Official Statistics

UK defence export statistics 2022 methodology and quality report

Published 17 November 2023

1. Methodology background

Statistic: Official Statistics

Frequency: annual

Compiled: representative survey to 682 companies complimented by additional data sources

Geographical coverage: survey covers United Kingdom only. Other sources provide information about both United Kingdom and other countries.

Sample size: 132 for survey of UK companies

2. Overview of the output

The UK Defence Export Statistics are annual publications that present figures on UK defence exports in the 10 years up to and including the previous calendar year.

Defence export figures are collected by UK Defence and Security Exports (UKDSE), a part of the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) that monitors global defence and security exports. A survey is sent to UK businesses to capture the contracts they won in the previous calendar year, and this is complemented by a combination of government, NATO, industry and media sources.

There is no internationally agreed definition of defence exports or how they should best be measured. Figures for UK exports are based on an annual survey of defence export orders won by known UK companies operating in the defence sector. Please refer to Annex B for an example of the survey.

The information obtained from this survey is supplemented with data from a range of other sources, which provide information about other countries’ (Rest of world) defence exports, along with some additional information about UK defence exports. These other sources are described in more detail in section 4.

Defence figures relate to the full value of an order at the time a contract was signed, even if actual deliveries do not take place for months or years following the signing or are spread over several years. This enables the statistics to offer a current assessment of the health of the market.

Previous releases have presented information about both defence exports and security exports. It is not possible to combine the defence export figures with security export figures as they are recorded via a different methodology and use different metrics. The defence statistics are based on the reported values of awarded contracts and orders, which are allocated in full to the year in which the contract was awarded, while the security statistics are based on company accounts showing the revenue resulting from contracts, which could be spread over several years. For this release, defence and security figures will be published as separate official statistics.

A review and user engagement will be carried out by the department for the approach to future releases.

3. Output quality

This document provides a range of information that describes the quality of the output and details any points that should be noted when using the output.

This publication applies guidelines for measuring statistical quality; these are based upon the 5 European Statistical System (ESS) quality dimensions. This document addresses the quality dimensions and important quality characteristics:

• relevance
• timeliness and punctuality
• coherence and comparability
• accuracy
• output quality trade-offs
• assessment of user needs and perceptions
• accessibility and clarity

More information is provided about these quality dimension in the sections below.

4. About the output

4.1 Relevance

(The degree to which the statistical outputs meet users’ needs)

Data and information related to global defence and security exports is fundamental to UKDSE’s analysis and understanding of trends in the global defence and security export market. The statistics help to identify the UK defence industry’s strengths and weaknesses and to give an indication of trends in both UK and other countries’ defence exports.

4.2 Timeliness and punctuality

(Timeliness refers to the lapse of time between the publication and the period to which the data refer. Punctuality refers to the gap between planned and actual publication dates)

This is an annual publication, referencing the previous calendar year. The 2022 publication covers the calendar year from January 2022 to December 2022. The UKDSE survey is sent out to companies on an annual basis, and the figures refer to the previous calendar year. The survey that provided most of the information about UK defence exports was sent in March 2023.

The UK Defence Export Statistics for 2022 are published in November 2023, with the Security Export Statistics published in December 2023.

5. How the output is created

5.1 UKDSE survey of UK defence exporters

Data about UK defence exports is collected primarily via a survey of UK companies, through which known defence exporters are asked for detailed information about their orders and contracts over the previous calendar year. For the 2022 publication, the survey was sent in March 2023.

The survey covers orders for defence services, support, and equipment. Exports are judged to be defence-related primarily based on the type of customer, for example overseas Ministries of Defence and associated armed services, rather than on the type of products sold.

The list of companies that receive the survey is revised regularly to ensure that the maximum number of defence exporters are included. However, as the survey is voluntary, some companies may choose not to participate, while others may choose to provide aggregated figures rather than detailed contract information.

For the 2022 statistics, UKDSE sent the survey to 682 companies, of which 132 responded. This is an overall return rate of 19%. 18 of the companies surveyed have been identified as Key Account Managed (KAM) companies and are believed to account for a high percentage of the UK defence export market. Of those 18 companies, 13 responded, giving a return rate of 72% for that group.

The UKDSE survey is the main source of information about UK defence exports: across the full period covered by the statistics (2013 to 2022), the UKDSE survey contributed 94% of the total value of reported UK defence exports. Where a company has not provided a survey return, other data received by UKDSE from companies which verify specific exports are used where possible. These are described in the following section. Official published data on other countries’ imports from the UK are also used (for example foreign government tender websites).

