Oh, What a Lovely War Contract — Part 2 of 3.
£6.7 billion. One supplier. One decade. The capability never arrived.
In Part One, we found the people selling the tickets. The CEOs. The shareholders above them. The $2.7 trillion. The pier still open, the scoreboard still running, the cheerful songs still playing. The Almighty Gob left you with one question: it isn’t who is selling the tickets.
It’s who built the turnstile. Who owns the pier. And who signed the contract.
This is Part Two. The contract.
The pier was built on a promise. The promise was never the point.
You already know what a defence budget is. A number. Announced in Parliament. Applauded on the government benches. Reported in the press. Filed and forgotten. What you probably don’t know — what the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, Time Magazine, the Sunday Times and Reuters have each failed to place in a single connected piece — is what happens to the money once it leaves the Treasury.
It enters a machine. The machine has one function: to consume the money. Not to produce capability. Not to deliver the warship, the communications system, the surveillance drone, the working navy. To consume the money, request more, and begin again. The feeling of threat arrives — it is always arriving — and the budget follows before anyone has stopped to ask what the last budget actually bought. The pause between requirement and scrutiny has been removed so quietly, over so many years, that nobody in the building notices it is gone.
The entrance is always free. The contract is what costs you.
Three million food parcels. Still. Sorted by volunteers in Wiltshire, Sheffield, Bristol — the same cities as Part One, because nothing has changed since Part One. In a country that spent £74 billion on defence last year and got, in return, a destroyer that broke down four days into its deployment, a communications system twenty years in development with no operational date, and a drone fleet scrapped after costing £1.35 billion and crashing eight times. Hold those numbers alongside each other. The explanation for all of them is the same machine.
Who Is Having a Good Morning
Not the question this time. This time we already know the answer.
In Part One, Jim Taiclet took home $23.45 million. Christopher Calio took home $24.84 million. Phebe Novakovic took home $23.79 million. Same architecture on this side of the Atlantic. Different postcode. Same mechanism.
Charles Woodburn runs BAE Systems. He took home £11.68 million last year — 89.4% of it in bonuses and stock, tied directly to company performance. His company received £6.7 billion from the MoD in 2024-25. That is not a contract. That is a relationship. Sixteen point three percent of Britain’s entire defence budget flowing to one company. The highest single-supplier concentration since records began. And nearly half of it — nearly half — awarded without inviting anyone else to bid. Have you noticed that nobody in Parliament finds this remarkable? That the figure is reported, filed, and the defence budget is raised again the following year? The brain stem fires on security. The rational mind never gets to ask what did last year’s security budget actually deliver.
When Keir Starmer stood up in February 2026 and announced accelerated defence spending to 3% of GDP, BAE Systems stock rose 2% that day. When the United States and Iran exchanged fire on 2 March 2026, defence stocks jumped. By 25 March 2026 — the same month HMS Dragon broke down in the Mediterranean — BAE Systems shares hit an all-time high of 2,360p. Up 23% in 2026 alone. Revenue up 8%. Operating profits up 9%.
The threat arrives. The budget follows. The share price rises. The ship breaks down. Which you have to admire, in a way. The precision of the arrangement.
Every crisis is a contract renewal. Every breakdown is a maintenance opportunity. Every failure of capability is a fresh requirement. The machine does not malfunction. The machine functions exactly as designed. You see how that works, don’t you.
Above Woodburn — as above Taiclet and Calio and Novakovic in Part One — the same three firms sit as dominant shareholders. BlackRock holds 9.9% of BAE Systems. The same BlackRock that runs the US Aerospace and Defense ETF. The same Vanguard and State Street that own the American contractors simultaneously own the British one. Different flags on the building. Same names on the share register. Have you noticed that the architecture never changes? Only the address does.
Someone always collects the fare. Now you know the name on the invoice.
What the Money Bought
Here is what £6.7 billion a year — sustained, uncontested, largely without competitive tender — actually buys when paid to the same supplier for over a decade. Not what it was supposed to buy. What it bought.
A naval destroyer that completed six weeks of maintenance in six days, crossed the Mediterranean, and broke down almost immediately on arrival. You already know that one from Part One. It belongs here too, because here is where the contract lives.
A communications system called Morpheus. Designed to replace the British Army’s Bowman network — a system that has been in service since the early 2000s. The contract was awarded — to General Dynamics Mission Systems UK, not BAE Systems; this matters, and we will come back to why — the money was spent. More than £760 million of it. No working system exists. Entry into service is now unlikely before 2031. The Bowman system Morpheus was supposed to replace was itself supposed to be retired in 2026. It will now run until at least 2031 — perhaps 2035. There is now a project called Bowman 5.7. An upgrade to the upgrade to the system that was supposed to have been replaced. Did you know about Morpheus? Of course you didn’t. It was never on the news. A government that calls a failing programme a success and commissions an upgrade to the thing the failing programme was supposed to replace is not governing. It is performing governance for an audience that stopped watching.
