Over the week, a number of UK ministers gave keynote speeches which sought to reassure the industry about levels of government military spending and the development of new ‘warfighting capabilities’. Between Monday and Thursday, the Farnborough Airshow operates as a closed-door trade show. Away from public scrutiny, multi-million-pound arms deals are made.

The same tarmac that hosts arms companies exhibiting to delegates from authoritarian states with horrendous human rights records, now also hosts school children, teachers and aspiring young people.

Having secured their lucrative defence contracts during the trade-only days, the industry turns its attention on Friday to public relations and securing its future labour pipeline with the gates opening for the ‘Pioneers of Tomorrow’ public day. The same tarmac that hosts arms companies exhibiting to delegates from authoritarian states with horrendous human rights records, now also hosts school children, teachers and aspiring young people.

The ‘Pioneers of Tomorrow’ event is advertised to the public as an opportunity to ‘discover, experience, explore the world of aerospace’ and to ‘experience exhilarating flying displays, unlock career opportunities, get involved in hands-on STEM [Science Technology Engineering and Maths] activities’.… Read more

This week it has been reported that the UK government intends to open a second training establishment for recruits to the armed forces aged under 18, as a ‘companion’ to the Army Foundation College (AFC) in Harrogate. A government source spoke of the ‘amazing opportunities for young people, especially those from working-class backgrounds’ with the college helping ‘to maximise defence’s contribution to solving the Neets challenge’. They didn’t address the UK’s position as an outlier in continuing to recruit children as young as 16 into the armed forces or the many concerns that have been raised about welfare issues at Harrogate.

Also this week, the BBC has published a detailed investigation of abuse of four girls at the ‘Army teen college’ in Harrogate in the last five years. Now young women, they say that their traumatic experiences show that, ‘the college has a dangerous culture of misogyny and sexual violence.’ Evidence of this culture, and other unacceptable behaviours at AFC Harrogate has been growing in recent years yet far too little attention has been paid to the experience of these most vulnerable recruits. While the negative experience that many women have had in the forces has finally received significant attention with the publication of the report of inquiry on Women in the Armed Forces in 2021, how this impacts girls who join up aged 16 and 17 has been given much less focus.… Read more

Press Release by a coalition of peace and anti-war organisations – Peace Pledge Union, ForcesWatch, Campaign Against Arms Trade and Quakers in Britain; supported by Veterans for Peace Britain

Individuals and groups this weekend (27-28th June) are challenging the normalisation of Armed Forces Day military displays and ‘family fun’ events with counter-activities across the country.

At a vigil for peace, held at this year’s national event in Farnborough on 28th June, hosted by Rushmoor Borough Council, anti-war organisations are inviting the public to take part in alternative family activities to build peace and highlight the wasteful spending on Armed Forces Day events.

This year alone, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) awarded a total of £480,000 in grants to Armed Forces Day events across the UK. While at least six of the world’s largest arms companies are sponsoring the events, with both BAE Systems and QinetiQ handing over £100,000 in sponsorship for the national event.

Also amongst campaigners’ concerns is a decision by the Council to exclude the public from its decision to host the national event at the expense of the public purse. Rushmoor Borough Council events are costing over £680,000, with the council agreeing to fund any shortfall for events often portrayed as family entertainment.… Read more

To understand the gravity of this issue, this article will first unpick what AI actually is, to explain the mechanics of these statistical prediction engines. It will then examine how global militaries are currently automating the ‘kill chain’, outline the severe, immediate risks of automation bias and unaccountable algorithms, and assess the catastrophic future trajectory of fully autonomous weapons. Finally, it will highlight the growing global resistance, from United Nations diplomats to tech industry whistleblowers, fighting to establish binding regulations before meaningful human control over life and death is permanently lost.

Contents

• What is AI? The prediction engine
• Bureaucratic algorithms: how are governments currently using AI?
• The battlefield algorithm: how are militaries using AI?
• Algorithms of escalation: what are the current risks?
• Future risks: fully autonomous weapons
• The precipice

What is AI?

The people of Iran are being terrorised as they experience the simultaneous power of states to inflict crushing violence on two separate fronts. We must show solidarity with their struggle against military and political violence and for their liberation, justice, peace and human rights.

