Equipment goes green at industry exhibition

Defence equipment is a huge industry with worldwide Governments spending some £640 billion in 2006. In the UK the industry is responsible for over 300,000 jobs and the MOD, one of its biggest customers, spends around £16 billion a year on equipment and support. The DSEi defence technology exhibition is a chance for manufacturers to show off their wares and impress potential buyers with their strength, speed and targeted effects.

But in among the old-school metal and muscle, many of this year's exhibitors made an effort to display some green credentials. One of the more surprising exhibits was a metallic blue Mini car, fitted out by PML Flightlink with an electric drive system that can allegedly push it to a top speed of 150 mph. Hybrid vehicles could soon be coming to a battlefield near you.

PML's company slogan, 'Caring for the environment, designing for the future', could have been applied to many other not obviously eco-friendly activities at this year's show. Whether it was virtual training packages for tank drivers, or claims for the reusability of shipping pallets, the message seemed to be that being tough on your enemies doesn't necessarily mean being hard on the ecosphere.

One of the indisputably green exhibits was a folding bicycle made by Montague Military Technology: a chunky green-painted mountain bike that could take a paratrooper down country lanes or across hillsides, leaving no hint of a carbon footprint.

Even where environmental protection isn't the first priority, lightness and efficiency are always sought-after qualities for battlefield kit, as in Milliken's polypropylene vehicle armour. Thinner steel plates mean a massive weight-saving - and, therefore, presumably, increased fuel efficiency.

In a sea of gleaming paintwork and polished metal, the VBCI infantry combat vehicle - Renault's giant FRES contender - was the only object at DSEi covered in real-world mud and dust (which may or may not have been applied by hand). The armoured wagon is the size of a small house, and the interior, with its green lighting and black vinyl seats, looks more like a niche restaurant than the cupboard-sized accommodation more usual in battlefield vehicles.

Obviously, importing your whole range of products for a week in London - particularly when you're in the business of manufacturing aircraft or ships - can be a logistical nightmare. But there's no problem displaying fleets of aircraft or submarines if you scale them down to 1/20th size. The Russians had a whole stand full of trucks and helicopters on show - including one that was a doppelganger of the Apache, apart from its fetching baby-blue paint job.

As a civilian at DSEi, your opportunities for making purchases are limited (though a Cheetah mine-protection vehicle, with a price tag of £200,000, was recommended to me as a solution for the school run). But window-shopping is a pleasantly surreal experience. Everyone, from the Lara Croft style girls advertising leg-holsters and camouflage shorts, to the Chinese generals clutching KBR goodie bags, appears to be on the same side.

It's an encouraging if slightly surreal vision of peaceful international co-operation - even if bicycling paratroopers probably won't turn out to be the whole future of warfare.