes all become live considerations.
The result, until now, has been that Defence customers either build bespoke sovereign capability at high cost, or live with operationally inferior tooling that meets the security bar. Neither is a good outcome.
The OnXR architecture was built from inception against UK and EU sovereign hosting. All scan data, IoT feeds and analytics are processed and stored in regional AWS UK and EU regions, with on-device AES-256 encryption at capture, TLS 1.2 or higher in transit, and KMS key management at rest with Bring Your Own Key options for enterprise and Defence buyers. For higher-classification work, air-gappable deployment is supported, and the platform runs on regional sovereign cloud where required, including UK-only deployment.
Capture hardware matters here. An iPhone Pro is appropriate for many depot, garrison and estate workflows. Where the environment is more demanding — degraded GPS, low light, dust, vibration, the need for measurement-grade scans — the OnXR handheld scanner with 360° LiDAR and 8K RGB is the capture device, and it remains entirely controlled within the customer security boundary.
Three categories of value are showing up consistently in conversations with UK and allied Defence customers:
The conversation with Defence customers is usually not about the front end. The buyer assumes a modern UI is the easy part. The conversation is about the things that are hard: data sovereignty, supply chain, security accreditation, audit, classified handling, cross-domain transfer, and long-term support arrangements that survive contract renewal.
OnXR is a UK-registered company (No. 15927771) with UK-based engineering and a UK and EU hosting footprint. Our security and data protection regime is owned by a sitting CISO/DPO and is built to align with ISO 27001:2022. Where required by the customer security case, we deploy in customer-controlled environments and we do not retain data outside the customer boundary.
Defence does not adopt enduringly through commercial trials; it adopts through proof in the user's hands. The right starting point is a focused capture of a single representative environment — a building of interest, a training facility, a depot — to verify the workflow inside the security boundary, against the buyer's accreditation regime, with the buyer's people.
Sovereign spatial data is one of the few areas in Defence digital transformation where the hard problem can be commoditised without compromising the security case. That is the opportunity.
