Arming the Syrian opposition is a better option. The Assad regime has shown no hesitation in using artillery and armor against the Syrian people. Equipping Syrian rebels with light anti-tank weapons such as RPG-7s will allow them to combat the regime’s T-55 and T-72 tanks. RPG-7s and lighter anti-tank weaponry are not capable of penetrating U.S. M1 Abrams tanks.
The Middle East is already awash in such weaponry so America wouldn’t be introducing anything new. Getting them quickly and directly into the hands of Syrian resistance fighters will bring the timely turning point needed to end the violence. Keeping an eye on the future after the Assad regime falls, America should stop short of providing small-arms weaponry, such as machine guns which may be used in the turmoil after the regime falls.
The new report, submitted by a panel of sanctions-monitoring experts to the Security Council's Iran sanctions committee, said the panel investigated three large illegal shipments of Iranian weapons over the past year.
"Iran has continued to defy the international community through illegal arms shipments," it stated. "Two of these cases involved (Syria), as were the majority of cases inspected by the Panel during its previous mandate, underscoring that Syria continues to be the central party to illicit Iranian arms transfers."
The third shipment involved rockets that Britain said last year were headed for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
India has agreed a $560-million deal to buy 145 howitzer guns from BAE Systems of the United States as it upgrades its antiquated military hardware, an official said Saturday.
India is updating its military capabilities with hardware worth tens of billions of dollars in the face of long-standing tensions with regional rivals China and Pakistan.
"The contract for the ultra-light howitzers was awarded on Friday to BAE Systems Inc" of the United States, a unit of Britain-based BAE Systems Plc, a senior defence ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity..
The government will spend 30 billion rupees ($560 million) on the field guns, the official said.
The howitzers, with a maximum range of 30 kilometres (17 miles), will be used by the army's mountain artillery divisions along India's high-altitude frontiers.
Just as everything was becoming as clear as mud, America has unexpectedly raised the possibility that it might sell Taiwan the F-16 C/D fighter jets that it has been requesting since 2006. The move would infuriate China. Officials in Beijing have in the past voiced strenuous opposition to the sale of F-16 C/Ds, marking it as a line in the sand, of the kind that can’t be crossed.
As it stands, the gesture was remarkably blunt. Days before the arrival of Hillary Clinton, America’s secretary of state, and smack dab in the middle of confusions to do with the custody of Chen Guangcheng, the boffins in charge of America’s foreign affairs have made things much tougher than they might have done, had they tarried for some weeks or months. It was on Friday that the White House said, seemingly out of the blue, that it is “mindful of...Taiwan’s growing shortfall in fighter aircraft” and “committed to assisting Taiwan in addressing the disparity in numbers of aircraft through our work with Taiwan’s defence ministry.”
No one in Taiwan doubts that the island needs new jets. China has 2,300 military aircraft in service, to Taiwan’s 490. Of those 490, around 60 are elderly F-5 jets that were sold to Taiwan during the Reagan administration. Another 50-odd are French-made Mirage fighters which are scheduled for retirement over the next several years; their maintenance and spare parts have become too expensive. The U.S.-Taiwan Business Council, a lobby group which represents American defence companies, among others, estimates that Taiwan will have as few as 75 usable modern fighters at its disposal from 2016 to 2022, while the F-16 A/B planes are undergoing upgrades.F-5
Somali pirates have acquired sophisticated weaponry, including mines and shoulder-held missile launchers from Libya, and are likely to use them in bolder attacks on shipping, a senior maritime security analyst said on Thursday.
"We found that Libyan weapons are being sold in what is the world's biggest black market for illegal gun smugglers, and Somali pirates are among those buying from sellers in Sierra Leone, Liberia and other countries," said Judith van der Merwe, of the Algiers-based African Centre for the Study and Research on Terrorism.
