Is UK military R&D aggressive and counter-productive? | Stuart Parkinson

Why is the UK government focusing military R&D on offensive weapons in preference to tackling the roots of conflict?

UK public spending on military research and development has long been among the highest in the world. Its advocates argue that this spending is focused on defending Britain and keeping our soldiers safe – an argument that has been hard to challenge because of the opaque nature of Ministry of Defence accounting practices.

However, thanks to data obtained using freedom of information requests and published in a new report by Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR), it is now possible to see just how misleading this argument is. What’s more, examination of R&D spending on tackling the roots of conflict shows that this is much less than the military spend.

SGR used the three-year period 2008-11 as the basis for its analysis. In total, the MoD’s R&D spending during this period was about £5.3bn. We were able to obtain project level spending data for about three-quarters of this spending. We found that the bulk was spent on developing major weapons systems, including combat aircraft, submarines and nuclear weapons. Using the military academic literature, we classified all the spending according to whether the systems had a major “offensive” capability – aimed at “projecting force” far from British shores – or not. We estimated that 76% of the spending was for offensive systems.

The top R&D spending area was strike planes, ie jets whose main roles include carrying out long-range bombing raids. The two principal planes in this area are the Typhoon (also known as the Eurofighter) and the Joint Combat Aircraft (Joint Strike Fighter or F-35 Lightning II). R&D spending in this area was reported to be £771m over the three-year period. The Typhoon was originally developed during the cold war for fighting Soviet jets but, since then, further development work has adapted them to carry out long-range ground strikes. The UK plans to use the F-35s on its new aircraft carriers, also to “project force” at long-range.

The weapons with the strongest offensive capability are, unsurprisingly, nuclear weapons. Britain’s current Trident system comprises four submarines, each with the capability of launching nuclear warheads against up to 40 city targets, killing millions. R&D in this area relates to both the current system and the new system. The latter is still in the early stages of development, and has yet to get the final approval from parliament, but it is clear that a similarly destructive capability is envisaged for the future. R&D spending in this area between 2008 and 2011 includes £317m on the nuclear weapons themselves, and a large fraction of the £674m spent on R&D for all submarines (both nuclear- and conventionally-armed) and their propulsion systems.

A rapidly growing and equally controversial area of the MoD’s R&D spending is drones – both for surveillance and armed roles. Funding in this area was £195m between 2008 and 2011, and seems set to rise. Some of the funding has been for the development …read more