“Scared” of Washington: UK silent on Trump abuses to protect arms trade, report finds

Campaign Against Arms Trade says Britain’s reliance on US weapons makers leaves it complicit in Washington’s wars and too scared to speak out.

Britain’s arms industry is so tightly bound to the US that the government is staying silent on the Trump administration’s abuses, a new report from Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) argues.

Entangled, published this week, maps how the two countries’ arms industries feed each other. It warns that this creates dangerous dependencies and leaves the UK complicit in US warmongering.

Hidden trade

The US is likely the second biggest buyer of UK arms, but CAAT says the true scale of the trade is hidden.

Between 2016 and 2025, the government issued single licences worth £7.7bn for arms exports to the US. But much of the trade runs through open licences, which have no value limit and no reporting requirements.

Ministry of Defence figures show arms export contracts to North America worth £15.2bn over the same period, most of them likely with the US. That suggests the real value of UK arms sales to the US could be double what the licence figures show.

The flow goes both ways. The UK imported more than £10bn of military equipment over the decade. In the last five years, 85.3% of its conventional weapons imports came from the US.

The report finds that most leading UK arms companies have major US subsidiaries, while many US firms have significant UK operations. Companies named include BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Babcock, QinetiQ, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon.

Dependence runs deepest at the nuclear level. The UK’s Trident missiles are leased from a US-owned pool, and its warheads are based on US design and technology.

The F-35 loophole

The clearest example is the US-led F-35 fighter jet programme. The UK is its only tier-one international partner and makes around 15% of every aircraft.

F-35s have played a crucial role in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The government suspended some arms licences to Israel in September 2024 after accepting there was a clear risk UK-made components could be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law. But it carved out an exemption for F-35 parts supplied through the programme’s global stockpile.

“Scared of the consequences”

CAAT says the so-called special relationship has always been deeply problematic. It argues that Donald Trump’s presidency – including his war with Iran, the actions of US immigration enforcement agency ICE and US military action in Venezuela – has laid bare the dangers of that dependence.

Report author Dr Sam Perlo-Freeman, CAAT’s research co-ordinator, said: “Trump’s war-mongering presidency is committing war crimes and human rights abuses with impunity. However, the UK government is largely silent, scared of the consequences of damaging this deeply entangled web between the US and UK arms industries.”

He added: “Security doesn’t come through facilitating genocide, breaching international law, or supporting so-called allies no matter the cost; and security is certainly not achieved by protecting arms company profits no matter the cost.”

Perlo-Freeman called for security to be reframed around people rather than weapons, and around what he called the biggest threat of all – the climate crisis.

CAAT’s goal is to end the arms trade altogether. But the report accepts that unpicking the UK-US relationship will not happen overnight.

Instead, it calls on the government to end the F-35 exemption and apply its arms export licensing criteria rigorously to the US. It also wants ministers to refuse licences for weapons that could be used in unlawful military operations or by ICE.

Click here to download the Entangled report.