Dual-use tech: the BAE Systems example

While the majority of its workforce is based in the UK (principally in North West England), the company’s fortunes are interdependent on the US economy, which supplies nearly a third of its personnel. The US is its biggest market by far, representing 43% of its sales; this is followed by the UK (at 27%), and Saudi Arabia (9%). BAE’s extensive sales to the Saudi Kingdom has drawn heavy criticism for its role in facilitating war crimes.

By the end of 2025, BAE had an order backlog worth almost £84bn and a 10% increase in sales on the previous year. It enjoyed an operating profit of £2.9bn in 2025 and had paid out £1.5bn in dividends and share buybacks to its investors.

 

While BAE systems are primarily known for their military products, recent reports reveal the company’s efforts to capitalise on the growing interest in dual-use tech and broaden its customer base by promoting a number of its products as multi-purpose. Prominent among these are its intelligence gathering, data fusion and command and control software platforms - but as with other companies in this series, drones and satellites also feature in its dual-use portfolio. Over the past few years, BAE Systems has cultivated a significant civilian surveillance and law enforcement business portofolio. Most notably, the company served as the primary delivery partner for the UK Home Office’s National ANPR Service (NAS)–a road surveillance system. BAE System’s Automatic Number Plate Recognition (APNR) resulted to what is believed to be the largest data set in civil government, processing over 50 million ANPR reads per day. The company has also invested in biometric identification technologies. Rounding out this domestic surveillance portfolio is its IntelligenceReveal Content Monitoring product, which, according to the company, enables law enforcement agencies to process and analyse the communications of targeted individuals.

Dual-use products

BAE Systems’ products are overwhelmingly military in nature, with tanks, artillery, fighter jets, naval ships and submarines still comprising a substantial proportion of its sales.

Azalea is a low orbit, “multi-role” surveillance satellite cluster which was launched in December 2025. The product of a collaboration between In-Space Missions (a company which BAE acquired in 2021), and Finnish satellite firm, ICEYE, Azaelea has been described by BAE as a “perfect example of dual-use capability that is currently being developed here in the UK”. The satellites orbit the earth every 90 minutes, gathering imagery and signal intelligence using electro-optical, hyperspectral and infrared sensors, which is then processed and analysed using Machine Learning. The system detects and geolocates radiofrequency signals of interest, before a radar-based imaging satellite homes in to gather the visual data for uses including military operations, monitoring natural disasters, protecting key infrastructure (such as energy installations), and detecting illegal activity at sea.

Azalea’s designers have also built in the capacity for a long-term expansion in the system’s capabilities, with BAE commenting that the system is:

“reconfigurable whilst in orbit in the same way a smartphone installs a new app; this will ensure it can deliver future customer missions while expanding the lifecycle of the satellites”.

Somewhat closer to Earth, BAE’s Phasa-35 is a High Altitude Pseudo Satellite (HAPS) - a device part way between a drone and a satellite which operates in the stratosphere. There it can remain for over a month (at times in autopilot mode), thanks to its solar-powered flight and 35m wingspan. Closely resembling Airbus’ Zephyr, it features a “customer-defined”, independently operated payload, meaning that Phasa-35 can be easily repurposed depending on the users’ needs. Phasa-35 is promoted for applications ranging from intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), border monitoring, disaster relief, and - like Zephyr - supplying 4G and 5G connectivity to remote areas. BAE reached an agreement to acquire the developer, Prismatic, in 2019, and the system has been undergoing trials. However, in December 2025, a five-year deal was announced - worth up to $10m - to supply Phasa-35 to the US Air Force Research Laboratory.

Besides Phasa-35, BAE also sells more conventional drone-based surveillance systems like Longreach70 UAS (unmanned aircraft system), which is currently being developed in collaboration with UK-based company, Sentinel Unmanned. This is a small drone designed for long-range (5km) targeting of objects of interest for military, government and security agencies. It uses electro-optical sensors, information gained through intercepted signals, and laser technology to identify targets and hold aim whilst loitering. This location information is then relayed to aircraft, ground troops or command bases for attack or other courses of action. BAE states that Longreach70 is compatible with both military and civil radio equipment regulations, paving the way for its use in different spheres.

