Moog 4 prepare to stand trial

The Moog 4 are comprised of four pro-Palestine activists who were arrested and remanded to prison for six months in August 2025. Their trial is due to start at Birmingham Crown Court on 4 June 2026. Regardless of the outcome, it is an action that has shed new light on the UK government’s facilitation of the genocide in Gaza

Moog Inc.

You might associate the name Moog with electronic instruments and synthesisers. It turns out Robert Moog had an equally inventive cousin, Bill, who went into aviation and engineering.

The company that bears Bill’s name supplies key parts to the global F-35 programme and for the M-346 trainer aircraft – specifically, flight actuators. These are essential parts that no other company makes.

In the recent Al-Haq judicial review, the High Court ruled that exports for the F-35 to Israel could not be suspended, because the programme is overseen by the US. The M-346 is another matter.

M-346

Reporting from Declassified UK explains how the M-346 trains would-be Israeli fighter jet pilots, who have carried out much of the destruction of Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. The Israeli Air Force, always prone to brag, claims that they can have pilots go from training to live deployment is as little as six months.

The UK government knows all about this. In an internal briefing written by the Foreign Office, they concluded that the M-436 “facilitates the development of an offensive capability”. In their own words, the M-346 facilities genocide, but they have spent more time prevaricating about what the words “facilitation” and “genocide” mean rather than doing their due diligence to halt even the risk of the slaughter of Palestinians, as is their duty under international law.

Chris Bryant MP was asked about all of this during a select committee meeting in 2025. He said:

the assessment is that the training of an aircraft pilot on such equipment would take so long that they would not be among the people who would be engaged in fighter combat in Gaza.

But the briefing Bryant received on the M-346 does not mention anything about the time taken to train pilots, and if he’d done his own research he’d know it does not take long at all, so it appears Bryant was simply making this up on the spot.

The only argument that Bryant’s briefing made was that, since these trainer aircraft are not used over Gaza themselves, because they have no direct “combat utility”, then exports can continue. This contradicts the government’s own assessment of the M-346 facilitating an offensive capability.

Moog’s shipments to Israel

Last year Declassified reported that they had acquired records of at least 10 shipments going from Wolverhampton to Israel. (They now have many more.)

Moog has done everything in its power to keep its shipping routes open, with the full support of the UK government and its courts. Following the Moog 4’s action, the company took out an injunction – an characteristically American tactic not often used in the UK – that makes any disruption outside the factory illegal. They also changed their shipping patterns in response.

If Moog did this to avoid scrutiny, they probably shouldn’t have started shipping parts via Belgium… Unlike the UK, Belgium does have a full arms embargo on Israel, which includes shipments from other countries over land or through its airspace. As previously reported by the Canary, Moog were caught trucking their military components to Liege airport, before flying them out to Israel from there. Their shipments were seized and a criminal investigation has been opened in Belgium into Moog’s activities as a result.

This hardly comes as a surprise. In 2024, Moog were fined almost $2m for bribing Indian officials to acquire public tenders. They are a company that will do anything to maintain its profits, with no concern for business ethics, never mind human life.

Moog 4 on trial

Despite all of this, Moog are not on trial or under investigation — at least not in this country. Instead, the UK government seeks to convict four people for trying to do what they should have done two years ago, which is stop this country’s corporate facilitation of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The activists are alleged to have caused £1.2m worth of damage to Moog’s factory. Given that four of the Filton 6 may be sentenced as terrorists for their direct action, similarly on the basis of a high level of property damage, there are concerns that the Moog 4 will face the same repressive treatment.

There is a clear pattern in this country showing that the UK wants to designate protestors as terrorists, when all they have done is try to uphold international law and save Palestinian lives. Under their scaremongering use of the Terrorism Act, which is having a chilling effect across this country, what is really happening is that the moral conduct of normal citizens is being outlawed by a government that would rather sit on its hands and rake in profits. They will brutalise anyone who puts human life before their pockets. We cannot allow this to continue.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

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