Arms industry on the defensive
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Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. Today, with me, Toby Gillis, and Stuart Willey. There are warnings that the defence industries in Western countries are at risk. And

at a time when demand for the weapons they produce is higher than ever, what with multiple conflicts raging and heightened global threats. The arms firms are facing difficulties getting access to capital because of ethical investment policies and now even struggling to recruit people to work for them.

In the UK, thousands of positions in the sector are unfilled. And today, the Times' defence editor Larissa Brown reports on a new blow to their recruitment plans as arms firms pull out from attending university careers fairs. Larissa is with us now. What have you been hearing from the industry?

Yes, well, it's very interesting because someone came to me with this story and then I ended up speaking to various defence companies and also ADS about it. And what I was told is that defence companies have become increasingly worried about attending careers fairs at universities because of the nature of the protests that are happening.

And in some cases, universities themselves have given advice to defence companies that they don't think they should attend because of health and safety concerns and security concerns. And that advice has basically meant that the defence companies themselves have felt that they don't want to subject their young employees to intimidation and harassment at these careers fairs. So they've had to pull out of them. Or in some cases, the events and programmes

careers fair sort of talks have had to go online so that's been another impact of that and then what I was told was really worrying people is that that then means that recruitment's affected in the sector and this is a sector that already has thousands of job vacancies and because of the the inability to actually go to these careers fairs and recruit young people they're suffering even more and that's obviously concerning people at a time when we've got heightened threats.

So the ADS you mentioned is the lobby group for the defence and security industry. Just what's prompting these protests and threats? Well, it's different causes. One thing that ADS were saying was that, you know, there's been a sort of increase in all of this in the recent years, and somebody else was saying that it was linked to what was going on in Gaza, and the protesters are targeting companies that

might be affiliated with the Israeli Defense Ministry. Now, a couple of the companies that I spoke to, they were BAE Systems and Leonardo Defense Company, and both of them don't sell any weapons directly to Israel, but they both do provide components for the F-35 defense.

and those F-35 jets that have sent these components to the US to develop the F-35s, and then the US have sent these on to Israel. Now, Leonardo says that it's not clear whether Israel's actually using the component from Leonardo because it's unclear. They don't basically specify what exactly they're using. They could have sort of tailored their own F-35s using something else.

However, the idea is that protesters are sort of targeting these specific companies that may be helping them.

effectively. And then that's why they're then obviously standing outside these universities. And what ADS are saying is that they are being, you know, intimidating and harassing members of staff. And obviously what their end goal is, is for things like they're not to be, people not to be recruited to these defence companies and the defence companies not to do as well because they don't want the defence companies to be operating in

in a way that enables them to then sell arms on to Israel. Larissa, when we think about arms fairs, military bases, the UK has a long history of protests against arms companies, the defence industry. Is this a ramping up now? Is it getting much worse?

Yes, and this has always happened. And of course, one of the things that defence companies wanted to stress is that, you know, they believe in the right to protest. This is one of the reasons we're developing weapons to protect Britain from countries that might want to stop our ability to do these things and live in a fair and free democratic society. And yes, this has always happened. But they've said that in recent years, it's got...

to a level that they're worried about, and it's become violent in some cases. And in the case of universities, it is what they deem to be intimidation and harassment of employees. And so they think that whilst there should be these, you know, an ability to protest, the protests are going too far.

It feels sometimes, Larissa, like the arms industry is under fire. We had a senior NATO official this week who was calling banks, pension funds and the ratings agencies stupid for not investing in the defence industry. That's often blamed on ESG policies, the sort of company ethical and social responsibility rules that they keep to. Is all of this a real risk to those industries keeping on going in the Western world?

It is, and this is an issue that we've also highlighted in The Times actually before Christmas because ministers were trying to

do more to help especially small defence companies from getting the loans and financial support that they need from banks. And that was because there is this general concern that, yes, as well as defence companies struggling to get their voice heard at universities, they're also being denied basic loans and other services from banks. They're being debanked, as it were, because they are defence companies

we've heard from various people who are saying that that shouldn't be happening and that there's a great risk potentially to even our national security if the defence companies can't

you know can't can't operate effectively um and actually one of the problems of this is is if you say that oh you don't want defense companies to export perhaps well they'll never think that the the companies like BAE systems are developing will be too expensive if they were just providing it for the British military they need to be able to export some of this equipment in order to make to drive down the costs um so that's another point that someone uh told me yesterday. For the

For the industry lobby group ADS and for the defence companies you've been talking with, what do they see as being the solution? What do they want to happen next? ADS didn't give me any specific solution necessarily, but I've already got quite a lot of reaction from people this morning who have been messaging. And I know the general idea is that

universities need to do more to ensure that these companies can go to the jobs fairs, whether that's security or, I don't know, changing their venues or just making sure that there is a process in place so these companies can actually attend places like jobs fairs. And so banks also have the pressure on them to help defence companies so they can actually flourish. And Larissa, could we get to a position where the government legislates to make this happen?

I've not heard about the idea that they could legislate, but one person did suggest to me that he thinks that there should be basically like some form of body, like a committee that looks at how defence companies can be better supported in this context. And so I think they're planning on writing to various secretaries of state to say that there should be more done across government to help defence companies. Yeah.

Larissa, thank you. Larissa Brown is The Times' defence editor. While defence industries in the West struggle with recruitment, for Russia, what some have described as the meat grinder strategy is now causing problems getting enough troops to hold the front lines in Ukraine. George Barros is from the Institute for the Study of War. He's been talking with Frontline, the interview series from Times Radio you can hear on YouTube, which the World in 10 has partnered with.

He says Russia is having to pay some soldiers a sign-up bonus of $36,000, or four times their annual salary, just to get numbers up. The Russian casualty rate across the entire feeder is not sustainable. All the open source intelligence indicates that the Russians lose between...

On average, 30,000 troops per month killed and wounded. In the quarter four of 2024, the Russians pushed harder because they were, I think they're sprinting at the end of a marathon and they were losing closer to 40 or 45 casualties per month.

So when North Korea gifted the Russians 10,000 soldiers back in the fall, that was really just roughly 10 days worth of soldiers if you were to aggregate it across the entirety of the theater. Now, within Kursk itself specifically, we've not been able to confirm independently the number of North Koreans killed or wounded because we actually just, we're not prepared to look at people's faces and pictures and say, yep, those are North Koreans versus Asiatic Russians living, you know, coming from North Korea.

eastern Siberia parts of Russia. However, that's all consistent with the reports that we've gotten from Pentagon officials and UK officials and Ukrainian officials. You know, I think it was just about a couple of weeks ago, the Pentagon claimed that the Russians have taken on about 1000 casualties of

The battalion being between 500 and 1,000 in total, which was over the course of several weeks of fighting. And then that was before that the Russians even started to decisively deploy North Koreans in these wave attacks. The purported combat footage that we've seen of the North Koreans being used shows them being used as dismounted infantry without vehicle support being marched across fields to go seize tactical positions.

land and the Ukrainians engaging them relatively effectively, because that is not a particularly effective use of infantry, but you make gains that way, but it comes at a tremendous human cost.

So it's not inconceivable that you would see up to a battalion's worth of casualties over a 48-hour period. So the hot spots are really hot. George Barros from the Institute for the Study of War was talking with Frontline. And that's it from us. Thank you for taking 10 minutes to stay on top of the world with the help of The Times. See you tomorrow. ♪