British Aerospace

Theodore Baird1

A number of scholars, journalists, and activists have argued that we may be witnessing the development of a ‘security-industrial complex’ in Europe which resembles the earlier ‘military-industrial complex’ of the Cold War. The border security-industrial complex refers to the relations between military, security, and private industry within a global market for the design and implementation of border security technologies. The main actors are governments, suppliers of security technologies, and security forces demanding use of new technologies for controlling and managing state borders.

Stephanie Demblon

“Europe is at war against an imaginary enemy” - this is Frontexit’s campaign slogan regarding the respect of migrants’ human rights at the borders of the European Union. Usually addressed from a humanitarian angle (guilty of negligence to basic migrant rights) or a political one (the question of migratory flux management and distribution), the subject is rarely connected to the European arms market. And yet…

Anne-Marie O'Reilly

A key event for the international arms trade took place in London from 9-13 Sept: the DSEi arms fair which hosted 1500 arms companies and 30,000 arms buyers and sellers.

The UK government’s invite list was a roll call of authoritarian regimes and human rights abusers. Unarmed protesters have been killed this year on the streets of Bahrain, Turkey, and Brazil. Yet not only were the companies which supplied the teargas used in this repression at DSEi, each of their militaries was there too - at the invitation of the UK government's arms sales unit.

Terry Crawford-Browne

After more than a decade of cover-ups and denials, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma in September 2011 told the national executive council of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) that he would lose the case I had brought against him in the Constitutional Court (CC). Zuma reportedly only agreed to my demand for a commission of inquiry into the arms deal scandal to avoid having the CC dictate to him.

Terry Crawford-Browne

The Barclays Bank, HSBC and StanChart banking scandals well illustrate why the City of London is sometimes described as “the most corrupt square mile anywhere on the planet Earth!”
The British and the war business do corruption with panache. How apt that the villain in the Barclays saga is a man called “Diamond” -- for diamonds are symbolic of colonial conquest both in India and South Africa, as well as war and the passions of love.

In 2009 the Defence & Security Equipment International (DSEI) exhibition was due to hold its bi-annual arms selling jamboree in East London, opening with a conference at the Queen Elizabeth Conference centre in central London.

Abi Haque

A careers fair at the University of Edinburgh was closed down last week after the organisers’ decision to invite the world’s largest arms firm to the event triggered a nonviolent protest by students. The students laid down in front of the stall run by BAE Systems in a symbolic die-in.

Formerly known as British Aerospace, BAE Systems has grown into one of the world’s largest aviation and weapons companies, with major operations not only in the United Kingdom but also in Australia, South Africa, Sweden, Saudi Arabia and the United States, where it is now one of the Pentagon’s largest contractors. BAE is one of the top producers of armored combat vehicles such as the Bradley Fighting Vehicle (widely used by the U.S.

Ian Prichard, CAAT’s Research Co-ordinator, describes his day at Farnborough 2010: an arms fair operating alongside a civil aerospace exhibition, all obscured by an airshow in the UK.

BAE Systems which has been embroiled in allegations of bribery and corruption, has topped a list of the world's 100 largest arms manufacturers, the first non-US company to do so, according to figures released today.
BAE produces a wide range of weapons systems, including Eurofighter-Typhoon jets and Trident nuclear missile submarines. It sold $32.4bn (about £21bn) of arms in 2008, says the Stockholm international peace research institute (Sipri).

Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and The Corner House were shocked and angered by the decision of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to settle with BAE Systems. As a result of the settlement there will be no opportunity to discover the truth behind alleged bribery and corruption in the many BAE deals that were under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.

In September every other year London's antimilitarist scene is dominated by DSEi - the Defence Defence Systems & Equipment International, the largest arms fair in Europe. One problem in organising such regular events is that it is virtually impossible to keep the numbers growing every time, and this year numbers were again down.