DEFENCE Secretary John Healey announced plans today to develop a new defence industrial strategy aimed at boosting jobs and investment in the sector.

Mr Healey said the strategy will “mobilise the private sector to help face down global threats,” while new “wargame” exercises will test how the industry and military can develop a more resilient supply chain. 

A spate of firms showed their support and announced new investments. 

Defence company Helsing unveiled its dystopian AI-enabled HX-2 drone, which it is set to be mass produced in Britain following a £350 million investment. 

BAE Systems, which supplies parts for F-35 jets used by Israel in its genocide in Gaza, announced that it will train a record 6,500 apprentices and graduates next year. 

Similarly, Babcock is set to introduce nearly 1,500 early career roles.

The defence industrial strategy is expected to be published in the first half of 2025. Industry and trade unions have been invited to contribute. 

GMB national officer for defence manufacturing Matt Roberts said: “Under previous governments we have lost far too much of our onshore sovereign capabilities.

“For this new strategy to succeed it must have a laser focus on the jobs and skills needed to underpin it.

“Listening to workers themselves, with unions around the table, is vital to solve this.”

A Unite spokesperson said: “We support the need for ‘securonomics’ over globalisation, which has left the UK weaker in terms of resilience and our members worse off in pay and conditions. 

“We also support the Defence Secretary’s commitment to ‘wargaming’ to develop a more resilient and proactive supply chain but this needs to address Unite’s concerns about any further outsourcing of jobs from [Ministry of Defence body] defence equipment and support.”

But CND general secretary Sophie Bolt said: “Far from strengthening the British economy, tying growth to war, militarism and nuclear weapons will drive instability and make the world far more dangerous. 

“How is pouring billions into companies complicit in genocide a basis for economic growth?  

“How will more nuclear warheads help the security of local people who have lost their homes to severe flooding? 

“Instead, the government should be investing in planned jobs diversification away from militarism into green jobs, where skills are used to develop the scale of sustainable energy and energy-saving initiatives, like retrofitting homes.”

Commenting on the BAE Systems’ recruitment drive, which will see its trainees increase by nearly 60 per cent, Sam Perlo-Freeman from the Campaign Against Arms Trade warned that the firm “arms some of the most brutal regimes in the world.”

He said: “John Healey describes them as a ‘leading light of the defence industry,’ and no doubt they will promise decent pay and conditions to new recruits, along with copious layers of ‘greenwashing,’ but anyone considering working for them should be aware of their much darker side. 

“The government meanwhile should be investing in green technologies that offer young people well-paying jobs that contribute to the future of the planet, instead of to death and destruction.”

This was echoed by Stop the War Coalition. A spokesperson said: “There are many green and peaceful industrial investments that could yield just as much growth and as many jobs, without putting still more into the weapons of war.

“This government’s orgy of militarism in the name of ‘national security’ exposes the importance it attaches to maintaining the present world order by keeping wars going and indeed extending them, aligning itself unconditionally with the US and guaranteeing great power and influence for the UK’s defence industry.”