Don our arms exports help to defray the cost of supplying our own armed forces with military equipment?
This is the argument that is most often used by the arms companies to justify their subsidies. The reality is that export orders tend to come after the initial investment and often after any orders for the MoD have been filled. This means that any benefits go to the company and do not bring the cost of weapons for our own armed forces down. The government implicitly recognises this by trying to charge a levy to the arms manufacturers on exporters. They have tried to set this levy at 30% but currently only get around 1%.
