FOI_26-181 Partnerships with arms trade companies
Date of response: 09 September 2026
We have now considered your request of 15 august 2026 for the following information:
Please note that the phrase ‘arms trade companies' relates to any company on the SIPRI Top 100 arms-producing companies and Defence News Top 100 lists.
For this request, this is limited to:
1. BAE Systems
2. Babcock
3. QinetiQ
4. Rolls-Royce
5. Serco
6. Cobham
7. Raytheon (RTX)
8. Airbus
9. General Dynamics
10. Leonardo MW
11. Lockheed Martin
12. Thales
13. MBDA
14. Elbit Systems
15. Northrop Grumman
16. L3 Harris Technologies
17. General Electric
18. AVIC
19. GKN Aerospace
20. Boeing
21. Ministry of Defence (MoD)
22. Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL)
23. Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE)
In the request below, the phrase ‘academic partnership’ is related to any partnership within or between universities to collaboratively facilitate the delivery of learning and other strategic opportunities.
This includes the following activities:
• Opportunity advertisements (jobs, graduate schemes, apprenticeships, other opportunities)
• Careers fairs appearances/attendance
• Graduate schemes including studentships
• Apprenticeships including degree apprenticeships
• Sponsorships (events, training, etc.)
• Academic scholarships
• Consultancy fees (paid to the university or paid by the university)
Please may you provide the information broken down by:
Question 1. Please may you provide information on any partnership or funding for ‘academic partnerships’ from ‘arms companies’ from 01 August 2024 to 31 July 2026, broken down by:
The title and descriptions of the purpose of the partnership and academic department(s) involved)
The partners and source of funding (to be included, an arms company can be either a partner or funder of the partnership)
Academic years, including the start and end date (DD-MM-YY) of the partnership or funding.
Total amount in GBP provided for each partnership
Other participating UK universities and the nature of their involvement (partner, collaborator, funder).
Our response:
The only ‘partnerships’ with the listed arms trade companies which took place in the requested period are advertised job opportunities, inclusive of internships, graduate programmes and apprenticeships or summer work, which were listed on our careers service pages.
For list of partners who advertised job opportunities (including apprenticeships) please see accompanying document, our ref: FOI_26-181 Appendix A.
Please note that no funding was received for these job opportunities, and no other participating UK Universities were involved.
Question 2. Name of the department or school where the information is located, or if no relevant records are found, where the information would be located.
b. If the information requested in Question 1 is (would be) located centrally, for example, within the Careers or Student Futures department, please identify the department, faculty, research unit, administrative office, or other part of the university that stores or manages the relevant information for each category listed.
Our response:
Careers and Graduate Services.
b. If any part of the information requested in Question 1 is not located centrally, please specify which parts are not held centrally and identify the department, faculty, research unit, administrative office, or other part of the university that stores, manages, or is otherwise most likely to have the relevant information. For example, information related to apprenticeships is held by individual schools or subject departments.
Our response:
Not applicable.