DSEI: Arms not for hugging

The first thing that I noticed upon arriving at DSEI was a young mother and baby protesting one of the world’s biggest defence and security exhibitions, or ‘arms fairs’, depending on your point of view. The Excel Centre in London’s Docklands – Newham if you actually live there - played host this week to the biennial defence industry jamboree. The mother and a friend – there were surely many more at a safer distance – chanted ‘arms are for hugging,’ which made the policemen and security guards standing nearby smile.

Taking the fight to DSEI (note also the baby's t-shirt)

I entered DSEI in record time, thanks to a very efficient media registration operation, and soon settled in to my usual people and kit-watching mode. It wasn’t long before I wondered what the hell I was doing at this almost absurd spectacle. This was my fourth time of attending; I’ve also been to IDEX in Abu Dhabi and similar events. At the latter, some 20 years ago, I was however speaking at an associated Gulf security conference. At DSEI I was, as ever, unsure of what my role was.

The Excel Centre - care of ADNEC, a UAE exhibitions company

I typically wander around either trying to hook up with existing contacts or just talking to stall-holders about their wares. However there were some undoubted sights to marvel at too. Whether the classic British Centurion tank (see below) or a chance for the boys (me included) to play with some guns (see below), there was much spectacle.

Rear-end of a Centurion tank replete with cacti

Admiring the hardware

I noted that past in-theatre deployments of Russian ultra-babes had been forsaken for more conventional ways of promoting the goods. I gawped at the sheer scale of the UK’s state of the art ‘Tempest’ aircraft (see picture below), which had a steady queue of both men and women wishing to clamber aboard. I stepped outside and admired the huge naval ships in the former London canal-way and the small aircraft or unmanned drones taking to the skies above Docklands. Across the way two huge abandoned warehouses stood as stark reminders of what the area used to be.

Dockland dereliction

'Team Tempest'

Ship's inspection

Having a Gulf interest, I scoured in vain the DSEI guide for any sign that the Saudis’ much-vaunted planned expansion of their limited defence production capacity was reflected at DSEI. The DSEI website did have a brief about SAMI: the ‘Saudi Arabian Military Industries’ company set up as part of the Kingdom’s ambitious Saudi Vision 2030 (SV2030). But there was no DSEI stall number. SAMI, in partnership with GAMI, the overarching ‘General Authority’ for Saudi military industries is tasked with ensuring that 50% of all new Saudi arms are produced in-country within 11 years and that SAMI becomes a significant arms exporter.

More prosaically, earlier this year a former UK official told me that SAMI was making progress because it was producing small and, he admitted, basic engineering components. ‘Widgets’ was the word that came to my mind. Either way, this is seemingly not enough to warrant hiring a DSEI stand.

The contrast with the UAE was striking. Perhaps having a ‘UAE Pavilion’ wasn’t that surprising as the Emiratis own the Excel Centre in which DSEI is held. However the UAE seems more serious than the Saudis about developing a domestic defence industry. This effort essentially revolves around Tawazun, the state-founded company that since the early 1990s has been promoting in-country defence industry capacity. EDIC, the ‘Emirates Defence Industry Company’, was founded more recently as the country’s overall defence industry platform, but Tawazun has the majority stake in it. Someone on the Tawazun Economic Council (TEC) stall told me that TEC’s focus since 2017 has been on using ‘offsets’ (a de facto Gulf tax on western defence companies who commit to developing local know-how as part of an arms deal) to assist defence and non-defence industry development. TEC is also using its remit to develop local capacity in order to shepherd ostensibly private Emirati companies such as Halcon (part of the Al-Yas Group), who were right next door in the Pavilion. In February 2019 Halcon got a large TEC soft loan as part of the TEC policy to either fund or co-opt local defence businesses[i]. I was told that Halcon employs about 150 people, over half of whom are Emirati and are typically engineers who come to the UK for a post-graduate education. About 30-40% of the components in Halcon’s missile guidance and control systems are imported apparently. This is the all-important electronics component; the rest is done in-country. 

