On 3 November 2025, more than a hundred British engineers and scientists signed an open letter to the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) condemning what they called a “moral failure.” The Academy, they said, had chosen to celebrate National Engineering Day (an annual campaign meant to “make the UK’s engineers more visible” and show how they “improve everyday lives and shape the world around us”) while partnering with MBDA, Europe’s largest missile manufacturer.
Two days later, on 5 November, the Academy launched the event with an online “AI-Z of Engineering” guides, and upbeat hashtags urging young people to imagine future careers as “climate resilience engineers” or “space habitat designers.”
Yet critics argued that the inclusion of MBDA in that event made a mockery of such rhetoric. “MBDA engineer the wing assembly of the GBU-39 precision-guided bomb, which unfold after launch allowing the bomb to be guided to its target. Thousands of these bombs have been shipped to Israel and a recent investigation verified 24 cases where the GBU-39 was deployed in air strikes that killed civilians. Each one included children among the fatalities and a number of these attacks have been examined by the United Nations and the humanitarian group Amnesty International, which flagged them as suspected war crimes.” read the letter.
That letter accused MBDA (along with BP and Rio Tinto, maming up the three corporate sponsors of the 2025 campaign) of profiting from “genocide (and) human rights violations.”
The letter referenced The Guardian’s July 2025 report confirming that fragments of MBDA’s wing assemblies had been recovered from the ruins of a school in Gaza City where 36 civilians, half of them children, were killed in an overnight air strike. onducted with Disclose and Follow the Money, the investigation traced how revenues from the bomb’s US-made variant flow through MBDA’s UK arm, despite Britain pausing some weapons exports to Israel. The report identified multiple attacks in Gaza where fragments of MBDA’s components were found at the scene, raising questions about European complicity in the destruction and civilian casualties caused by Israel’s bombing campaign.
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On the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory concluded that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza met the legal definition of genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Against that finding, the idea of celebrating an arms manufacturer under the banner of “engineering better lives” seems grotesque.
MBDA, jointly owned by Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo, sits at the heart of Europe’s defence-industrial complex. It builds missiles deployed by NATO allies in conflicts from Libya to Ukraine, and markets itself as a “defensive” innovator safeguarding peace through precision. Its engineers may indeed be among the best in the worldm but their craft is one that perfects lethality.
In Gaza, where more than 33,000 people were killed within six months of Israel’s bombardment, precision has brought no mercy.
The episode exposes an awkward truth about the British engineering establishment. For decades, defence contractors have rebranded themselves as technology firms, presenting military research as a branch of innovation and sustainability. They fund university departments, sponsor apprenticeship schemes and attach their logos to STEM competitions.
The effect is what AOAV might call “reputational laundering”. It frames the missile-maker as mentor, the arms firm as educator. Violence is absent in its advertising slogans.
Supporters of such partnerships might argue that engineering education depends on industrial funding, and that companies like MBDA provide well-paid jobs and advanced training. But a profession that prides itself on ethical responsibility cannot credibly celebrate firms whose products level schools and hospitals.
If the Academy wishes to inspire the next generation, it must decide what kind of future it is inviting them to build. The engineer’s ingenuity can serve humanity or harm it.
To “re-engineer what it means to be an engineer,” as the campaign proclaims, the RAEng must confront its own industry’s complicity in war.
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