A drone called Watchkeeper. Built over nearly two decades. Fifty-four aircraft. £1.35 billion. Eight crashes. Unable to operate in poor weather — a notable deficiency for a system marketed as all-weather capable. In November 2024, Defence Secretary John Healey walked to the despatch box and scrapped the entire fleet. An MP called it “an unmitigated disaster, arriving years late and effectively already obsolescent.” The MoD had called it “powerful” and “successful” four months earlier.
Four months. Between “powerful and successful” and “scrapped.” You might want to take a moment with that.
And above all of this — the number that makes the rest of them make sense — the National Audit Office published its assessment of the MoD’s ten-year equipment plan in December 2023. It found one thing. The plan is unaffordable. Forecast costs exceed the budget by £16.9 billion. The largest deficit since the Equipment Plan was first published in 2012. The NAO used the word “unaffordable.” The MoD acknowledged this. Then carried on spending. Hold that number. Not alongside the food parcels this time — alongside the BAE Systems share price hitting its all-time high in the same season.
These are not three separate procurement failures. This is one condition — made permanent, institutionalised, protected from scrutiny — by a system that has learned to reward the contractor regardless of what the contractor delivers. The political class cheers the budget announcement. The contractor banks the contract. The capability never arrives. More money is requested. Nobody is accountable for the gap. That gap is not an accident. That gap is the product.
The scoreboard was always meant to keep climbing. In Part One it counts the profits. Here it counts what the profits were supposed to buy.
The Revolving Door Has No Handle on the Outside
Byline Times investigated what happens when a general retires. The pattern is consistent across decades. A senior officer finishes his commission on a Friday. A seat at a defence contractor appears. The knowledge walks with him — the procurement relationships, the understanding of what the MoD will spend and where, the informal networks that no competitive tender process can replicate or disrupt. The contract follows. Have you noticed that this is described as the natural order of things? That the movement of military expertise into the private sector is spoken of as a feature, not a defect? The pause that might allow someone to ask whether this is appropriate has been removed so thoroughly that the question is no longer considered worth asking.
BAE Systems has been the MoD’s largest supplier for over a decade. The revolving door keeps it that way. Not through corruption — nothing so crude. Through adjacency. Through the simple fact that the people who decide what to buy know the people who sell it. Have always known them. Will know their successors. It is the system working precisely as intended.
Now consider MODSAP. The Ministry of Defence Saudi Armed Forces Projects. Running since 1986, originally as the Al Yamamah programme. Under this arrangement the Saudi Arabian government pays the British MoD for British soldiers and civil servants to support and train the Saudi armed forces. £303.6 million paid by Riyadh to London over five years. More than 200 British service and civilian personnel. The MoD provides the personnel. Saudi Arabia provides the paycheque. BAE Systems is the prime contractor throughout — having sold more than £17 billion of weaponry to Saudi Arabia since the war in Yemen began in 2015.
Have you sat with what that means? British soldiers, funded by the Saudi government, training the pilots flying the jets — sold by BAE Systems, built in part with British taxpayer subsidy — that have been bombing Yemeni civilians. At least 9,000 killed in direct attacks on civilian targets. Hospitals. Schools. Marketplaces. Agricultural facilities. The Campaign Against the Arms Trade described the relationship between BAE Systems, the MoD and the Saudi military as “deeply integrated.” Not “problematic.” Not “concerning.” Deeply integrated.
Deeply integrated. That is the phrase they chose. Which tells you everything you need to know about how comfortable the arrangement is — and how long it has been comfortable.
The concern about Yemen exists. It is expressed in Parliament. It appears in newspaper editorials. It generates protests. And simultaneously — in the same Parliament, under the same government, signed by the same ministers — the MODSAP contract continues, the BAE Systems weapons flow, the Saudi paycheques arrive at the MoD. The legitimate grievance travels all the way to its own opposite without anyone appearing to notice the journey.
The broken navy. The failed programmes. The revolving door. The Saudi paycheque. They are not four stories. They are one story — told in four chapters by a machine that has been running uninterrupted for forty years and has never once been held accountable for the gap between the promise and the delivery.
The turnstile doesn’t care which direction you’re running. The contract runs in one direction only.
The Pension You Didn’t Know You Had
Here is something that will follow you out of this article.
In December 2024, petitions arrived at the Avon Pension Fund. Bristol City Council itself appealed to the Fund to divest from aerospace and defence companies supplying Israel. In March 2025, the Committee met in public in Bath — 140,000 members across Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset represented in that room. Ten voted to continue investing. Three voted to divest. An in-principle decision. Not yet final.
The Committee considered a single question: should the Fund continue investing in Aerospace and Defence?
The companies named were BAE Systems. General Dynamics. Boeing. Northrop Grumman. Rheinmetall. Saab. The Fund holds £18 million — 0.3% of its £6 billion assets — in these companies. One of the cited companies, BAE Systems, is a major employer in Bristol. The committee noted it. The contract continued.
The Committee then did something significant. It surveyed 20,000 members — asking directly: should we stop investing?
