The British military is designed to be an expeditionary force that can intervene anywhere in the world. In 2023, the Ministry of Defence argued that this requires a “persistent forward presence not only in Europe but across the globe”.
The social destruction wrought by this strategy — whether through direct interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan or military support for allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia — is obvious. War is responsible for ecological damage too; the toxic metals that contaminate the water, soil and air of Fallujah and Basra and the systematic destruction of farmland in Gaza represent just two examples.
The deeper planetary impacts of war are also catastrophic, if less immediately legible. Greenhouse gas emissions from the military sector amount to approximately 5.5 per cent of the global total. Direct emissions are compounded by the hot consequences of cold war tactics. With tariff wars in green industries, geopolitical competition between the US and China is a barrier to the technological cooperation necessary to facilitate a global process of decarbonisation.
Although eclipsed in its carbon footprint by the US, the British military is a greater source of emissions than at least sixty countries. Proposals for a net zero military are as much a mirage as BP’s rebrand to “Beyond Petroleum”. In technological terms alone, militaries are one of the most difficult sectors to decarbonise because their primary sources of emissions — such as fighter jets and warships — do not have green alternatives. Given the remote possibility of a decarbonised fighter jet, a reduction in the size of global militaries is instead imperative.
About half of Britain’s military emissions originate from the Ministry of Defence itself, while the rest are produced by private companies that make military equipment for the government and its chosen export partners. A drawdown of military infrastructure and operations is therefore required as well as the reduction of public spending on procurement contracts.
This is a unique opportunity: the military industry is Britain’s only heavy manufacturing sector to rely almost entirely on state contracts. As a private industry overseen by the Ministry of Defence, the military sector can be restructured by the state.
In 2023-24, the Ministry of Defence spent £37.6 billion on equipment contracts, of which just over three quarters went to UK industry. Military contractors also benefit from an unusual level of state intervention, for instance through direct subsidies for research and development (R&D). In 2022, BAE Systems — the UK’s largest military contractor — paid for just 14 per cent of its £2 billion R&D budget, with the rest funded by government customers in the UK and around the world.
State subsidies for R&D help contractors achieve healthy returns on investment and to reward their shareholders — to the ultimate benefit of the asset management firms that own them. Restructuring the sector would redeploy public investment that currently benefits military contractors and their owners to meet a wider range of social needs instead.
Specifically, parts of the military industry could be repurposed for green manufacturing given close adjacencies in skills and technology. For instance, at least four of the UK’s naval shipyards — on the Forth, Lagan, Tyne and Mersey — already produce goods for offshore wind supply chains. In a recent study for the think tank Common Wealth, I interviewed 21 workers in the military industry about the potential of converting production to green manufacturing. My interviewees identified the skills adjacency between naval shipbuilding, offshore energy and public transport production. In the aerospace sector, one interviewee described how his site was at imminent risk of relocation and argued that an earlier transition towards civilian manufacturing would have protected jobs.
Although most interviewees were open to the expansion of their firms into green manufacturing sectors, it was clear that a wider transition would not be possible without the reordering of state priorities. One interviewee at a naval shipyard described the difficulties faced by their company when producing parts for an offshore wind developer. The developer consistently hit the shipyard with penalties, seeking to reduce costs as far as possible to maximise profits. Despite this experience, the interviewee emphasised that they would support a pivot towards offshore wind production if it was for a publicly owned energy company.
With state support, it would be possible to repurpose military sites. This would build on a century-long lineage of trade unions and workers in the military industry organising for a transition. Workers’ transition proposals have been ecologically prescient too — the 1976 Lucas Aerospace Alternative Corporate Plan identified the possibility of producing wind turbines and solar panels among over a hundred other civilian products.
Building on the Lucas Plan, a new approach to industrial strategy could coordinate the repurposing of military production for green manufacturing. To deliver the transition, a publicly owned holding company, governed in part by workers and trade unions, would acquire strategic sites and repurpose them to meet the needs of public bodies such as Transport for London, Great British Energy and ScotRail. In parallel, the government’s forthcoming reviews of defence policy and defence industrial strategy should assess where procurement projects are designed for global intervention rather than national defence and reallocate the military procurement budget to support transitions at relevant sites.
Reckoning with Britain’s global military power as a barrier to decarbonisation is a route to an internationalist climate politics — one that unites trade union organising and the climate movement with opposition to soaring military spending.
Khem Rogaly is a Senior Research Fellow at Common Wealth where he leads their programme of research on the military industry.
Main image: Mehmet Ali Özuğur
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