At around 5am on Tuesday 28 January, Palestine Action crashed a van into front of Teledyne Defence and Space in Shipley – yet another arms manufacturer complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
The van hit the main perimeter:
BREAKING: Palestine Action crash a van into the front of Teledyne's weapons factory in Shipley.
By also attaching themselves to the vehicle, actionists are disrupting the production of crucial parts for Israel's missiles and fighter jets. pic.twitter.com/I60lwgJcu9
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) January 28, 2025
Activists then attached themselves to the vehicle in order to disrupt the factory’s shipments of weapons parts to be used against the people of Palestine and Lebanon.
Palestine Action: targeting Teledyne
The site was previously targeted twice by Palestine Action with rooftop occupations involving dismantling the factory. Before then, Palestine Action dismantled its ‘Teledyne Labtech’ factory at Presteigne, Wales, in 2022 where it caused £1m in losses.
The site, between 2009 and 2014, was granted at least 86 licenses for the export of weapons to Israel – mostly for ‘ML11’-category military electronics equipment and ‘ML4’ category explosive weapons, munitions, or parts therefor. After 2014, the company’s sales and licensing were handled by the parent company ‘Teledyne UK’, which continued to export vast quantities of ML4 and ML11 weapons to Israel as part of its 48 export licenses granted between 2014 and 2020.
The American company Teledyne has a $5.6bn yearly turnover and is, along with its subsidiary ev2, the largest exporter (by volume of licenses granted) of weaponry from Britain to Israel. A significant proportion of the company’s almost 200 export licenses for weapons and weapons parts to the US, 2009-2020, will also form into finished products ultimately exported to Israel.
Teledyne Defence and Space, Shipley, manufactures critical components for missile systems – specifically missile filters – which will comprise the ML4 exports made yearly from the site. Teledyne Defence and Space boasts of its involvement with missile products procured by Israel, including the AGM-Harpoon, AIM-120 AMRAAM, and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles deployed by Israel against Gaza – the latter reportedly being used to strike Al-Shifa hospital. Teledyne Defence and Space also produces components for the American’s Tomahawk and Patriot missiles, deployed by US forces against Yemen.
The company also produces parts, including filters and multi-function assemblies, for UAVs (drones), aircraft, and radar systems, including the AN/APG-81 (AESA) type fitted in Lockheed Martin F-35 Fighter jets. Teledyne Defence and Space, solely based in Shipley, has sales representatives in Tel Aviv. Shipley-made products can be seen advertised by Ormic Components, the sales company for the Israeli military market. Teledyne, the parent company, also produces image sensors for military applications and radar technologies around the borders of the occupied West Bank and Gaza while also providing armed UAVs to Israel as far back as 1973.
Disrupting Israel
A recent investigation by Declassified also uncovered two shipments from the Teledyne Shipley site which were addressed “to a location near the Israeli air force’s (IAF) Hatzerim air base in the Negev desert, which houses fighter jets as well as the IAF Flight Academy”.
A Palestine Action spokesperson said:
We are more committed than ever before to disrupting the production of weapons used to massacre our brothers and sisters in Palestine. Whilst our government remains an active participant in Israeli war crimes, it’s the duty of ordinary people to take direct action to shut down the merchants of death.”
Featured image via Milo Chandler