In a much-hyped 2023 trial carried out by BAE Systems and Malloy Aeronautics - a partner company specialising in autonomous, heavy-lift quadcopters - a T-600 Malloy logistics drone was used for the first time to drop a replica torpedo. The drone’s architecture would then form the basis of the T-650, a product still in development, which will “offer rapid reconfiguration capabilities applicable to military, commercial and humanitarian uses”.

BAE bought Malloy in 2024, and in the process also acquired its dual-use, heavy-lift T-150 and T-400 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Applications cited by BAE include logistics, casualty evacuation, anti-submarine warfare and precision strikes, but for now, its listed buyers are principally military in nature. In 2025, the T-150 drone was used in a trial to transport supplies between warships, with a Royal Navy Captain commenting:

“The really exciting bit is that we then plan to incorporate these lessons to be able to use UAVs for many other roles, including options for warfighting.”

Indeed, within a year of acquiring Malloy, BAE started to weaponise the T-150, fitting it with a laser guidance kit to enable it to fire munitions. The innovation was reportedly prompted by the prohibitive cost of surface-to-air rocket interceptors, with the added benefit being that the weapons system can be dismounted within an hour, “enabling the drone to be repurposed to supply cargo or to perform reconnaissance”.

In the maritime sphere, BAE is currently promoting Nautomate, an autonomous control system for boats and submarines. The system can follow a pre-planned route, and be integrated with military and commercial payloads (attachments), including signal intelligence technology, remotely-operated weapons, and acoustic warning systems. Uses explicitly cited for Nautomate are anti-submarine warfare; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; “force protection”; border control; and anti-piracy missions. BAE’s head of maritime suggested that navies could employ unmanned Nautomate vessels to “arrest” Houthi pirate ships in the Red Sea, or that UK Border Force could use them to intercept migrants in the Channel.

While there is as yet no evidence that the Home Office has deployed Nautomate-powered vessels in the Channel for this purpose, it is clear that BAE would like to see its system integrated (even retrofitted) into Border Force’s fleet. Worryingly, Nautomate reportedly includes “Non-lethal Vessel Arrest Systems” which a recent company report refers to as its “stinger arrest system”. These systems can involve firing a rope or net to disable a boat’s propeller. One has to wonder whether unmanned boats and stingers could be safely employed to ‘intercept’ refugees, particularly in light of increased overcrowding in vessels as a result of repressive border policies.

Aside from its drones, BAE’s Digital Intelligence division produces a range of communications interception and data analysis systems geared towards military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

One such product is IntelligenceReveal, which gathers data from multiple sources to investigate “criminal or terrorist activities”. Sources of this data include communications content, IP metadata, flight information, “open source data” (such as social media content), and Automatic Number Plate Recognition information. Users can query the data and analyse, visualise and consolidate it into a report; for example, the software can produce network diagrams for the purposes of mapping the connections between individuals or groups. Potential queries the user can ask include questions regarding a person’s associates, their address, and top countries visited; while commands can be made to cross reference the travel patterns of multiple people, analyse a person’s emails or phone calls, and chart their activity in a particular location. At the Home Office’s 2025 Security and Policing event, a BAE salesperson informed Corporate Watch that the software can also read handwritten text and translate data from seven languages into English.

Another BAE Systems Digital Intelligence product promoted to both the police and military is the Intelligent Lead Assessment Service (ILAS), an automated risk assessment tool which was initially marketed as a means to protect vulnerable children. According to a company salesperson speaking at the Security and Policing event, the system replicates a human intelligence analyst, by processing significant amounts of intelligence data and producing a “risk confidence score” for individuals of concern, as well as a “vulnerability score” for those at risk. The company claims the system can draw together data from various sources, picking up on subtle clues and connections between seemingly unrelated pieces of information, to build a picture of a potential threat.

While ILAS is strongly marketed at the police and is currently used by several forces in the UK, an R&D brochure made it clear that the system is “now being adapted to help armed forces spot emerging threats”. Indeed, a BAE salesperson at the Security and Policing event said that the data agnostic system could be configured to work in any domain, such as domestic abuse, counter-unmanned aircraft systems, missing children, border enforcement, or hypersonic missiles. Notably, ILAS is being incorporated into a military command and control platform called the Battlefield Management Intelligence System (BMIS), to gain intelligence on enemy troop movements.

