The UK Defence Industries Council (DIC) aims to use the results of a study it commissioned into the value of defence exports to the country's economy to help the government target research funding more effectively and achieve better links between academia and industry.
The DIC is an industry forum of senior executives that regularly meets with UKgovernment officials to advise defence secretary Geoff Hoon.
"This study is part of assembling a factual database on which we can all agree," says Gordon Page, DIC industry lead on defence exports and Cobham chairman. "R&D decisions can then be targeted to best effect."
He adds: "What we are saying is that unless we re-target what [R&D funding] we've got, some of the [negative] trends we've seen will accelerate. The links between industry and academia are not as well developed as they might be."
The study, by Oxford Economic Forecasting, determined that UK defence exports - of which aerospace products make up 75% - totalled £4.1 billion ($7.47 billion) in 2002. This represented 1.5% of total exports and boosted the UK's trade balance by about £2.8 billion. Defence exports directly supported 29,000 jobs, the study says, and productivity in the defence sector is 33% higher than in the manufacturing sector as a whole.
"But it is the so-called spillover benefits from R&D spending - the extent to which defence exporters contribute to increased productivity in other industrial sectors - which are of most interest to economists," says OEF managing director Adrian Cooper. "We estimate the R&D spending attributable to defence exports might add around 0.4% to the UK's gross domestic product in the long run. In 2002, that would have been worth £4 billion."
The UK is the world's second-largest defence exporter with a market share of roughly 22%, having benefited in recent years from the massive Al Yamamah contracts signed with Saudi Arabia in the 1980s.
ANDREW DOYLE / LONDON
Source: Flight International
