How Britain is cashing in on the Middle East’s hunt for weapons

[robert99]

How Britain is cashing in on the Middle East’s hunt for weapons
How Britain is cashing in on the Middle East’s hunt for weapons

Raytheon’s factories in Essex and Scotland produce the Paveway IV guided bomb which, according to its manufacturer, has been “put to the test in every major conflict” and proved itself “time and again, as the weapon of choice by the end users”.
One enthusiastic end user is Saudi Arabia, now the UK defence sector’s biggest customer, having agreed orders for £3.5bn of military hardware since the start of 2015.
Newly published official figures reveal that the UK won defence orders worth £7.7bn last year. It now has about 12% of the global defence export market and, over the last decade, has shored up its position as the second largest arms exporter in the world.

There is still much to play for. The government’s own figures suggest that the global defence export market in 2015 was worth a fraction under $100bn, a 17% increase on 2014.

 

[Second Summer]

It's surprising that this sort of business and arms export is tolerated in this day and age. Perhaps there is a kind of "realism" behind the decision to allow arms export to Saudi Arabia - the assumption that if we, the UK, didn't provide the arms, they would get it from someone else, perhaps bombs with less sophisticated guiding / targeting systems that would cause a higher civilian death toll. Or the fear of what kind of government Saudi Arabia would get if the current one were to be toppled.