BAE also produces a range of geospatial intelligence products under the GXP brand name. For instance, SOCET GXP is an aerial intelligence platform that analyses data obtained from sensors operated by drones, planes and satellites, with its long list of compatible technologies including Airbus’ Pleiades and Elbit Systems’ EROS-B’s satellites. The company boasts a wide range of users that encompass military agencies, local governments, universities and transport departments. Another GXP product, GXP OpsView, is a command and control system comprising a centralised data platform for operations conducted for military, natural disaster management, search and rescue, police and private security purposes. Meanwhile, its MOVINT (Movement Intelligence) technologies analyse data from human and vehicle movements from sensors in a select area, for example by identifying objects, time-stamping, and geo-referencing for purposes ranging from counter-terrorism, anti-smuggling, border security and target detection.

Partnerships & programmes

BAE operates a number of important joint ventures with Italian arms firm Leonardo and European defence giant, Airbus. Alongside these companies it makes up a third of the Eurofighter consortium, and enjoys a significant share (38%) in missile manufacturer MBDA. It also runs a joint venture with Leonardo and Japanese firm, JAIC, which is focused on the development of a new fighter jet known as Edgewing.

BAE’s US research and development arm is called FAST Labs. FAST Labs aims to exploit innovations made by startups and ultimately integrate these into BAE products by providing support to make the tech marketable. Many of its products are apparently “designed with dual-use applications in mind”, and the unit aims to “leverage new external technologies that have both commercial and defense applications” and create a “clear pathway to…insertion into military systems”.

FAST Labs also participates in dual-use accelerator programmes such as MassChallenge. The latter co-runs the Air Force Labs Accelerator at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts, which focuses on dual-use tech startups that address Air Force priorities. One company selected was AirShare, an airport safety company whose “mission quickly expanded to military and humanitarian contexts.” AirShare makes ‘friendly missiles’ - non-lethal, counter-drone rockets called Overwatch which function by “entangling their propellers, blocking air intakes, jamming their control surfaces, and obscuring important flight sensors”.

For several years running, FAST Labs also sponsored ‘US Air Force Accelerator Powered by Techstars’, which focused on supporting the development of dual-use products - particularly autonomous tech, augmented reality, and products aimed at modernising air bases.

In Europe, BAE companies have participated in several dozen Horizon programmes, for which BAE received over £15m euros in total. For instance, BAE Systems (Operations) Ltd was a participant in CAMELOT, a Horizon 2020 project coordinated by Portuguese drone firm Tekever to integrate European border surveillance command and control systems into a central analytical platform. BAE has also acted as an unpaid partner in a number of European projects, such as POLIIICE (Powerful Lawful Interception, Investigation, and Intelligence), which concluded in 2025. The aim of this programme was to develop interception technologies that bypassed encrypted communications and:

"model QUDDaaS (Quantum unlock, detection and decryption as a service) as an envisaged central service, potentially outsourced at pan-European level, which will harness quantum computing (enhanced by AI) for decryption of lawfully intercepted encrypted communication".

Among the topics explored in the research was how to standardise data collection by “mobile-ad network companies” - such as realtime geolocation data - to ensure law enforcement can access the information they seek for their investigations.

One innovation currently being explored by BAE, apparently in collaboration with Cranfield University in Bedford, UK, is the ability to temporarily repurpose 6G phone masts - not yet in operation - as emergency command and control centres for the military. According to the company, this could be “as simple as uploading a purpose-built Large Language Model (LLM)” capable of understanding military commands.

Other critical issues

BAE has frequently sold equipment to countries with poor human rights records. In 2011, BAE Systems purchased Danish company ETI and sold its spyware system, Evident, to numerous repressive Middle Eastern regimes which then reportedly used it against Arab Spring dissidents. Buyers included Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Morocco and Algeria.