The following details the types of orders that are included in the statistics:

• ‘new orders’ covers both legally binding contracts and routine or small orders (for example, spares) - which though not legally binding are regarded as firm

• orders where the customer is defence related. Exports from a UK non-defence supplier may also be included if the customer is a Ministry of Defence (MOD) or defence manufacturer

• additions to existing orders. These are identified as separate entries in the database and will be included in the year in which they fall, rather than the year of the original order

• government-to-government programmes: a figure is included annually for exports achieved under these programmes (Saudi British Defence Co-operation Programme). These are based on customer-approved claims submitted against budgetary provisions included within various underlying agreements for goods and services and fixed priced purchase orders. This information is provided by the MOD Saudi Armed Forces Projects Office

• orders from companies with dual ownership, for example UK/French, noting that only the UK value of the export is included

• since 2019, all exports derived from collaborative projects including between partner nations are included. For example, UK Eurofighter Typhoon exports to Germany, Italy and Spain

• orders covering international collaborative ventures, where the sale is not to one of the partners. Only the UK value-added is counted

• joint ventures. Only the UK value-added part of the venture is counted

• orders received by a UK-based subsidiary of a foreign company

• contracts covering the provision of defence services overseas (consultancy, training), that benefit the UK defence industrial base

• only the UK work content of new business is recorded

5.2 Other sources of defence data

To increase coverage of UK defence exports, and to give an indication of other countries’ defence exports, UKDSE also collect data from a selection of other reputable sources, which are described below.

US Department of Defense contract listings

The United States Department of Defense publishes daily updates on awarded defence contracts related to various branches or agencies of the US military.

US Department of Defense is an official source and is considered likely to be accurate and reliable as a result.

This source provides information on both domestic and international defence contracts, and covers services, support and equipment. Contract information has good coverage across all different US defence agencies and military branches. The source provides details about each contract, including information related to contract value, contractor, a description of the purchase, date of purchase, length of contract, and the agency which has agreed the contract. 

New information is released daily in an online HTML format, and data is corrected in future releases where necessary.

See US defence contracts on defense.gov.

Janes

Janes is a news website which focuses on global defence and security issues. Published articles cover a broad range of defence and security issues and aren’t solely focused on contracts. However, Janes claims to have access to a wide range of open-source intelligence across global defence markets and is therefore a useful source of information for defence contracts across the globe. 

Data are primarily on a contracts/orders basis and originate from a variety of open sources, including government statements, or other forms of media engagement. Articles have included information such as: company name, date of contract, purchaser, and the contracted equipment. 

News articles are accessible in online HTML format only.

View the Janes news page.

DACIS from InfoBase Publishers

The Defense & Aerospace Competitive Intelligence Service (DACIS) is a global defence intelligence service specialising in defence, aerospace, and government technology, published by InfoBase. InfoBase provides services for over a million different defence companies (primarily in the US).

Information from DACIS is mainly centred around US government defence contracts, which InfoBase retrieve through their own linkages with US government databases. InfoBase also report on international contracts awarded by Ministries of Defence (MoDs), Government Agencies, and Prime Contractors.

Contracts are published in regular monthly updates. Data can be downloaded according to a specified time-frame and is accessible in Excel format. Publications include detailed contract information including contract codes, date of contract agreement, equipment, and countries equipment is exported to. The contract values provided can sometimes reflect exports to multiple countries. While it is sometimes possible to estimate the breakdown of the value by destination country by referring to other sources, sometimes this cannot be done and in those cases the destination country is described as “Unknown”.

View the DACIS homepage.

BBC Monitoring

BBC Monitoring is a news analysis service provided by the BBC. BBC Monitoring tracks, translates, analyses and summarises global media to help its customers make sense of world events. Part of this service includes providing regular news updates relating to developments in global defence, including the agreement of new contracts or orders.

View the BBC Monitoring homepage.

NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA)

Contracts data for NATO are published by the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA). The NSPA brings together, in a single organisation, acquisition, logistics, medical and infrastructure capabilities including the related procurement functions to answer a variety of customer requirements across all defence domains including air, ground, maritime, cyber and space.

The NSPA’s primary customers are the 31 NATO nations, and they also serve Partnership for Peace (PfP) nations provided they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the NATO Support and Procurement Organisation (NSPO).

Data are published on a quarterly basis and cover the previous quarter. NATO datasets are often punctual and are made available for download at the end of each quarter. Datasets contain information on contractor’s name, country code, purchase order number, and a description of the purchase. The data can be downloaded in PDF format.

View the NSPA contracts page.

CanadaBuys

CanadaBuys is the authoritative source of information about contracts awarded by Public Works and Government Services Canada, which are published online on behalf of Canadian federal departments and agencies. As an official government source, we consider it to be highly reliable and accurate.