"We believe our information is credible and know that some of the pirates have acquired ship mines, as well as Stinger and other shoulder-held missile launchers," Van der Merwe told Reuters on the sidelines of an Indian Ocean naval conference.
Russian man who became known as the "Merchant of Death" for his exploits in the arms sales markets worldwide is set to learn how long he'll be in prison after his defense lawyers asked a judge to set him free and prosecutors asked that he never get out.
Viktor Bout, 45, faces a mandatory minimum of 25 years in prison and possibly life during sentencing Thursday for his conviction on terrorism charges. His lawyers have asked U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin to throw out his conviction, saying he's a political prisoner who stepped into a vindictive U.S. government sting operation.
Federal prosecutors say Bout should spend life in prison because he agreed "without hesitation and with frightening speed" to ship "a breathtaking arsenal of weapons," including hundreds of surface-to-air missiles, machine guns and sniper rifles along with 10 million rounds of ammunition to men he believed represented a foreign terrorist organization willing to kill Americans in Colombia.
They say his weapons fueled armed conflicts in some of the world's most treacherous hot spots, including Rwanda, Angola and the Congo and that he was looking for new arms deals in places like Libya and Tanzania when he was arrested.
Last December, Tokyo announced that it would purchase Lockheed-Martin's F-35 Lightning II as its next-generation jet fighter. In doing so, it disappointed BAE Systems, the European maker of the Eurofighter Typhoon, which had hoped to win the $4.7 billion contract itself. For a while, it seemed as though it might. The Lockheed deal had its downsides: Initially, Japanese firms would have played no role in producing the new jets; likewise, they would not have had access to the secret technologies used in the F-35's design. It was not until Lockheed agreed to allow domestic contractors to participate in building the new jets and share some top-secret technologies that Japan decided to make the deal. In retrospect, that move should never have been in much doubt. The contract closely follows Japanese defense policy precedent: acquiring the most advanced American military hardware available under licensing agreements, producing that hardware in Japan to boost the economy, and keeping the U.S.-Japan alliance tight, positing Japan as a buffer between the United States and the region's major powers.
Japan has filled this role for decades. In 1946, during the United States' postwar occupation of Japan, General Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander for the Allied Powers, insisted that the country's new constitution include a clause barring Japan from maintaining war-making capabilities. In return, Washington would protect Japan from outside attack and maintain a sizeable military presence there to do so. When the Korean War broke out, the number of U.S. troops in Japan dwindled as soldiers were moved from Japan to fight on the Korean peninsula. Realizing that the force it could afford to retain in Japan was not sufficient for maintaining order or fending off a communist infiltration, the United States pressured Japan to relax the ban on maintaining military forces. Under the guidance of the U.S.-dominated Allied General Headquarters, the country created a paramilitary force, the National Police Reserve (which gradually morphed into the Self-Defense Forces, or SDF, Japan's main military organization today). Meanwhile, military production contracts from U.S. firms poured into the country. For example, during the three years of the Korean War, 235 Japanese companies produced $500 million worth of ammunition for the U.S. military.
As Japanese factories built military hardware on license from U.S. defense firms, the country's heavy industrial companies picked up the know-how to create cutting-edge domestic civilian technologies. In the 1950s and 1960s, for instance, the highly reinforced plastics originally designed to build the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter found their way into Mitsubishi's YS-11 and MU-2 turboprop aircraft. And Japanese experience with U.S. jet engine bearing technology -- which allows mechanical parts to work at high speeds -- played an important role in the development of the country's iconic Shinkansen bullet trains. Soon, producing military hardware under license from the United States and then reaping the civilian technological and economic benefits became a cornerstone of Japanese foreign arms procurement policy: When negotiating arms deals with the United States, Tokyo often requested that specific processes -- such as quality testing, metal bending, and the development of cameras, tires, engines, and synthetic materials -- take place in Japan so that Japanese firms could build experience in those lucrative fields. Producing the F-35's fuselage and studying its stealth technology, too, will also give Japanese defense contractors a leg up. Already, Mitsubishi is producing a prototype one-third-scale stealth aircraft, the Mitsubishi ATD-X Shinshin, and the project will surely benefit from familiarity with the inner workings of the F-35.
