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WASHINGTON: To wage war in Yemen, Saudi Arabia is using F-15 fighter jets bought from Boeing. Pilots from the United Arab Emirates are flying Lockheed Martin's F-16 to bomb both Yemen and Syria. Soon the Emirates are expected to complete a deal with General Atomics for a fleet of Predator drones to run spying missions in their neighborhood.As the Middle East descends into proxy wars, sectarian conflicts and battles against terrorist networks, countries in the region that have stockpiled US military hardware are now actually using it and wanting more. The result is a boom for US defense contractors looking for foreign business in an era of shrinking Pentagon budgets — but also the prospect of a dangerous new arms race in a region where the map of alliances has been sharply redrawn.READ ALSO: Egypt ends US arms 'monopoly' with French jet fighter dealLast week, defense industry officials told Congress that they were expecting within days a request from Arab allies fighting the Islamic State — Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan and Egypt — to buy thousands of US-made missiles, bombs and other weapons, replenishing an arsenal that has been depleted over the past year.The US has long put restrictions on the types of weapons that US defense firms can sell to Arab nations, meant to ensure that Israel keeps a military advantage against its traditional adversaries in the region. But because Israel and the Arab states are now in a de facto alliance against Iran, the Obama administration has been far more willing to allow the sale of advanced weapons in the Persian Gulf, with few public objections from Israel.An unmanned Predator drone. (Getty Images photo)"When you look at it, Israel's strategic calculation is a simple one," said Anthony H Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The gulf countries "do not represent a meaningful threat" to Israel, he said. "They do represent a meaningful counterbalance to Iran."Industry analysts and Middle East experts say that the region's turmoil, and the determination of the wealthy Sunni nations to battle Shiite Iran for regional supremacy, will lead to a surge in new orders for the defense industry's latest, most high-tech hardware.The militaries of gulf nations have been "a combination of something between symbols of deterrence and national flying clubs," said Richard L. Aboulafia, a defense analyst at the Teal
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Topic: Sale of US arms fuels the wars of Arab states (Read 261 times)