CanadaBuys provides historical data dating back to the 2009 to 2010 financial year.

The historical contracts datasets are accessible and easily downloadable in CSV format, with a data dictionary published alongside the data.

View the CanadaBuys contracts page.

AusTender

AusTender is the Australian Government’s procurement information system, which provides centralised publication of Australian Government business opportunities, annual procurement plans and contracts awarded where the value is over $10,000 AUD.

AusTender is managed by the Australian Department of Finance. As a government source we consider it to be highly reliable and accurate.

AusTender updates and amends published contract data on a quarterly basis, with currently available data dating back to the 2013 to 2014 financial year.

View the AusTender website.

5.3 Supplementary data sources

Where there are instances of uncertainty around the specifics of a contract’s content, targeted research of available media will be undertaken to provide additional clarification on the agreement of the contract or other details such as its total value or date of implementation.

It is not always possible to be definite about the signing of a contract. In uncertain cases, judgements and estimations may be made based on collateral reporting. When the value of a contract is not published, an estimate of its value is made based on historical sales and other factors.

The total value of a contract published at the time of announcement is counted and does not account for when actual delivers are made. The value is not spread over the length of the contract.

Where there is a contract with several supplying nations but no indication of work share, the value is equally divided between the suppliers. Likewise, where there is an export to several nations and no percentage split, the figure is divided equally.

5.4 Amalgamation of figures

Data from all sources are combined in a single spreadsheet covering the last 10 years, and this combined dataset is used to produce the values, tables and charts provided in the statistics publication. Please see Section 6 for more details.

6. Validation and quality assurance

6.1 Accuracy

(This is the degree of closeness between an estimate and the true value.)

Because there is no single official record of international defence contracts, and variation in how much information is made public by countries and businesses, we are reliant on the information we can find and use, which is limited by numerous factors including availability, accessibility and trustworthiness.

We are confident that the long-established survey of UK defence businesses gives us the most reliable information available about UK exports.

Additional sources of information we use will inevitably have an impact on how the final outputs are represented. For example, they are likely to give greater prominence to exporting countries that have strong trading relationships with the importing nations and organisations whose data we use, while under-representing nations whose exports are focused elsewhere. Therefore, the global figures and comparisons shown in the publication do not represent a full picture of global defence exports. They are there to demonstrate trends and give context to UK export figures, and they should be treated as indicative.

6.2 Data quality and processing

Where data can be downloaded from the source in bulk (for example AusTender and CanadaBuys), those data are processed in separate files where automatic calculations and checks are carried out. This includes converting currencies using official Bank of England exchange rates and ensuring that the data relate only to defence exports and to the desired timeframe, as well as automatically converting the data into a consistent layout to reduce the risk of copying errors when the data are combined.

Data from all sources are then combined in a single spreadsheet, which is used as the basis for the charts, tables and headline figures provided in and alongside the publication. Automated lookups and checks are carried out in the combined spreadsheet to ensure that the names of countries are consistent across different sources and that all countries are allocated to the correct regions. The list of which countries are in each region for the purposes of these statistics are published alongside the other published documents. Manual checks are carried out to identify and remove entries giving information about the same contract from multiple data sources.

6.3 Coherence and comparability

Coherence is the degree to which data that is derived from different sources or methods, but refers to the same topic, are similar. Compatibility is the degree to which data can be compared over time and domain for example, demographic level.

Coherence

The UKDSE survey does not align with other trade data sources, as it is taken on a basis of orders placed rather than movement of goods. Movement of goods and balance of payments are the bases of goods exports statistics produced by HMRC and the ONS. In addition to these differences in data collection methods, HMRC and ONS trade statistics do not provide a classification with regards to defence or civilian use of goods categories such as ships or planes. Further to this, the data collected by the survey includes associated defence services which may be provided with or without associated goods, such as training. These services are not derived from HMRC data and are collected by the ONS using an alternative methodology.

The UKDSE survey also differs from other defence publications such as the strategic export controls licensing data. The licencing data are collected on a different basis via the total value of export licences issued or refused by the Export Control Joint Unit and thus are not comparable to this release.

Comparability

The UKDSE survey provides over 90% of the value of UK defence exports reported in the statistics and provides a level of coverage and detail for UK exports, particularly for those Key Account Managed companies representing the majority of exports, that is not available from most of the other sources used. This means that information about UK defence exports are based on a different methodology to information about Rest of world (RoW) defence exports, for which the statistics are reliant on the combination of open source and subscription data sources described in Section 5. For this reason, information presented in the statistics about UK and RoW defence exports are not comparable with one another and should not be used to draw conclusions about the UK’s ranking among other exporters.