Booming Middle East purchases of U.S. fighter jets will be a bright spot in what is expected to be a sluggish economy in 2012, possibly paying dividends for President Barack Obama's bid for a second term.
Beneficiaries include Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, whose respective F-16 and F-15 production lines are being extended by U.S. government sales to Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Oman, among other rich arms deals announced in recent weeks.
The foreign sales will help offset expected cuts in big-ticket purchases by the Defense Department, which is set to lose at least $450 billion in previously projected funding through 2021 as part of a deficit-reduction push. Additional cuts totaling another $500 billion to $600 billion over the same period are scheduled to kick in next year unless a new deficit-reduction plan is adopted by Congress.
The sales of fighters, missiles and other advanced U.S. weapons will help provide jobs as the United States heads into an election campaign expected to focus on the domestic economy. It has been growing at only half the pace needed to get the jobless rate down from 8.6 percent, a problem for Obama as the incumbent.
The Obama administration on Thursday hailed a new $30 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia as both a hedge against Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf and an economic windfall that could create thousands of U.S. jobs over the next decade.
The agreement to sell 84 top-of-the line F-15SA fighter jets to the Saudi air force also provided a needed boost to U.S. relations with the oil-rich kingdom after months of strain over the White House’s response to the Arab Spring uprisings, U.S. officials and Middle East analysts said.
The deal, which was finalized after more than a year of negotiations, was announced during a week of increased tensions with Iran, which has renewed its threat to block ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz in response to international economic sanctions. The administration has pursued a policy of supplying advanced weapons systems to friendly Arab states to keep Iran’s regional ambitions in check.
“This sale will send a strong message to countries in the region that the United States is committed to stability in the gulf and broader Middle East,” Andrew Shapiro, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, told reporters.
No one seems to know how 69 of the U.S.’ prized air defense missiles ended up on a ship bound for China but this kind of movement can only happen with the approval of someone in high places.
Keep in mind that Germany has a bunch of Patriot missiles and has sold its older Patriots to South Korea during times of high tension with North Korea. Finnish authorities couldn’t say if the ship was planning on making any stops before it arrived in China. It’s plausible the missiles found aboard the Thor Liberty are a German shipment bound for South Korea but you’d think we’d have heard about the deal; you’d also think they wouldn’t be “badly stored” and marked as fireworks.
Japan picked Lockheed Martin's F-35 jet as its next mainstay fighter Tuesday, choosing the aircraft over combat-proven but less stealthy rivals, as concern simmers over North Korea and as China introduces its own stealth fighters.
The decision came as Japan and the United States stressed that their security alliance was tight in the face of worry about an unstable North Korea after the death of its leader, Kim Jong-il.
Defense Minister Yasuo Ichikawa said the decision to buy 42 of the stealth aircraft, valued by analysts at more than $7 billion, would help Japan adjust to a changing security environment after Monday's announcement of the death of the 69-year-old North Korean leader.
"The security environment surrounding future fighter jets is transforming. The F-35 has capabilities that can firmly respond to the changes," Ichikawa told reporters.
Opening statements were set to begin Wednesday in the trial of a former Soviet military officer accused of agreeing to sell weapons to anti-American rebels, but only after jurors promised in writing not to research the case on the Internet.
Viktor Bout, dubbed the Merchant of Death, was arrested in March 2008 in a Bangkok hotel, where authorities say he agreed to sell the weapons to U.S. operatives posing as anti-American rebels. He was brought to the United States late last year after losing a fight against extradition. The Russian government opposed his transfer.
