The Economic Impact of the British Army

Commissioned by the British Army

The British Army’s core purpose is to protect the UK, defeat the nation’s enemies, deal with disaster, and prevent future conflict. Its contribution to the UK’s security and stability ultimately enables an environment which fosters economic growth and prosperity.

The Army delivers fundamental and far-reaching benefits through its core purposes, but quantifying them is extremely challenging. Beyond being simply a passive ‘insurance policy’, the Army actively deters threats and prevents conflict, saving the significant associated human and economic costs.

This report assesses a key benefit the Army brings: its contribution to the UK’s long-term productive capacity, through investment in research and development and training its personnel.

We further assess the Army’s economic footprint, by assessing three channels of impact: direct, the impact of the Army itself; indirect, which occurs through the supply chain spending of the Army, and induced, which arises from Army personnel and workers in the Army’s supply chains spending their wages.

Read the report

The experts behind the research

Our Economic Consulting team are world leaders in quantitative economic analysis, working with clients around the globe and across sectors to build models, forecast markets and evaluate interventions using state-of-the art techniques. Lead consultants on this project were: