ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Despite the growing coronavirus pandemic, major weapons manufacturers came to a convention center in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, on Sunday, hoping to strike deals with armies in the Middle East.
The UAE has unveiled $ 1.36 billion in local and foreign arms deals to supply its troops with everything from South African drones to Serbian artillery. While the figure surpasses the opening announcement of the 2019 show, defense experts expect a drop in military spending this year as the pandemic and falling oil prices put pressure on Persian Gulf budgets.
The biennial trade show, the International Defense Exhibition and Conference, is Abu Dhabi’s first major personal event since the virus outbreak – a sign of its significance for the oil-rich Sheikhdom that has maintained tight movement restrictions in recent months. Zoom would not be enough for the 70,000 attendees and 900 exhibitors who depend on the largest arms fair in the Middle East to scout out potential customers and sell their latest wares, from armored vehicles to ballistic missiles.
Top officials from the Emirates, including the powerful Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, were in attendance, walking between displays of guns, missiles and bombs.
But with hand sanitizer as ubiquitous as sterile drone displays, the effects of the pandemic remained visible. Significant national pavilions were missing, including the United States, the world’s largest arms exporter.
Major American companies showed up, but remained unobtrusive. Lockheed Martin representatives standing next to models of stealth F-35 fighters were tight-lipped during the Biden administration’s review of several major foreign arms sales initiated by former President Donald Trump, including a mass transfer of the $ 23 billion F-35s to the UAE.
Israel’s COVID restrictions also prevented it from joining the expo, which would have been a first after normalizing relations with the UAE last year. A technician at the Israeli Aerospace Industry booth spent much of the afternoon turning down disappointed potential customers.
But dozens of other countries had no qualms about appearing during the pandemic, underscoring how much have boosted their arms exports in the region. According to a recent report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the flow of weapons in the Middle East has increased by 61% in the past five years amid grueling proxy wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen.
China, which has the world’s second largest arms industry, lured passers-by with a full-size ballistic missile called ‘Fire Dragon’. At the state-owned Norinco, business manager Luo Haopeng noted that China had more floor space this year. In addition to his company ‘serving’ the Emirates ground forces, he declined to elaborate on his ambitions in the Middle East, where China has already sold armed drones to Iraq, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
“This kind of equipment is not like food or clothing,” he said, gesturing to the giant missile display. “It all has to do with politics.”
In the Russian Pavilion, Chechen regional leader Ramzan Kadyrov inspected a wide variety of Kalashnikovs. Not far from Poland’s WB Group, Poland’s WB Group showed glitzy sales videos of its “suicide drone” plummeting from a great height to shoot armored vehicles. Azerbaijan had shown interest in the system during last year’s border dispute with Armenia, communications director Marta Lazewska said, when Turkish drones helped turn the tide in its favor.
In the Pavilion for Saudi Arabia, ranked as the world’s largest arms importer for the past five years, officials sought to promote the kingdom as an emerging defense giant under its so-called Vision 2030. The program, spearheaded by the powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aims to break the country’s addiction to imports, diversify its economy away from oil, and locate more than half of its military spending.
Despite its radar and US Patriot missile batteries, Saudi Arabia is increasingly at risk of cross-border attacks by Yemen’s Iranian-allied Houthi rebels, who launched bomb-laden drones that hit an empty passenger plane in the southwest earlier this month. from Abha. airport. A Saudi-led military coalition has been at war with the Houthis since 2015, after the rebels expelled the Saudi-backed government from the capital. The conflict has led to what the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
“The threats have become apparent lately,” said Walid Abukhaled, CEO of Saudi Arabian Military Industries Company, a holding company owned by the country’s sovereign wealth fund. “You have drones coming from aggressive countries … you have fired some missiles now and then.”
Routine airstrikes and mounting tensions with Iran could boost military spending in the region, even as defense intelligence provider IHS Janes expects such spending in the Gulf to drop 9.4% to $ 90.6 billion by 2021 , as a result of the economic destruction caused by the pandemic.
“We are back in early 2020, where Iran is once again a potentially major threat,” said Charles Forrester, senior analyst at Janes, referring to a series of escalating incidents that have pushed the US and Iran to the brink of the latest war. year.
“If Iran gets into a major rearmament program or flexes its muscles, that’s where missile defense and air defense systems come into play,” he said. “As we have seen, a very simple system can attack you.”