China’s Growing Arms Sales to Latin America

In recent years China has asserted itself as a key player in the global arms trade. Not only have both export volume and weapons quality increased rapidly, the range of customers China has been supplying has also expanded greatly over the course of the past decade. Latin America is one of the key regions into which Chinese arms have begun to pour. Yet while commentators of the past have doubted the strategic significance of China’s arms sales to this region — pointing to their relatively meager quantity and the fact that most Latin American states still rely on more established suppliers for their most important military hardware (see here, for instance) — there are signs that things may be changing.

Members of the Venezuelan army fly a Chinese-made K-8 jet in Barquisimeto (March 13, 2010).

Image Credit: REUTERS/Miraflores Palace/Handout

With next to no arms sales to the region before 2005, China is now a key supplier to Latin America. Venezuela continues to lead in China’s Latin American arms sales, with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimating that between 2011 and 2015 Venezuela purchased $373 million of Chinese weaponry. A $500 million deal in 2012 for weaponry including armored personnel carriers and self-propelled artillery ensures that this arms relationship is set to continue flourishing into the future.

It’s Not Diplomacy, It’s an Arms Fair

The summit between President Barack Obama and representatives from the Persian Gulf countries that kicked off today at Camp David is meant to reassure Washington’s Arab allies. “Don’t worry about the nuclear deal with Iran,” Obama will say. “We’ve got your back.”

And what’s the best way to show your friends that you’ve got their back? Sell them billions of dollars worth of advanced weapons. In fact, it seems like arms sales are the Obama administration’s tool of choice these days for dealing with everything from counterterrorism to a lagging economy. And the consequences, unsurprisingly, are bloody.

DISARM AND MODERNIZE

 In the early decades of the Cold War, NATO made arrangements to bury what were known as atomic demolition munitions (in essence, nuclear mines) at key points in West Germany, to be detonated if Warsaw Pact forces ever invaded. Although this plan, if enacted, might have slowed the enemy advance, it also almost certainly would have turned vast West German territories into radioactive wastelands littered with corpses and smoldering buildings—the stuff of hellish alternative-
history scenarios. The West viewed such tactical nukes—NATO fielded 7,000 to 8,000 of these shorter-
range, smaller-yield weapons for most of the Cold War—as tripwires in anticipation of the Soviet Union’s own Strangelovian plans for its thousands of tactical weapons. That is to say, the forward positioning of these nukes was a signal: If the Soviet Union invaded Europe, confrontation would escalate quickly to the nuclear realm, and the United States would intervene.

China’s Weapons of Mass Consumption

 

In August 2014, China’s state-owned Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding Co.launched a new frigate, a small warship often used for submarine warfare or coastal defense, into Shanghai’s Huangpu River. As the frigate slid into the water, a casual passerby might have assumed that it was simply another ship in the Chinese Navy’s rapidly growing fleet. Yet its intended recipient was not China’s navy, but Algeria’s — the first of three that Algeria had ordered from China at a Malaysian arms expo in 2012.

Japan wrestles with wartime legacy as it starts selling weapons

Seventy years after the end of World War II, talk about any kind of military expansion remains highly sensitive here in Japan.

Just consider the position of Akifumi Arai, president of the Tamagawa Trading Company, a relatively small Nagano-based business that supplies sensors and gyroscopes used to guide torpedoes and missiles for Japan’s self-defense forces.

China confirms new generation long range missiles

China has acknowledged the existence of a new intercontinental ballistic missile said to be capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads as far as the United States, state-run media reported Friday.

A government environmental monitoring centre in Shaanxi said on its website that a military facility in the province was developing Dongfeng-41 (DF-41) missiles, the Global Times reported.

US spills Israeli missile defense secrets

The US government has publicized classified information detailing the location, design and specifications of a launch site to be built from this summer for Israel’s new Arrow 3 anti-ballistic missile system. The details, apparently spilled in error, appear to include highly sensitive information relevant to the struggle against Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

An Arrow 3 missile fired during a test launch in February (photo credit: CC BY U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Flickr)

The material specifies, for instance, that the launch site must be completed by the end of next year, by which time, it says, Israel expects to have the Arrow 3 — a missile defense system crucial to Israel’s plans for countering an Iranian nuclear threat — operational.

Russia's Fourth-Gen Fighter Could Be The Best Thing On The Market

Of the jets in production that promise to take military fighters deep into the 21st century and beyond, the U.S. F-35, the Chinese J-20, and the Russian Sukhoi T-50 PAK FA are at the top of the heap. 

China’s navy says it plans for more aircraft carriers

A top navy commander says China plans to operate more aircraft carriers in the future that will be even larger and carry more aircraft than the initial one launched last year.

The comments from deputy navy chief Song Xue reported Wednesday by the official Xinhua News Agency marked the clearest indication yet that China plans to expand its carrier program. Song didn’t give a specific number, saying only, “We won’t have just one.”

'US arms improve Israel's long-range strike ability'

US Secretary of defense, Ya’alon finalize arms deal that sells Israel V-22 Osprey aircraft, refueling tankers, advanced radars for jets; Ya’alon: Israel can defend self against Iran, but prefers diplomatic solution.