The result landed in September 2025. Only 42% of members wanted to stop. The majority either supported continuing or didn’t engage at all. The legal advice was unambiguous: to divest for non-financial reasons, two conditions must be met — no significant financial detriment, and demonstrable member support. Neither condition was fully met.
In December 2025, the final vote: eight to two. Continue investing.
The Fund is now transitioning from Brunel Pension Partnership to Local Pension Partnership Investments — LPPI — by April 2026, as part of government pension reforms. The investment in aerospace and defence goes with it.
Do you see what’s happening? The person who packed those food parcels in Bristol. The person who volunteers at the community hall in Sheffield. The person who is cold, who has a job, who opened a food parcel last month. Their workplace pension — if it is a local authority pension in the South West — may hold shares in BAE Systems, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman. And when asked whether that should stop, fewer than half said yes. Once you know that, you cannot unknow it. The entrance is always free. The exit is what costs you. And sometimes — often — you don’t know you’ve entered at all.
So. The protest marches to Trafalgar Square. The pension fund surveyed its members. Fewer than half wanted out. The final vote was eight to two to stay invested. In public. In Bath. In December 2025. The arms trade didn’t need to march anywhere.
The money is not absent. The choice has already been made. And it was made — democratically, legally, on the record — in a committee room, not on the street.
The committee room in Bath. Eight votes to two. December 2025. The arms trade sent no one.
The Loop That Closes Itself
The Washington Post has not run this story. The New York Times has not run this story. The Guardian has not run this story. The Sunday Times has not run this story. Time Magazine has not run this story. Reuters has not run this story. The Intercept has covered elements of it. But the full architecture — from the non-competitive contract to the failed programme to the Saudi paycheque to the Bristol pension fund — has not appeared in any of them in a single piece. You might find that interesting. The Almighty Gob certainly does.
In December 2021, three activists went to an Elbit Systems factory in Shenstone, Staffordshire and were acquitted. In February 2026, six activists who broke into Elbit’s Filton facility near Bristol were acquitted. Two cases. Two locations. Two acquittals. One pattern.
The arms trade has been building this architecture for sixty years. Patiently. Methodically. Contract by contract, appointment by appointment, committee vote by committee vote. It does not march. It does not need to. It has something considerably more durable than passion. It has a pension mandate.
Against that structure, a march to Trafalgar Square makes two short planks look like the most sophisticated computer system in the world. It is the political equivalent of arguing with the smoke alarm while the house burns down — the noise is real, the feeling is real, and the cause of the fire remains completely undisturbed.
BAE Systems holds its AGM every May in Farnborough. A public event. Shareholders may attend and ask questions. The 2026 AGM is weeks away. Lockheed Martin, RTX and BlackRock hold their annual meetings between April and June. The pension fund that may include your contributions holds shares in these companies. The addresses are public. The dates are public. Most people don’t know that. The arms trade is counting on it.
Friction is what allows a question to be asked. The contract is specifically designed to ensure that no one with the power to ask it ever has to.
What the Contract Knew
The scoreboard is still running. In Part One it counts the profits. Here it counts the gap between the promise and the delivery.
£760 million. No working communications system. Entry into service: unknown.
£1.35 billion. Fifty-four drones. Eight crashed. Fleet scrapped November 2024.
£16.9 billion. The gap between what the MoD told Parliament it could deliver and what it can actually afford.
£303.6 million. Paid by Riyadh. To the MoD. For British soldiers. Training the pilots. Flying the jets. Over Yemen.
£6.7 billion. One company. One year. Nearly half without competitive tender.
And somewhere in a logistics centre in Wiltshire, in a community hall in Sheffield, in a church in Bristol, volunteers are sorting food parcels. Tins of soup. Packets of pasta. For people with jobs. For people with children. For people who are cold. Whose pension fund voted eight to two in Bath in December 2025 to stay invested in the companies that received the contracts that produced the failures that required the extra budget that came from the welfare cuts that pushed 250,000 people into poverty.
You’ll have noticed, by now, who built the turnstile. Who owns the pier. Who signed the contract. And who is still, quietly, waiting at the gate.
The pier is still open. The scoreboard is still running. The contracts are still flowing. And the question Joan Littlewood never got to ask is still unanswered.
It isn’t who sold the tickets. It isn’t even who signed the contract.
It’s who is standing in Trafalgar Square, placard raised, aimed at the wrong building, while the AGM takes place three weeks from now in Farnborough.
Oh, what a lovely war contract.
Next — Part 3 of 3: Oh, What a Lovely War Protest.
The Almighty Gob is a Bristol-based publication founded by John Langley — independent Bristol mayoral candidate 2016 and 2021, and one of the city’s most forensic observers of institutional power. Publishing since 2020, with over 500 pieces including 88 FOI-based Bristol investigations. Across seven platforms and Substack at thealmightygob.com — no party allegiance, no press accreditation, no interest in acquiring either.
Sources and citations for all three parts of this trilogy are available as a separate reference document.