Ethics, Scientists, Engineers and the Military - Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability - page 341

couple of years, while that on military R&D has fallen, with a considerable drop
from the approximately 50% at the height of the cold war (Parkinson 2012a ). Most
military R&D, including government funded R&D, takes places in industry,
resulting in a subsidy of £500 million annually (Parkinson 2012b ). In many cases,
the government purchases the technology resulting from military R&D funding,
thereby effectively paying twice, once for the research and the second time when it
buys the resulting technology.
The main areas of UK military R&D are offensive not defensive, namely,
(1) nuclear weapons systems, including warheads, 'successor' submarines and
submarine nuclear propulsion systems (£980 million); (2) strike planes, such as
Typhoon, F35 lightning II and Tornado (£771 million); (3) attack helicopters,
mainly Future Lynx/Wildcat (£559 million); and (4) unmanned aerial vehicles or
drones, including Mantis and Taranis (£195 million). These expenditure fi gures are
for 2008-2011. They are minimum fi gures due to missing data, so the real fi gures
may be higher (Parkinson 2014 ). About a tenth of UK military R&D spending goes
to nuclear weapons. A recent expansion of the Atomic Weapons Establishment at
Aldermaston involving new research facilities on supercomputers and the Orion
Laser may undermine the Nuclear Proliferation and CTB treaties.
Public relations exercises tend to focus on de-mining and other 'life-saving'
R&D projects, but their contribution is in fact only a very small percentage of
military R&D, and 76% of the programmes for which data was available were for
technology with offensive uses. Changes to a less aggressive defence policy could
save £1 billion per year. In addition a quarter of military research spending of about
£500 million is undocumented at the programme level by the Ministry of Defence
(Parkinson et al. 2013 ). However, this high level of militarisation is taking place at
a time when even the prime minister admits that the UK does not face the threat of
attack by conventional forces and the use of conventional military power could only
deal with one the eight risks in the fi rst two tiers of the national security strategy
(HM Government 2010 ). Surprisingly a considerable proportion of R&D spending
is for equipment that has already been deployed, often including large overspends.
For instance, several hundred F-35 Joint Combat Aircraft have already been pro-
duced, although testing will continue until 2019 (Parkinson et al. 2013 ).
The current phase of military involvement in UK universities dates back to the
start of the century at a time of privatisation of government research labs and the
early days of the so-called war on terror. 42 out of 43 UK universities investigated
in four studies received funding for military objectives and research by Scientists
for Global Responsibility, and other organisations has not yet identifi ed a UK
university which defi nitely does not receive military funding (Langley et al. 2008 ).
It is therefore highly likely that the overwhelming majority of UK universities
receive at least some military funding, and a number of them defi nitely receive very
large amounts. In the period 2008-2011, 16 leading universities received over £83
million in military funding, with another six universities not providing any informa-
tion in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from the Huffi ngton Post
newspaper. The highest funding was received by Imperial College (£15.2 million),
followed by Sheffi eld and Cambridge Universities (each £13.8 million). 28% of the