Drawing the Line:
What is a Military Corporation or War Industry?

By Richard Sanders, Coordinator, Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT)

Waging war has always required a very broad range of technologies that go far beyond the actual weapons that kill, maim, and destroy property.

engines, radar, communications equipment and other components, are not intrinsically destructive, and therefore the corporations that produce them should not be considered military contractors. Clearly however, such equipment is absolutely essential to the basic functioning of weapons and their delivery systems.

Drawing the line between military and non-military industries is assisted by the fact that many corporations define themselves in terms of their “defence” production and openly publicise on their websites the fact that they have contracts to supply products and/or services to Canadian or foreign armed services, such as the army, navy, air force, marines or special forces.

For the most part, war industries or military companies self-identify as "defence" industries. This is how they define themselves and their place in the market. Most companies define themselves as belonging to several categories. For instance, in Industry Canada's Canadian Company Capabilities (CCC) database corporations can list "defence" as one of their "Industry Sector Market Interests." Many Canadian military companies list both "defence" and "aerospace" as their market sectors. So closely tied together are "defence" and "aerospace" that this government database (which is updated and maintained by the companies themselves) lumps the two sectors together as one in a "Specialized Directory" of Canadian companies. The database has 15 "specialized directories" or categories of industry and one is called "Aerospace & Defence."

There are also other ways that we can determine whether a Canadian company identifies itself as a "defence" industry. For instance, corporate websites can easily be searched using Google or other search engines for any occurrence of the terms "defence," "military," "armed forces," "army," "navy," "air force," "marines" or "special forces." Such searches often reveal detailed references to contracts with warfighting institutions and demonstrate that the company is indeed a "military industry."

Hundreds of Canadian companies are listed as members of the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries. This association maintains a "Profiles Database." Only CADSI members can attend the its annual military trade show (CANSEC) and the exhibitors at its 2008 exhibition are listed here. Other Canadian companies are known to have exhibited their wares at other international "defence exhibitions" that are held to showcase products in demand by various government's warfighting institutions.

There are also useful US government databases that list tens of thousands of companies that supply products or services to the US military. For example GovernmentContractsWon.com has extensive details and can easily be searched for Canadian contracts and contractors. Click here, for example to see about 1800 references to "Canada" in that database.  Click here for a modified search finding about 80 references to Canadian contracts for the AH-64 "Apache" helicopter gunship.

Another such very useful US database is called USAspending.gov.  

Another very useful source for identifying Canadian companies that provide parts and services for the US weapons systems is Integrated Publishing. Click here, for a sample search to locate Canadian contractors that have supplied components for the AH-64.

Other companies can be categorised as military industries because Industry Canada lists them as suppliers of “defence” equipment and services, or because they have been recipients of “defence” related grants, loans or subsidies from the government.

Most Canadian military contractors, like most military contractors in other countries, also supply non-military, civilian products and/or services as well.

Knowing where to draw the line between military and non-military corporations is certainly not straight forward.

To some, military contractors may be very strictly limited to only those corporations that manufacture whole or complete weapons, and may not even include those companies that produce the essential parts and services that are go into making those weapons systems. This however is such an extremely narrow definition of the term military contractor that would reduce the number of such companies in that category to almost nil.

Using this absurdly restricted definition, some may try to argue that even

On the other hand, some might wish to broaden the definition of military companies so widely that it includes all corporation supplying any products and/or services used by military institutions. This very broad view of what constitutes a military company would therefore include all corporations producing civilian dual-use equipment used by military forces to conduct the overall business of war and would therefore include office furniture and general business supplies, such as pens and paper clips.