A hidden factory in Great Yarmouth enables F-35 jets to bomb Gaza

Great Yarmouth, a place where families gather all year round, come together and visit the seaside, eat ice cream and play on the arcade machines. But deep down the seafront, hidden in the industrial estate, lies a factory that is responsible for making the parts that, without them, the F-35 jets wouldn’t be able to operate. The company is called Spectrum Control LTD.

You won’t find much advertising for it; in fact, if you go to the factory itself, there are no big signs on the doors or obvious branding. But if you dig deep enough into a combination of the company house, export license data put together by the campaign against arms trade, Spectrum has been making and supplying parts for the F-35 jets that have been used in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.

So who owns the place in Great Yarmouth?

From my findings, Spectrum Control LTD is listed online via Companies House under number 02721281 and, on paper, is typically a British company. But it is actually owned by AEA Investors LP, a private equity firm based in New York.

This firm is worth BILLIONS in assets in aerospace, defence and industrial manufacturing. To be precise, this firm goes all the way back to pure American elite power. It was founded in 1968 by the Rockefellers, the Mellon family and the Harriman family.

AEA manages £15 billion in invested capital. AEA took over spectrum control in 2019 from its parent company, API Technologies, which, to them, just sits there alongside handfuls of other businesses in their portfolio.

The directors

There are two directors listed on the company house website. First, we have Neil Snowdon, a British citizen who was given the role in November 2022. He works as Spectrum Controls’ vice president and managing director in the UK and EMEIA region. So in short, he sees the day-to-day at the Great Yarmouth factory. Snowdon’s LinkedIn shows how he is posting about RAF Typhoon upgrades and UK defence supply chains, but he actually has a boss himself; he reports to the US CEO, who is on the company’s executive leadership team. His name?

Richard Dennis Sorelle, sometimes known as Rich, is an American national listed as the other director of Spectrum Control and has been since 2021.

Rich has over 35 years of experience in defence electronics. Before Spectrum Control, he was the CEO and chairman of Abaco Systems, which is, in short, another military electronics supplier. When he took over spectrum control, he said he was looking forward to bringing his experiences in radar and sonar to the company (gross). He did an interview with Microwave Journal, and he described Spectrum Control and its mission as “protecting human life ” See the irony there, considering he’s making parts that help jets kill innocent children in Gaza.

Neither of these men work in Great Yarmouth, and no one from the local community was consulted or informed about this, and inquiries received no response.

Neither Snowdon or Sorelle have commented on the factory’s participation in its F-35 programme.

The invisible loophole

UK companies that ship and supply anything to do with F-35 jets don’t go through normal arms export licensing. What they go through alternatively is something called an open general export licence. What this means is registered companies have authorisation to export unlimited amounts of F-35 related parts to places like Israel without needing to apply for individual licenses.

Don’t believe me? The government’s own OGEL documents confirm this, and the campaign against arms trade has mapped every single UK company registered for this license.

The scary part is we have no idea how much has left the factory in Great Yarmouth, where it went and what aircrafts in has ended up in.

Funny how the UK government, when announcing a partial suspension on arms export licenses to Israel in 2024, seems to exempt F-35 components, giving factories loopholes to be able to still supply F-35 jet parts to countries using them for genocide.

The secret business

So when we think of spectrum control, we think obviously of the factory that’s making the F-35 components, but what if I told you they also run another business called SSIA.

SSIA (secure systems and information assurance), based in Gloucester, not Great Yarmouth, has been designing and making equipment for one of the most secret areas of military tech for well over 30 years, and its name is Tempest.

To put it short, Tempest is short for a NATO/government programme that handles the fact that every device leaks electromagnetic signals, and those signals can be intercepted by rivals, and they can manipulate what’s on the screens, what’s being typed, and what’s being broadcast.

Tempest Tech has been built to counter that.

This is also the first and only company in UK history to be NCSC accredited under GCHQ. And to work here, you have to have complete tight security clearance.

So, Spectrum Controls SSIA section supplies the military, government, and NATO with TEMPEST certified equipment, which includes secure computers, encrypted coms hardware and all of this is owned by the Rockefellers.

Our question is, why is the UK government allowing a Rockefeller-owned company in New York to handle our sensitive data?

The town that never got a say

We all know Great Yarmouth is not the wealthiest place; in fact, it’s one of the most deprived places in the UK. It sits among the bottom 20% of the most economically deprived areas nationally, and it seems to be the target of these awful industries profiting off the murder of children.

And yes, the company does employ people locally, and I’ve witnessed with my own eyes how some of the staff react to the locals trying to raise awareness, and I’m not sure if it’s silence out of fear of not wanting to lose your job because you feel like you have no other choice or just simply not caring.

I want to highlight the people who are locals and are trying to raise awareness about this issue. There’s a group of amazing activists who have been campaigning to get this factory shut down for a while, and they need your help.

When I first started journalism, I went and joined them at one of the protests outside the factory in August of 2025, and I could really feel the urgency for them to get the message across, but because Yarmouth is very far and secluded, people won’t know about it unless it’s amplified, and that’s what I’m doing right now.

The locals should be informed about what companies want to set up factories in their areas and be given a say on whether they want something like an arms factory to be operating in a town that also serves as a holiday destination for families. These companies make millions, and the community in itself is struggling. How about the government invest money in building community centres for these people instead of building factories that aid Israel’s murder mission?

Put the pressure on in Great Yarmouth

I grew up in Norfolk – in fact its funny, I was born there and lived in Great Yarmouth for a year as an adult. To me, I always associated it with the place people came to for the summer. The seafront is full of shops, arcade stalls, and things for families to do. It has one of the most popular high streets, but the work typically runs off seasonal trade, meaning after the summer, most shops shut, and people are left without work. It makes you wonder if this factory is put there on purpose, as people feel like they have no choice but to take the work that’s available to them.

But we still have questions and have sent off an FOI request to the Great Yarmouth Borough Council and ask them to disclose all communications between them and Spectrum Control, and we are still awaiting a response. Because between the Rockerfellers’ New York firm and Norfolk’s trading estate, accountability has gone missing, and I’m on the hunt for it.

And why did the mayor of Yarmouth stand with Snowdon and celebrate the 80th anniversary in 2023 of the site? Did the mayor know what the factory was making, and if she did, why would she endorse such a thing?

For now, all we can do is show up, put pressure on the spectrum control and listen to what the locals want.