Twelve jurors and three alternates were chosen Tuesday during a daylong process. U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin required all of them to sign a first-of-its-kind juror pledge, in which they promised not to research any of the issues or parties involved in the trial on the Internet. The pledge contained a signature line after the words: "Signed under penalty of perjury."
Before the jurors' selection, the judge questioned them to make sure they could remain objective despite mentions of weapons including high-powered rifles, missile launchers and Stinger missiles.
She also wanted jurors who would not be disturbed by allegations that Bout may have indulged in Africa many years ago in arms trafficking that did not break U.S. laws. No one said he or she was bothered by that.
The Russian army says it is halting orders of the famous Kalashnikov assault rifle until a newer model is developed by its manufacturer.
Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Makarov told Russian media that the army already had too many of the weapons in its stores.
A new model is expected to be ready by the end of the year.
News of the army's decision is reportedly being kept from the rifle's designer, Mikhail Kalashnikov, now 91.
"We do not want to take it upon ourselves to tell him," an unnamed member of his family told Russia's Izvestia newspaper.
"It might kill him."
Pakistan will not launch an offensive against Haqqani extremists despite Washington ramping up the pressure after a series of attacks on US targets in Afghanistan, an official said on Monday.
The US and Pakistan are key allies in the war against Islamist militants in Afghanistan, but their relationship is often troubled and hit new depths after the killing of Osama bin Laden in a covert US raid in Pakistan in May.
Pakistan's army chief of staff gathered together his top generals in an extraordinary meeting at the weekend after a series of stinging rebukes from the Americans blaming the Haqqanis and Pakistani intelligence for recent attacks.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is now expected to call a rare cross-party conference, although he has dismissed the American allegations as little more than finding a scapegoat for US "disarray" in the 10-year war in Afghanistan.
"I don't think the indicators are as such," a senior Pakistani security official told AFP when asked if the army was going to launch an operation in North Waziristan, near the Afghan border, where the Haqqani leadership is based.
Instead, he said, the military needs to "consolidate gains" made against local militants who pose a security threat elsewhere in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt that Washington has branded an Al-Qaeda headquarters.
Pakistan has around 140,000 troops based in its troubled northwest and says more than 3,000 soldiers have been killed since 2001 -- more than the 2,735 Western soldiers to have died fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
A group of American military officers and Afghan officials had just finished a five-hour meeting with their Pakistani hosts in a village schoolhouse settling a border dispute when they were ambushed — by the Pakistanis.
An American major was killed and three American officers were wounded, along with their Afghan interpreter, in what fresh accounts from the Afghan and American officers who were there reveal was a complex, calculated assault by a nominal ally. The Pakistanis opened fire on the Americans, who returned fire before escaping in a blood-soaked Black Hawk helicopter.
The attack, in Teri Mangal on May 14, 2007, was kept quiet by Washington, which for much of a decade has seemed to play down or ignore signals that Pakistan would pursue its own interests, or even sometimes behave as an enemy.
A Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee said Sunday that the U.S. should consider military action against Pakistan if it continues to support terrorist attacks against American troops in Afghanistan.
"The sovereign nation of Pakistan is engaging in hostile acts against the United States and our ally Afghanistan that must cease, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told "Fox News Sunday."
He said if experts decided that the U.S. needs to "elevate its response," he was confident there would be strong bipartisan support in Congress for such action.
Graham did not call for military action but said "all options" should be considered. He said assistance to Pakistan should be reconfigured and that the U.S. should no longer designate an amount of aid for Pakistan but have a more "transactional relationship" with the country.
"They're killing American soldiers," he said. "If they continue to embrace terrorism as a part of their national strategy, we're going to have to put all options on the table, including defending our troops."
Defence & Security Equipment international (DSEi) permanently shut down the Pakistan Ordnance Factory (POF) stand and Pakistan’s Defence Export Promotion Organisation Pavilion after promotional material was found on both containing references to cluster bombs at the London expo.
A DSEi statement said that promotional material was found containing references, which on closer inspection were found to be in breach of UK Government Export Controls and the exhibitions own contractual requirements.
