Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is planning to sign a new arms deal with China despite having a diverse arsenal of weapons, and his failure in the Yemen war.
Saudi Arabia Military Industries (Sasmi) is reportedly negotiating with China North Industries Group Corporation (Norinco) the purchase of Sky Saker FX80 drones, CR500 vertical take-off drones, Dragon 5 and 10 kamikaze drones, and air defense systems for the short range HQ-17AE.
Well-informed sources earlier confirmed that MBS spent 44.2 million euros on arms deals with Germany over the past year, the largest since the journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder.
According to the sources, a total of 48 approvals have been issued for Saudi Arabia. Of the total exports, €7.1 million is for military weapons, and €37.1 million is for other weapons.
These include deliveries of Tornado and Eurofighter fighters, which are manufactured in the UK.
MBS receives annual commissions from illegal arms deals worth billions of dollars, where he signed a number of arms deals totaling billions of dollars since taking office, completely disregarding record-breaking unemployment and poverty rates.
Saudi Arabia ranked as the second-largest arms importer globally in 2018-2022. The Kingdom received 9.6 percent of all arms imports during that period.
Saudi arms purchases during 2022 included aircraft, air defense systems, armored vehicles, missiles, naval weapons, sensors, and ships.
Saudi Arabia’s main suppliers and their share of its total imports: US (78 percent), France (6.4 percent), and Spain (4.9 percent).
MBS’s large arms purchases are aimed at whitewashing his poor human rights record, especially after the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in his country’s consulate in Istanbul.
MBS has spent a third of the kingdom’s budget on weapon purchases, despite the high unemployment rate.
According to the 2017 Congressional Research Service report, Saudi Arabia spent $30 billion worth on military expenditures from 2008 to 2015. A total of $16 billion of Saudi Arabia’s arms imports came from the US , and $11.4 billion from Western Europe, 1.6 billion dollars from Eastern Europe, and 1.3 billion dollars from China.
The report considered Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest arms importer from 2013 to 2017.
The US and UK are the kingdom’s top suppliers. With purchases of astonishingly expensive weapons like helicopters, tanks, and guided missiles, nearly all of its foreign-made weapons (by value) come from these two countries.
A total of 61% of Saudi Arabia’s arms imports came from the U.S., and 49% of British arms exports are allocated to Saudi Arabia.
On the other hand, Saudi Arabia was the third-largest recipient of German arms. The total for 2018 was €416.4 million. The kingdom is also considered France’s second-best arms customer between 2008 and 2017.
Saudi Arabia has spent a fortune buying arms from the US to prosecute a war that has killed almost a quarter of a million people — the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe in our lifetime.
However, no real achievement was reported, as Saudi Arabia failed to stop Houthi attacks on the Kingdom.
