On Tuesday 26th October 2021, the UK Defence & Security Exports at the Department for International Trade published its annual assessment of the UK’s defence and security exports performance for 2020. This is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-defence-and-security-exports-for-2020/uk-defence-and-security-export-statistics-for-2020

The document contains a wealth of data and official statistics on the UK’s defence and security exports for 2020, with context being provided by looking back over a number of years, and presented both verbally and graphically.

The main highlights from the summary are:

  • On a rolling 10-year basis, the UK remains the second largest global defence exporter after the USA.
  • In 2020, the UK won defence orders worth £7.9 billion, compared to the previous year (£11 billion) and illustrative of the volatile nature of the global export market for defence.
  • The UK share of the global defence export market was estimated at 6% in 2020. (This was largely due to $62 billion USA F-16 export contract offsetting competitor shares.) The UK’s largest defence export markets were Europe, North America and the Middle East.
  • In 2020, the value of UK security export sales was £7.95 billion, an increase from 2019 (£7.2 billion), with the UK third place in the rankings.
  • The UK’s largest security export markets were Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.