The statement posted on the DSEi website further read that the British Government fully supported the decision by DSEi to close the stand and the Pavilion.
The Pakistani arms companies were found distributing brochures bearing advertisement for banned cluster bombs at the expo.
Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing growing criticism from across the political spectrum here after news of a multibillion-dollar deal for the secret sale of 200 tanks to Saudi Arabia leaked from the national security council that approved it.
The government has responded with what the German news media have called an “iron silence,” which has fueled rather than dampened the furor over a sale that experts estimate would be worth roughly $2.5 billion.
Germany strained ties with its NATO allies when it abstained in the United Nations Security Council on the resolution authorizing military action to protect Libyan civilians. Now the government has approved the shipment of the 68-ton tanks to Saudi Arabia even as the image of Saudi tanks rolling into Bahrain to help suppress the protests there remains fresh in the public’s mind.
According to the Web site of Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, which produces the tank, the latest version, the Leopard 2A7+, includes “nonlethal capabilities” and an “obstacle clearance blade” almost like a plow in the front that can clear debris and roadblocks.
“This would be a perfect tank to drive into Bahrain and crack down on any uprising,” said Jan Grebe, a researcher at the Bonn International Center for Conversion, a nonprofit research institute that deals with security and development issues. “It’s also a good tank to fight any demonstrations in Riyadh.”
France has defended its move to airlift weapons to Libya's rebels, saying it did not break a U.N. arms embargo because they were needed to defend civilians under threat.
France on Wednesday became the first NATO country to openly acknowledge arming rebels seeking to topple Muammar Gaddafi, who has so far resisted a three-month-old bombing campaign that has strained alliance and rebel firepower.
The bombing is backed by a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing force to protect civilians, but Britain, France and the United States say they will not stop until Gaddafi falls.
Citing unnamed sources, Le Figaro newspaper said France had parachuted rocket launchers, assault rifles, machine guns and anti-tank missiles into the Western Mountains in early June.
A French military spokesman confirmed delivery of arms, prompting some U.N. diplomats to argue that such transfers without consent of the U.N. Security Council's Libya sanctions committee could violate the embargo.
"We decided to provide self-defensive weapons to the civilian populations because we consider that these populations were under threat," French Ambassador to the United Nations Gerard Araud told reporters.
Corruption in the global arms industry is systemic and widespread, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).
'Corruption in the arms trade contributes roughly 40% to all corruption in global transactions,' the think tank said in its 2011 yearbook.
The problem could be tackled by a global arms trade treaty, Sipri said.
Such a treaty should both outlaw corruption and provide mechanisms for enforcement, it said.
In the months before Libyans revolted and President Barack Obama told leader Moammar Gadhafi to go, the U.S. government was moving to do business with his regime on an increasing scale by quietly approving a $77 million dollar deal to deliver at least 50 refurbished armored troop carriers to the dictator's military.
Congress balked, concerned the deal would improve Libyan army mobility and questioning the Obama administration's support for the agreement, which would have benefited British defense company BAE. The congressional concerns effectively stalled the deal until the turmoil in the country scuttled the sale. Earlier last week, after all military exports to the Gadhafi regime were suspended, the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls informed Capitol Hill that the deal had been returned without action — effectively off the table, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the deal's sensitive details.
State Department spokesman Mark C. Toner said the proposed license was suspended along with the rest of "what limited defense trade we had with Libya."
The Gadhafi regime's desire to upgrade its troop carriers was so intense that a Libyan official told U.S. diplomats in Tripoli in 2009 that the dictator's sons, Khamis and Saif, both were demanding swift action. Khamis, a commander whose army brigade reportedly attacked the opposition-held town of Zawiya with armored units and pickup trucks, expressed a "personal interest" in modernizing the armored transports, according to a December 2009 diplomatic message disclosed by WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website.
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