January can always be a tough month, but this one has had a few notable points that stand out, and not for the reasons we might hope for.
On the geopolitical stage, NATO’s defensive capabilities in the North Atlantic and Arctic regions may need urgent review, but the chest puffed-out pronouncements on whose hand should be on the tiller for the future of Greenland have been shocking in the delivery and the content.
Meanwhile, the unilateral interventions to remove the sitting president of Venezuela are at best unnerving, no matter how questionable the status or tricky the record of the individual. And the appetite for destruction, injury and death by President Putin in Ukraine shows no sign of relenting, whilst support to Ukraine from its strongest ally appears to be doing exactly that as efforts to find an acceptable path to peace prove elusive.
Read more:
These all clarify and strengthen the reasons why the UK and our European allies are reassessing their defence capability in both people and equipment at pace and, honestly, not before time. The last 100 years or so have taught us that in a world characterised by superpowers acting in this way, with unstable regimes pursuing their agendas through proxy actors, strength is respected, and the only effective deterrence is a unified voice and purpose, backed by strong and flexible military capabilities.
With the protection of the UK’s national security the highest priority of government, it’s gut-wrenching to watch the attacks on defence manufacturers by those who claim to be protesting the supply of parts that directly or indirectly may be supplied to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).
These attacks have followed a concerning pattern of escalation: from external paint damage to broken windows; from illegal entry to equipment damage intended to maximise the disruption and cost impact to the organisation. The risk is that the impact to property and especially people becomes more damaging and irreversible in its impact until it’s stopped.
Read more:
To be clear, the companies attacked are operating in full compliance with UK law, supplying parts and assemblies that might be assisting the efforts in Ukraine, the UK’s own defence and rescue capability, or any number of our allies who need these critical components. They have no say in what the split is of where those parts go, but if attacks pause their ability to supply, and Ukraine is one of those recipients, then the person those actions are helping most is Putin.
It cannot be the role of industry to decide which state, conflict or individual mission their equipment may or may not be used to support – that must remain a role for national government through appropriate foreign policy, defence policy and export clearance protocols that exist robustly today. Any change in the UK’s stance on that would need very careful consideration for the longer term.
If protestors want to change that policy that should be done peacefully at Westminster where the reserved power of controlled approval of export licenses exists.
Read more:
In fact, we should stop referring to these groups as protestors or activists – they are just vandals, planning their damaging attacks across the sector with the greatest proportional impact on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).
A stated target of attacks has been the supply chain for the F35 fighter jet, a program to which the UK was a founding partner nation, with the Queen Elizabeth class carriers purposely designed to carry them. Countries using this platform include Japan, South Korea, Australia, Italy, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Finland, Belgium, Greece, Romania, Singapore, Germany and Switzerland – all current users or awaiting deliveries. Israel is also a user, supplied directly from the US.
This underlines that these attacks don’t achieve anything – programmes like the F35 will continue, as they must as a key part of the primary defence programmes of the West. Instead, attacks impact Scottish SMEs supporting UK and western defences, along with the other key sectors they support – including energy, utilities, medical devices, electronics, space, aerospace and automotive – ultimately undermining and exporting Scottish jobs, Scottish investment and Scottish opportunities.
Read more:
The right to peaceful protest we defend, but this is not peaceful protest. At a Scottish Parliament event in 2024 celebrating Scotland’s aerospace and defence apprentices, I was appalled to see the teenagers and young people entering facing slurs shouted at them and being hit with cardboard placards. That was not peaceful protest.
The mood music towards our aerospace and defence sector from Scottish Government took another significant step backwards following its September 2025 policy statement pausing new awards of public money to defence and engineering companies supplying directly or indirectly to Israel under national government clearances.
The policy statement was released without prior consultation, and without the necessary guidance on how and to whom this would be applied, guidance that would remain unconfirmed for a further three months. Meanwhile, all were implicated, creating an atmosphere of concern without consideration for the complexities and the realities of the supply chain outlined here.
Read more:
The escalation of attacks places Scotland’s defence sector in a state of fear of what comes next, and it is our government’s primary responsibility to its population to ensure their security, and the security of their lawful business activities.
So, to our elected representatives with vital defence companies in their constituencies I ask: have you supported them, have you championed their efforts, their successes, their investment, their jobs? Because we need them as never before and a few misguided people should not dominate the conversation at the expense of Scottish jobs, people’s mortgages and our national security.
Paul Sheerin is chief executive of Scottish Engineering.
Share