BAE Systems is one of only two firms that build warships in Britain (the other is Babcock). Its maritime services are led by managing director Sir Simon Lister.
BAE operates a shipyard at Govan on the River Clyde near Glasgow, where it recently opened the largest shipbuilding hall in the country. The company is investing some £300m in the Govan yard. It is also investing £12m in a new welders academy, where it plans to take on around 200 apprentices a year.
BAE is building eight Type 26 submarine-hunting frigates for the Royal Navy, with delivery of all eight expected by 2035. In August 2025 Norway announced a £10bn ($13.5bn) contract for five Type 26 frigates to be built by BAE at Govan—Britain's highest-value warship export deal ever and Norway's biggest single defence investment to date. Norway last procured British-built warships in 1899, when two Eidsvold-class battleships were assembled on the river Tyne in Newcastle. The Norwegian order means BAE will be building at least one ship a year well into the 2030s. The deal could see the "interchangeable use" of British and Norwegian sailors on joint patrols in the North Atlantic to hunt Russian submarines.
BAE has an apprentice programme that takes in more than 5,000 trainees a year, of which one-third are degree apprentices—students paid by BAE to pursue a university degree while receiving on-the-job training. The programme received more than 31,000 applications for 1,100 spots in its most recent cycle. Degree apprentices work on projects such as cockpit technologies for the Tempest, a new fighter jet. Richard Hamer, BAE's education director, has said the programme "definitely pays off" for both trainees and the company, which had been struggling to find graduates with the right skills.
BAE employs more than 14,000 people in Barrow-in-Furness, a town of some 67,000 in north-west England where one-third of workers are employed in manufacturing. The firm has almost finished building seven attack submarines and is constructing four nuclear-armed submarines for the Royal Navy. Next will come attack submarines for the AUKUS defence partnership. BAE's order book in Barrow is full for decades. Between 1992 and 2002 BAE's Barrow workforce shrank from 13,000 to fewer than 3,000 after the end of the cold war; the current submarine-building boom has more than reversed those job losses. BAE is converting a shuttered Debenhams department store in Barrow into a training centre.
Economists can certainly disappoint you. One said that the economy would turn up by the last quarter. Well, I'm down to mine and it hasn't.