In 2025, reports emerged that Israel had repurposed BAE’s M113 armoured personnel carriers (sold via the US in the 1970s) to transport significant quantities of explosives into Gaza City, which were then used to wreak wholescale destruction. These were reportedly operated remotely or dragged into position by an unmanned version of Caterpillar’s D9 bulldozer, likely IAI’s Robdozer. As Reuters reported, BAE Systems only responded that it currently had not direct military sales to Israel. ‘It said equipment it sold to the U.S. government could reach other countries indirectly.’ This raises inevitable questions about control mechanisms when products are resold by third parties.

The company’s extensive sales to Saudi Arabia have drawn particular criticism. Its close relationship with the Kingdom reportedly led to the deployment of Saudi-supplied BAE armoured vehicles in the crackdown on Bahrain’s Arab Spring protestors. BAE sold £15bn worth of arms and services to Saudi Arabia from 2015-2020, against a backdrop of an indiscriminate bombing campaign in Yemen that saw thousands of civilian deaths as well as the destruction of schools and hospitals.

Tireless litigation by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) resulted in a 2019 suspension of UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia, owing to concerns about violations of international humanitarian law in Yemen. However, CAAT’s campaigning was fervently opposed by the British government, which resumed exports and appealed the judgment claiming that these violations amounted to isolated incidents. Neither CAAT staff nor its lawyers were permitted to attend the High Court hearings or see the evidence against them; in their absence the court ruled in the government’s favour. At an annual general meeting, BAE Systems then-chairman Roger Carr, when asked whether any of its products were used in an airstrike on a wedding in northern Yemen that had killed at least 20 people, simply replied, “you don’t know, and I don’t know.”

In 2004, corruption revelations exposed by the media regarding BAE’s sales to Saudi Arabia prompted a Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation, which found that bribes of up to £6bn had been paid by the company to Saudi officials. However, the investigation was closed down following the personal intervention of former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

People & politics

Data from Transparency International shows that BAE held more meetings with UK government figures than any other company over the decade from 2012-22, with 225 meetings in that period. In the US, the company spent $4.6m on lobbying Congress and Federal agencies in 2024.

BAE has a history of using underhand tactics to gain advantage. In 2003, the company was found to have employed half a dozen corporate spies to infiltrate the central and regional offices of Campaign Against Arms Trade. These spies were apparently supplied by former MOD consultant whom BAE is said to have approached for the task in the mid-nineties. Aside from gaining the personal details of nearly 150,000 CAAT supporters, these undercover agents acquired advance information on CAAT’s campaign against BAE’s Hawk aircraft sales to General Suharto’s authoritarian regime in Indonesia.

In 2007, CAAT exposed yet another BAE spy in its ranks. The informer (who was a personal friend of the shadow defence minister at the time) supplied privileged legal information to the company about CAAT’s judicial review application regarding its weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.

BAE Systems is headed by Dr. Charles Woodburn, CBE, who was appointed Chief Executive Officer in 2017. A former oil industry manager, he was paid £12.4m for his role at BAE in 2025. BAE’s current Chair is Cressida Hogg, who replaced Sir Roger Carr in 2023. Hogg is also the current President of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).

Who’s behind the brand?

BAE’s top shareholders are some of the world’s biggest asset managers. According to financial databases, at approximately 11%, BAE’s leading shareholder is Capital Research and Management Co, which is owned by Capital Group, a privately-owned, US-based investment management firm. This is followed by BlackRock (at approximately 8%), and Vanguard Group (at around 5%).

Appendix: Additional examples of dual-use technologies

• Koios is a vertical take-off drone built for intelligence gathering which, according to BAE, is “operationally proven in both civil and defence markets worldwide”. Purposes touted include search and rescue, infrastructure monitoring, border surveillance and military reconnaissance. It is ‘payload agnostic’ indicating that it can incorporate a broad range of other cameras and sensors, depending on the needs of the user.
• BAE’s Geiger-Mode Lidar Camera uses lidar (laser-based technology designed to create 3D models of terrain) for surveillance and commercial purposes, “whether your needs are government, military lidar, terrain following/mapping, space or commercial use”. The camera is designed to be integrated into planes, drones and armoured vehicles.
• Cross-Domain Solutions is aimed at the military, defence agencies, law enforcement, and government departments. These tools aim to create secure communication and data storage platforms for intelligence purposes across distinct security systems.