New weapons factories in Wales 'would increase chances of war' say campaigners

Martin Shipton

An anti-war campaign group has denounced UK Government plans that could see new weapons factories opened in Milford Haven and Monmouthshire.

They are among at least 13 potential sites across Britain intended to boost the UK’s “war readiness”.

Defence Secretary John Healey said the new factories would make munitions and military explosives, with at least 1,000 new jobs expected to be created in total.

In a speech at Westminster he said: “This is a new era of threat, but the opportunity of this new era is a defence dividend from our record investment, measured in good jobs, thriving businesses, and new skills for the British people.

“We are making defence an engine for growth, unambiguously backing British jobs and British skills as we make the UK better ready to fight and better able to deter future conflicts. This is the path that delivers national and economic security.”

In the Strategic Defence Review published in June 2025, the Ministry of Defence committed £1.5bn of additional defence investment, saying it was committed to building at least six new munitions and energetics factories during this parliament, which could last until 2029.

Energetics weapons, also known as Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs), use concentrated energy, such as lasers or high-powered microwaves, to damage or disable targets instead of using traditional physical projectiles. These weapons are capable of precise, scalable effects ranging from non-lethal disruption to destruction, and their development is accelerating due to their potential advantages in speed, precision, and cost per shot compared to conventional munitions.

Militarism

The group PARC Against DARC, set up in 2024 in opposition to the proposed US-run military space radar station at Brawdy in Pembrokeshire, issued a statement opposing any further militarism in Wales as well as what it described as “the UK’s current drive to war at the behest of the US and Trump”.

The statement said: “We are against the rush to war with Russia, but even more so against the bigger risk of inciting a whole new Cold War with China.

“At a time when political solutions to conflict are needed more than ever, the UK Labour government always seems to have the money to find yet another excuse to paint a military target on Wales’s back, and add to the long litany of armament factories, military bases and training grounds that already litter our rural communities. It is no coincidence to us that they rarely seem to find a reason to put many of them in the nicer parts of the south of England, but they’re happy to push for arms factories and massive radar farms in some of the most beautiful parts of our country.

“John Healey’s suggested 1,000 jobs across 13 sites is not a very significant number of jobs at all for the privilege of making Milford Haven - which sits on the UK’s largest high-pressure gas pipeline and is known for a nearby major oil refinery - into even more of a target in wars that the UK Labour government, and perhaps the US arms interests adjacent to it, seem to be only too excited to try and start.

“We find it especially abhorrent that Healey is now parroting the US's aggressive rhetoric, using phrases such as ‘war fighting readiness’ when a nation's priority should always be to strive towards maintaining peace, not pushing for war.

“Have we learned nothing from the aggressive colonial wars of Iraq or Afghanistan? Hundreds of thousands of people from all nations died as a result of the UK propping up US aggression purely for the sake of US supremacy and domination of oil and resources.

Target

It continues: “We do not need a US-run DARC space wars radar in Pembrokeshire, and a munitions factory in Milford Haven would bring a pitiful number of jobs for how much of a military target it would make a town on a high-pressure gas pipeline. It would bring absolutely nothing positive to the area.

“Military spending is the worst type of public spending in terms of boosting an economy. After 15 years of austerity and cuts to our social infrastructure, we need investment in public services and to reverse the cost of living crisis far more than we need to exacerbate the decline in people's living standards by siphoning yet more profits to arms companies and military producers.

“Agitation for war is an extremely polluting and high carbon exercise. To tackle the climate emergency and provide high skilled, secure jobs in Pembrokeshire we need massive investment in green jobs as part of a coherent green industrial strategy.

“The UK Government claims these moves are about Russia, but given that Russia was always highly unlikely to attempt open warfare with the whole of Europe and NATO combined, we’re far more concerned about the government escalating tensions with China.

“The rhetoric coming from our leaders seems to be attempting to manufacture a consensus view that China is a huge global threat, but when you consider that the US has over 750 military bases around the world where China has none, and the fact that the US has been involved in wars with almost every country on earth whereas China has been involved in no foreign wars since 1991, it begs the question: who are the real aggressors here? And why should the UK blindly follow the US war drive when there is no evidence that we are under threat?”