Snippets from the 2007 DESO Symposium

Under the Freedom of Information Act we requested copies of speeches from the Defence Export Services Organisation (DESO) Symposium held earlier this year. Here’s a taste of what we received:

Speech by Head of Defence Export Services, Alan Garwood

“In this job I have met more kings, princes, presidents, prime ministers, ministers and service chiefs than you can shake a big stick at.”

“In Indonesia we are very much a resurgent brand. Having had Indonesia off our Christmas card list for many years, we are once again being welcomed into this enormous market, which ten years ago was second only to Saudi Arabia in terms of its value to the UK defence industry.”

Presentation by Director General Defence Export Services, Malcolm Haworth

“The pie chart [withheld] illustrates our reliance on two of [our major customers]: Saudi Arabia and the United States.”

“... we have made some progress developing the emerging markets that we identified last year: Libya, Algeria, Iraq and Vietnam. Since then, DESO has set up an office in Tripoli and we have had Algerian delegations in the UK to look at what we can offer. Iraq, however, is largely a market yet to emerge, for reasons obvious to everyone.”

Malcolm Haworth also told his military industry audience that there were six threats to the UK’s market share of the arms business. One of these was: “... public pressure from NGOs like CAAT – Campaign Against the Arms Trade, who do not accept the value that defence exports bring.”

Speech by DESO’s Senior Military Adviser

On what DESO and the Ministry of Defence can offer arms exporters:

“And finally, echoing Alan Garwood’s words this morning about ‘Brand UK’, there’s the warfighting reputation of the British Armed Forces available to you all as a constant backdrop to your efforts.”

“We help arrange flying and ground training; we organise flights for a lucky few in RAF aircraft; we even help negotiate deployments of aircraft in support of specific campaigns, as we did for getting Typhoons to Singapore and EH101 Merlins to the United States in recent years.”

On “regular visits” to the service chiefs:

“They look quite happy in these pictures, but their faces always fall when we arrive, because they know we are on… the... scrounge.”

The full texts (as far as we have them) are linked below, as pdfs:

• Head of Defence Export Services, Alan Garwood
• Director General Defence Export Services, Malcolm Haworth
• Senior Military Adviser
• the Director of Business Development