US Secretary of State Chuck Hagel and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’aloPhoto: Courtesy of Ministry of Defense

US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel met with Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Monday, vowing that the US would continue to help Israel maintain its military qualitative edge in the region, particularly in the air, by providing the Jewish State with the means to carry-out long-range strikes.

Reversing policy, US will sell Israel aerial refueling planes

KC-135 refuelling Stratotanker, photographed in 2010 (photo credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Tech. Sgt. Angelique Perez)

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will finalize a huge arms deal with Israel during his visit starting Saturday, under which Israel will for the first time be permitted to purchase US aerial refueling planes and other ultra-sophisticated military equipment that could prove vital to any Israel strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Secretary of Defense Hagel alongside Israel’s previous defense minister, Ehud Barak, in early March at the Pentagon (Photo credit: Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo/ Ministry of Defense/ Flash 90)

The deal is to be finalized during Hagel’s visit — his first stop on his first overseas trip since taking over from Leon Panetta — during his talks with Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. But most of its content was agreed upon with Ya’alon’s predecessor Ehud Barak. Hagel’s first meeting with a foreign counterpart after taking up his post was with Barak at the Pentagon in early March. Hagel said at that meeting that, while the US continues to believe there is still time to address the threat of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons through diplomacy, that window is closing.

The Single Most Expensive Piece Of Military Equipment Ever Has Reached A Massive Milestone

The lead ship in a new class of carriers, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is the most expensive piece of military equipment ever created. And it now has a perfectly-laid flight deck that could one day see 6th generation fighters screeching across its surface.

The Ten Largest Arms Exporters in the World

US Army Spc. Lee T. Williams, a supply specialist for the 730th Quarter Master Company out of Johnson City, Tenn., fires a Degtyarov-Shpagin Kruphokaliberny a Russian/Soviet 12.7 mm heavy machine gun at the firing range at Babadag Training Area, Romania, Aug. 13, 2009. Credit: DAVIDSHUB via Flickr

Security is a massive industry and there are some nations that profit immensely from it. Global Conflict Analysis presents a list of the Ten Largest Arms Exporters in the World.

Is Turkey’s Arms Industry Changing Equations?

Word out of Turkey is that Roketsan—Turkey’s domestic missile manufacture—has just concluded a nearly $200 million deal with the United Arab Emirates. Turkey has made no secret of its desire to build up its arms industry. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has, for example, beseeched the Obama administration to provide Turkey with drones at the same time that a Turkish armament company was trying to develop Turkish drones for export.

Turkey has taken an increasingly activist approach to the Middle East. It has supported the radical al-Nusra Front, designated a terror group by the Obama administration, because it prefers violent jihadists over secular Kurds. (Last week, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu dismissed those who labeled the al-Qaeda affiliate “Jihadists” as little more than “American neo-cons and Israelis.” The fact that Turkey is willing to arm radical Islamists at odds with U.S. strategic interests certainly marks a new era.

Russia’s state arms trader says shipments to Syria will continue

Russia will continue supplying weapons to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government despite the country’s escalating civil war, the head of Russia’s state arms trader said Wednesday.

Anatoly Isaikin, the director of Rosoboronexport, said that Russia sees no need to stop arms trade with Syria as it isn’t prohibited by the United Nations. He dismissed Western criticism of Russian arms sales to Assad’s regime, saying that his company has only delivered defensive weapons.

Iran Tests New Version of Missiles in Exercise

Iranian forces fired what military officers said was a new generation of surface-to-air missiles on Monday during a wide-ranging naval exercise that focused on striking hypothetical unmanned aircraft and vessels in international waters to the south of the country, Iranian news media reported.

The missiles were fired on the fourth day of a six-day naval exercise thatstarted Friday, when Iran announced that it had begun the exercises that would test a new version of its Thunder surface-to-air midrange missile. They were meant to demonstrate the country’s defense of its territorial waters, the official Islamic Republic News Agency said.

U.S. moves toward selling advanced spy drones to South Korea

The Obama administration formally proposed a controversial sale of advanced spy drones to help South Korea bear more of its defense from any attack by the heavily armed North.

John Schwab/AP - In this Nov. 3, 2006, file photo provided by the U.S. Air Force shows an RQ-4 Global Hawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) landing at Beale Air Force Base, Calif. The Air Force is basing three of its most advanced unmanned aerial vehicles, the Global Hawk to Guam.

Seoul has requested a possible $1.2 billion sale of four Northrop Grumman RQ-4 “Global Hawk” remotely piloted aircraft with enhanced surveillance capabilities, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement dated Monday and distributed Tuesday.

EADS and BAE in defence tie-up talks

EADS and BAE Systems, Europe’s largest aerospace company and biggest defence contractor, are discussing a €38bn tie-up that would create a European rival to Boeingand reshape the global defence industry.

EADS would control 60 per cent of the enlarged group, which would have a unified board and management structure. European governments have talked for more than a decade about consolidating their national champions to create a pan-continental competitor to Boeing, the biggest commercial aerospace company in the US and also its second-largest defence contractor.