story-type: ForcesWatch comment

A school trip to an arms fair

The end of July saw the biennial Farnborough International Airshow take place, under the guise of a celebration of all things aerospace. The reality is that it is an event where the world’s largest arms companies gather and exhibit their equipment and make multiple multi-million-pound deals.

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

‘These are children, General’

Introduction and summary

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

The AI arms race: the new face of war

Developed by militaries over the last decade, artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally changing the nature of warfare. The wars in Ukraine, Venezuela, Gaza and Lebanon have shown the most dramatic demonstration of the shift in the way that warfare is being conducted, described by some as a once-in-a-generation inflection point. The development and use of AI is changing and breaking fundamental ethical, societal and legal conventions, no more so than in its application in the military.

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?

… Read more

A war of choice, mass civilian killing and the consequences of militarism

The UK government has positioned itself as reluctantly cooperating with the aggressors but has failed to condemn the war. With the legality of the UK’s cooperation in doubt, Starmer’s pre-election pledge for ‘no more illegal wars’ and the government’s rhetoric in support of international law looks questionable.

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

Roadshows, robot dogs and fairytales: How Britain’s largest weapons company targets schools

robot dog with school pupils

‘Thank you to the team from the STEM Roadshow […] for delivering such a memorable event and providing an insight into the types of opportunities available to pupils who want to pursue careers in Science Technology and Maths (STEM).’

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

Do we want militarised schools? Cadet forces, ‘independent’ evaluations and defence agendas in education

Cadet with rifle

Read a PDF version of this report

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

A ‘chief of staff’ and ‘enduring relationships’: The advance of military interests in Parliament

AFPS article

In November 2024, the UK’s Defence Academy posted on X that the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme (AFPS), which is run by the Armed Forces Parliamentary Trust, has returned with a record number of participants. At just shy of 60, this means almost one tenth of the House of Commons is currently participating in an arms industry funded military cosplay fantasy that, as we highlight below, is seen by UK Strategic Command as a way to influence MPs. This is an 80% increase on the 33 parliamentary ‘graduates’ from the Scheme in 2023-24.

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

Is this militarist realism? Defence dividends for an ‘armour-clad nation’

Graphic of man thinking about defence

With the publication in June of the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) and the National Security Strategy (NSS) and with more reports to come, this government is working hard to change the status of ‘Defence’ in the consciousness and economy of the country. ‘If you want peace, prepare for war’ the authors of the SDR tell us, with the promise of a ‘defence dividend’ that brings jobs and prosperity.

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

York Armed Forces Day: ‘rage-bait’, militarism and the authorised ‘knowers’

Controversy around York’s Armed Forces Day 2025, held on 5 July, caused a stir in the national press after it was reported that military equipment had been ‘banned’ by the local Labour council. Yet key details were either missing from, or misrepresented in, coverage about the supposed ban, as ForcesWatch’s Joe Glenton, a York resident, reports.

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

Hope in a time of luminous insanity

I read a sentence today in JK Galbraith’s history of the 1929 stock market crash that seemed to capture something of our current moment. He wrote:

‘Great drama joined in those months with a luminous insanity.’ 

Writing in the week of VE Day 2025 – the 80th anniversary of the defeat of 20th century fascism in Europe – is an odd feeling. Far away from Halifax bombers, royal pomp and nostalgic street parties to commemorate the end of a devastating war, another outbreak of mass human conflict threatens. There is great drama, and it seems like only a matter of time before it cross-contaminates with a luminous insanity. Or perhaps it already has.

In Ukraine, there is grinding trench warfare which wouldn’t look out of place in 1916. Israel, with material and political support from the UK and others, has just announced the latest phase of its genocidal assault on Gaza. And now (nuclear-armed) India has bombed numerous targets in (nuclear-armed) Pakistan and Kashmir. For those of us who closely observe war and militarism, there is a sensation of being unseen and unheard; a feeling that the world is ploughing towards a third global conflagration despite everything we’ve said and done, often over long, thankless decades.… Read more