THE Ministry of Defence (MoD) is so keen on selling British weapons to other countries — especially oil-rich Gulf dictatorships — that it has grown a new, powerful arms-sales unit.

Many people assume the MoD’s main duty is running the armed forces for wars and emergencies (like our current Covid-19 crisis), but it is also a keen seller of arms. 

This distorts defence policy and means there is an additional pro-arms sales department at the heart of government.

Announcing an MoD-led review of Britain’s “defence industrial strategy” this March, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace was explicit that the government believes arms sales to foreign nations are good because they build “the UK’s global influence,” while “underpinning our strategic partnerships with key allies.”

Wallace was making clear a government view that selling British weapons is both a money-maker for the nation and also helps us win friends with the nations buying our weapons.

These befriended arms-buyers are often the Gulf dictatorships involved in bloody conflicts like the Yemen war.

You might think that the MoD’s main arms business would be buying arms for Britain’s armed forces,  while British arms sales would be the business of the Department for International Trade.

But Wallace thinks the MoD should be selling arms to other nations’ armed forces too. 

Thanks to this Tory policy, the MoD has grown its own arms sales unit.

I have established through freedom of information requests that this “exports policy” unit sits in the MoD’s Directorate of Economic Security and Prosperity, and is central to some of Britain’s biggest arms sales, including to the Middle East. 

The unit is run by a deputy director — a Civil Service grade third in rank below the top official in the department, the  permanent secretary. 

This deputy director is assisted by a group captain, a wing commander, a squadron leader and other staff. These military qualified staff have been recruited into a sales department. 

According to the most recent MoD annual report, this exports policy unit “leads on supporting strategic defence export campaigns.”

These highly valued “strategic” deals includes sales of the Typhoon warplane, built jointly by arms firms BAE Systems, Airbus and Leonardo. 

The exports policy unit’s work brought an order in 2017 for 48 Typhoons from Saudi Arabia, though the £5 billion deal is in limbo as arms sales to Saudi are partly suspended due to the war in Yemen. 

The unit says it is “currently in discussion with Saudi Arabia on their future requirement.”

The MoD exports policy unit also “led the Typhoon export campaign” to Qatar in 2018, which resulted in a further £5bn order, and it leads on “complex weapons” — something I have discovered refers to a variety of rockets and bombs, including many sold to Gulf regimes, including Paveway IV guided bombs, Brimstone missiles, Meteor missiles and Storm Shadow cruise missiles.

The MoD previously hosted the massive Deso (Defence Export Services Organisation) arms sales organisation, which was deeply involved in the Saudi arms trade. 

In 2008, Deso was transferred to the Department for Trade, but it seems that losing one arms sales outfit was so painful that the MoD has grown another. 

The Labour government made moves to scrap Deso in 2007, as a special arms sales unit marketing weapons to dictators was seen as incompatible with an “ethical foreign policy,” especially as Deso was implicated in some massive bribery cases — with corruption a key feature of many arms deals of the time. 

There was fierce resistance from the arms industry, and as a compromise Deso was retained, but transferred out of the MoD.

In 2015, following a defence review from David Cameron, the MoD was given an extra new duty to “promote our prosperity,” which tasked the department with an economic role, “working with industry,” not just a defence one. 

The Directorate of Economic Security and its export policy unit were formed soon after, in 2016. 

So now as well as Deso, working for the Department for International Trade (but co-operating with the MoD), we also have the MoD’s exports policy unit.

By putting the MoD back in the arms sales business, the government has increased the number of departments pushing to sell weapons to dictators.

There is a second effect. The arms industry has a history of supplying weapons to the British armed forces that are overpriced, late and not fully effective.  

But the MoD has been made into both a salesperson and a customer for bombs, rockets, jets and other bits of kit. 

This closeness to the arms trade only makes it harder for the MoD to press down on high prices, infamous cost overruns and late supply of military kit.