6.4 Terms and definitions

UKDSE

UK Defence and Security Exports is part of the Department for Business and Trade. UKDSE helps UK defence, cyber and physical security, and civil maritime companies to export, and helps overseas companies invest in the UK in these sectors.

Rest of world exports

RoW exports refers to exports by countries other than the UK. UK and RoW exports are treated separately in the statistics because of the issues described under the Comparability section above.

Defence orders and contracts versus revenue or earnings

The data collected and used in these statistics relates to defence export orders and announced contracts. The value of those orders and contracts represents the total payment agreed for the goods and services provided and is attributed in full to the year in which the order was reported. This is different to the true earnings or revenue generated by those orders, which may be spread over several years. That spread cannot be accurately determined from the available data. As a result, order values may appear to show considerable variation from year to year, for example an apparent decline in the years following a large contract. This does not necessarily reflect variation in demand for exports.

Moving average

A moving average is a way of presenting time series data in which each presented value is an average of a set number of recent underlying values, with the selection of underlying values moving forward with each unit of time. This method helps to reduce the visual impact of year-to-year variation and give a stronger impression of underlying trends, and it has been used in the statistics because of the apparent variability in defence contract data. The charts provided in the statistics use 5-year moving averages, which means that each value shown represents the average of the values seen in the 5 years up to and including that year, rather than the actual value of contracts in that specific year.

7. Other information

7.1 Assessment of user needs and perceptions

This refers to the processes for finding out about users and uses, and their views on the statistical products.

UKDSE engages with stakeholders across HMG to determine the need for Defence and Security Export Statistics. In particular, the information collected on the defence market is vital to our understanding of the shape of the market and trends and helps UKDSE target support to the defence industry.

UKDSE surveyed the users of the combined Defence and Security Statistics in 2015 to find out information about the users of the statistics and their experience of using the statistics. Most of the 51 respondents agreed at the time that they found the statistics and accompanying tables easy to use and understand, and that they found the methodology easy to understand. The most common types of users were large, small, and medium sized businesses, and the top reported uses were “marketing information”, “industry trends” and “business planning”.

7.2 Accessibility and clarity

(Accessibility is the ease with which users are able to access the data, also reflecting the format in which the data are available and the availability of supporting information. Clarity refers to the quality and sufficiency of the release details, illustrations and accompanying advice)

In 2020 legislation came into effect requiring all publications to meet accessibility standards. Our recommended format for accessible content is a combination of HTML web pages for narrative and charts, with data being provided in usable formats such as CSV and Excel. For further information or additional requests please refer to the contact details on this report.

7.3 Revisions policy

Information from some sources is amended over time, for example cancelled contracts being removed from a published dataset. These changes will not lead to revisions during the year but will be reflected when the latest data are collected for the next scheduled release of these statistics. For those sources whose information is not provided in a downloadable format or updated by the provider, changes such as cancelled contracts will not be reflected in future statistics releases.

8. Annex A: alternative defence export data sources

The following data sources are not used by this publication and are not comparable with it. However, they may provide additional information and context for users.

8.1 HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC)

HMRC publish data on exports and imports by commodity in Overseas Trade Statistics (OTS). However, these are commodity based, rather than customer based. They record transactions at the point in time when the commodities cross borders, not when initial orders are placed. It is not possible to specify which commodities are for defence use or which are for civil use. This data is therefore not useful in assessing defence industry specific exports and imports.

In 2008, the UK government ceased producing defence export delivery data, as it was not possible to derive meaningful results. For example, the HMRC customs codes for aircraft do not differentiate between military and civil aircraft.

8.2 Export Control Joint Unit (ECJU)

The Export Control Joint Unit is part of the Department for Business and Trade and publishes official data on the number of licences granted for export in the strategic export controls annual and quarterly reports. Some of these are categorised as military or dual-use. This data relates to numbers of licences and the value under each licence. The actual value of exports made under the licences is likely to be less than reported because some of these licences will not be used. For this reason, this data is not useful for assessing the health of the UK defence exports sector.

8.3 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)

SIPRI is a major provider of defence export delivery data. It only reports on global arms deliveries, and not new orders or contracts that we require for our business purposes.

8.4 Congressional Research Service (CRS)

Another provider of defence export (arms transfer) data is the United States Congressional Research Service. The CRS, a component of the Library of Congress, conducts research and analysis for Congress on a broad range of national policy issues. It tracks and reports on agreement and delivery data for US G2G foreign military sales (FMS) transactions, in addition to global arms transfer deliveries. Most reports can be retrieved from the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) website.

9. Annex B: survey form sent to UK defence companies

The UKDSE survey is the main source of information about UK defence exports for these statistics. A blank sample of the survey form is provided as an annex alongside the statistics publication.