Mass bombardment of civilians

The US-Israeli mass bombardment of Iran has unleashed hellish scenes across much of the country and has inflicted incalculable suffering on Iran’s population. In addition to the brutalisation of Iranian civil society by the US and Israel, Iranians had endured extreme violent repression in the weeks preceding the war by government forces in response to mass civil protests.

Iranian civilians have paid the overwhelming price of this war of choice. At least 1,330 Iranian civilians, including over 200 children, have been killed and a further 17,000 wounded since the US and Israel launched their war on 28 February. Reportedly, the youngest of those killed so far by US-Israeli forces was an 8-month-old girl.… Read more

This was the feedback one school shared on their website after their year 7 class was visited by BAE System’s STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Maths) education roadshow in April of last year. The class had taken part in an AI workshop, created their own music video and even played with a robotic dog called Lexi.

The STEM roadshow, which has partnered with the RAF from 2008 and the Royal Navy from 2015, has been running for 20 years. During this time it has become a fixture in the calendars of at least 500 schools across the country.

BAE Systems claim the event’s ‘awe inspiring assemblies’ on topics such as electricity, space travel and robotics have played ‘an important role in inspiring the next generation of innovators, aviators and engineers’.

Who are BAE Systems and what is their involvement in education?

With around 35,000 staff and now making record profits exceeding £3 billion last year, BAE Systems is Britain’s largest defence contractor but also operates globally.… Read more

Summary

In August the government announced £70m of new funding for the UK’s military cadet forces. The pledge to increase the number of cadets by 30%, or over 40,000, by 2030 was made in June’s Strategic Defence Review. The review also stated that a further increase would see cadet numbers rising to 250,000 ‘in the longer term’.

Much of this expansion will be in school-based cadet forces. Since 2012 it has been government policy to increase the number of armed forces cadet units in state-funded secondary schools. To back up the expansion the Ministry of Defence commissioned the University of Northampton to produce a series of evaluation reports to demonstrate the social impact and value of cadet forces.

The first of these reports came out in 2017 and the most recent in April this year, with a report published almost every year in between. The reports have provided the government with a string of similarly highly positive findings and made claims about huge financial benefits to the country. They have been used to generate press releases, media coverage and parliamentary debates, and provided justification for the spending on cadets – estimated to be £210m a year.… Read more

There are some interesting parallels here with the first Tony Blair administration. As we found in our first investigation into the Scheme, Labour very quickly decided to expand the number of MPs taking part in the Scheme when they came to power in 1997. Whilst significant at the time, it was merely a stepping stone to the ever increasing rise to the size of participation today.

Other changes have occurred since the 2024 election, chiefly that Conservative MP James Gray, the long time Chair of the Scheme and its sibling the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for the Armed Forces, lost his Wiltshire seat due to constituency boundary changes. Whilst this means he can no longer take part in the APPG, the charitable status of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Trust, and its dual position of being both inside and outside Parliament, allows him to stay actively involved in the Scheme.… Read more

We reflect on the two strategy reports, what other critics have highlighted and what they tell us about a narrative of ‘militarist realism’ at this moment.

Contents

• New strategies, with extra politics
• The rise of centring ‘Defence’
• Militarist Realism
  • Militarism: the dominance and state subsidy of the (US) military industrial complex
  • Realism: the pervasive atmosphere of permanent war
• No escape from reality….we are not there yet

New strategies, with extra politics

The Strategic Defence Review (SDR) was published in early June with a fanfare. The high rhetoric was matched by the staging of the launch at BAE Systems in Glasgow and a quarrel in Parliament when some in the defence industry – as well as journalists – were given access to the review before MPs. In contrast, the publication of the National Security Strategy (NSS) was hardly registered by the media.… Read more

Inaccurate, partial and unevidenced claims were made in the press about a decision to not have military equipment present at York Armed Forces Day (AFD). For example, it was suggested by The Independent that ‘fear’ about potential protests influenced the council’s decision. The Daily Mail carried quotes from a military ‘expert’ incorrectly linking recently proscribed group Palestine Action to protests in York. But a statement from the Leader of City of York Council suggests that the decision was not a result of some nebulous ‘fear’, but of a democratic process of consultation which directly involved the army and local residents. This key detail, and others, were missing from several stories in the national papers.

As a result, a degree of moral panic was generated. If a few key, publicly available, details had been included in the coverage stories they would have clarified the matter.… Read more