Defence and aerospace reporting becomes unreliable when a company announcement, government statement or social-media claim is repeated without establishing where the information came from. Our editorial process therefore begins with source provenance: before we ask what a development means, we establish who said it, on what record, and whether anyone else can independently confirm it.
This page sets out the standard our newsroom works to. It applies to news, analysis, programme pages and data products alike.
Source tiers
We classify every source into one of three tiers.
Tier 1A — Government, programme and procurement
Defence ministries, armed forces, procurement authorities, programme offices, NATO, European Union institutions, the US Department of Defense and service branches, government audit and research bodies, parliamentary and budget documents, official tender and contract records, and recognised government test organisations.
These sources originate the information or carry formal institutional responsibility for it.
Tier 1B — Company and regulated primary sources
Manufacturer press releases, investor-relations disclosures, regulated stock-exchange filings, official programme-partner statements, manufacturer technical documentation and official test announcements.
Tier 1B is authoritative for what the company says. It is not, on its own, independent verification of performance, combat effect or a disputed operational claim.
Tier 2 — High-quality secondary sources
Established defence publications, major international news agencies, recognised specialist trade press, peer-reviewed papers, reputable technical and academic reports, and research institutions that show their own sourcing. We use Tier 2 to confirm a primary announcement independently, to add context the original release does not carry, and to reconcile conflicting accounts.
Tier 3 — Leads only
Unattributed social-media posts, aggregation and repost sites, anonymous screenshots, forums, unsourced blogs, AI-generated summaries and unverifiable translated excerpts.
Tier 3 material may prompt us to start reporting. It does not, by itself, support a material claim in a published article.
How much verification a claim needs
Not every sentence carries the same risk, so the standard scales with what is being claimed.
Class A — high impact
Contract values, procurement quantities, programme cancellations, first flights, first deliveries, operational deployments, combat use, casualty and loss claims, export agreements, sanctions, production capacity, weapon and system performance, major schedule changes and industrial workshare.
These require a Tier 1 source plus independent confirmation from a second Tier 1 or Tier 2 source wherever it exists, together with second-person review before publication.
Class B — routine programme facts
Previously published programme participants, official event dates, previously announced specifications and confirmed manufacturer roles. One current Tier 1 source is normally sufficient where the information is unambiguous and uncontested. If it is old, strategically important or likely to have changed, we re-verify.
Class C — analysis and inference
Programme-risk assessments, likely procurement implications, industrial consequences and comparative or market judgements. The evidence underneath the inference must itself be verified, and the language must separate evidence from our judgement. We write this suggests, one implication is or Defence Agenda assesses that rather than presenting an interpretation as a sourced fact.
Where we are uncertain which class a claim belongs to, we apply the stricter one.
The two-source rule
Two links are not two sources. A company press release, an agency story repeating that release and a blog repeating the agency story are one originating claim, not three confirmations.
Independent confirmation exists when:
- a second institution records the same event independently,
- a procurement or contract record confirms a company announcement,
- a government document confirms a reported contract,
- an independent reporter verifies facts beyond the originating release,
- a second primary participant confirms the event on its own account.
For every material claim we identify the originating source before deciding whether anything has actually been corroborated.
Single-source reporting
We publish a high-impact story from a single authoritative source only when that source is the competent authority for the claim, independent confirmation is not reasonably available at the time of publication, the claim is explicitly attributed, the limitation is recorded, and an editor approves publication.
In that case the article says the ministry said or the company announced — not that something has been established. Where an article carries a note explaining how it was verified, that note tells you which of these situations applies. We revisit such stories if independent confirmation later becomes available.
Numbers
Numbers are where defence reporting most often goes wrong, so before publishing an important figure we check the value, the unit, the currency, the quantity, the base of any percentage, whether it is annual or cumulative, current or planned, nominal or inflation-adjusted, fiscal or calendar year, announced or contracted, ordered or delivered, and whether a conversion between metric and imperial has been applied correctly.
Contract values, procurement quantities, production-capacity figures and performance claims additionally require a second person to check them.
Attribution
We attribute information to its source and link to the original document wherever a public version exists, so readers can check it. We do not present other outlets' reporting as our own and we credit original reporting we build on. Where reliable sources disagree, we say so rather than quietly picking one.
Anonymous sources
Named, on-the-record sources are always preferred. We use unnamed sources only where the information is in the public interest, cannot reasonably be obtained on the record, and the source is in a position to know. In those cases we take responsibility for assessing the source's reliability.
Open-source material
Satellite imagery, imagery from social platforms and other open-source material can be valuable but is treated with caution. We seek to confirm authenticity, date and location before relying on it, and we are explicit about what remains uncertain.
When we get it wrong
A verification standard is only meaningful if errors are corrected openly. If you believe something we have published is inaccurate, our Corrections Policy explains how we handle it, or write to [email protected]. The wider framework is set out in our Editorial Policy, and how technology is used under human oversight in our AI Use Policy.