UK close to giving Israel’s Elbit £2bn contract to train British soldiers

A display of rockets from Elbit Systems UK at the DSEI arms fair at ExCel, 10 September 2019

Imran Mulla reports in Middle East Eye on 21 August 2025:

The UK is reportedly poised to sign a £2bn ($2.69bn) contract with Israel’s largest arms manufacturer that would see it train 60,000 British soldiers a year.

Elbit Systems provides around 85 percent of Israel’s drones and land-based military equipment, and has played a major role in supplying Israel with weaponry for its genocide in Gaza.

Private Eye reported this week that the company’s British arm, Elbit Systems UK, is close to winning a major contract that would make it a “strategic partner” of Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Elbit is reportedly bidding against Raytheon for the Army Collective Training Service contract, after the MoD reduced the bidders to two in February.

If Elbit wins the contract it will work with the MoD to transform military training “through digitalisation, simulation, a different relationship with industry, and by changing how and where the military trains”.

This comes after it emerged earlier this month that Elbit signed a $1.63bn arms deal with Serbia to supply it with long-range precision rockets, alongside a range of other military technologies.

Last month a report by Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for Palestine, said that “for Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems… the ongoing genocide has been a profitable venture”.

Since 2023, Elbit’s UK arm has run the MoD’s Project Vulcan, a £57m contract of simulation-based training for tank crews. The new deal, if it goes through, would be a significant step up in the relationship.