On the other side of Halcon’s stand was one belonging to ‘Al-Hamra’, whose smart promo publication boasted of them “Addressing Tomorrow’s Threats, Today”. Their emphasis it seems is on assisting private and public organisations with counter-terrorism and ‘intelligence’ work, something they do across the Middle East and Africa according to their glossy brochure. Sadly there was no one on the Al-Hamra stall to comment further. In fact this was a depressingly familiar experience from past such encounters of mine. It belies the UAE's go-ahead attitude that seeks to match its regional and extra-regional military ambitions with a greatly expanded supply of domestically produced kit that by definition isn't beholden to western political sensitivities or technology embargoes. I spoke to the former Tawazun press spokesman who told me that his successor, Mohammed Ahmed, was the only one who could make any comment to me, whether on or off the record. However Mohammed Ahmed had been called away from DSEI on business and would, I was assured, contact me when he returned. He didn’t.

I am ambiguous about missiles. However one that caught my eye was QinetiQ’s ‘Banshee’, which is actually an aerial practice target. Perhaps it was the name that appealed to me, making me think of Siouxsie Sioux’s band, or perhaps it was its attractively bright red colour-scheme (see below) and the free key ring.

A Banshee minus Siouxsie

Oxford space miniaturists

I wandered into a talk by a representative of Oxford Space Systems who addressed punters on her company's contribution to the 'miniaturisation' of space communication (see above). She mentioned that her company had a UK Ministry of Defence contract for aspects of this work. On my way out I noted that the use of canines in war zones was taking on a very hi-tech dimension (see below).

A dog of war

Oman was out in force at DSEI, commanded by Sheikh Badr bin Saud Al-Busaidi, officially known as ‘the minister responsible for defence affairs’. When I spotted him and his large retinue of uniformed Sultanate officers, they were surrounded by UK military and defence industry people. He went on after DSEI to meet with the UK’s new defence secretary Ben Wallace, and to visit Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre.

Oman hosts a new UK naval base and, separately, an army training base. The former, located on the Arabian Sea, is designed to accommodate the UK’s one and only aircraft carrier which is still undergoing operational trials before being scheduled to form a ‘carrier group’, with a still to be trialled second carrier, sometime in 2021[ii]. This intimate British role in Oman’s security was arguably unaffected by our ‘pull-out’ East of Suez in 1971. However its stepping up in recent years has made the UK even more central to the Sultanate’s security, including the highly tense Gulf littoral [i].

Before leaving DSEI, I met with an ex-British military friend. He told me that coming in to DSEI on the DLR that morning he had felt disconcerted by a  man who sat right next to him. The man in question started wheezing before my friend asked if he was ok. He noted that the man was wearing a ‘Veterans for Peace’ t-shirt and was obviously about to join a protest outside DSEI. An understanding passed between them. ‘Have a peaceful day,’ my friend said at their parting.

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[i] February 19 2019, Dania Saadi, https://www.thenational.ae/business/tawazun-to-invest-up-to-dh193m-in-uae-defence-company-halcon-1.827609
[ii] ‘UK carrier begins ‘Westlant 19’ operational trials’, Richard Scott, Jane’s Defence Weekly, September 4, 2019.
[i] See my article for the University of Kingston's History Department blog contrasting Harold Wilson’s decision to end the UK’s formal defence presence in the Gulf and commitment to defend the Gulf rulers, with the so-called return ‘East of Suez’ under PMs Cameron and May 

The state is moi

"I am the state; the state is moi," so, apparently, said Louis 14th. The state in Saudi Arabia is orientated toward the royal family, the al-Saud, but it has a life beyond the ruling family, or so says a well placed observer of the Saudi scene. The state has taken on the patronage role of the tribal sheikhs who once used their loyalty purchasing power to mark out their territorial domain. If the Saudi state can send security forces into every home and to operate on its extremely long and sometimes insecure borders, then it is a state and not just a family business, goes the rationale of those close to official sentiment. Yet take away a budget surplus, that according to genuinely modest official projections will be $1bn in 2013, then the Saudi state would seem a lot weaker. In neighbouring Jordan an IMF aid package requiring the slashing of domestic fuel subsidies resulted in riots and calls for the king’s head. While the government in Amman managed to retain much of its intended cut, aided by the restoration of cheap gas from Egypt, its tight fiscal situation makes it dependent on Saudi and other Gulf largesse. 

The Jordanian state, a frail entity born of a British strategic adjustment 90 years ago, and vulnerable to successive refugee influxes since the creation of Israel 65 years ago, is more than the sum of its Hashemite masters and their patronage games. However the key reason it looks vulnerable in the face of the Arab Spring and the latest refugee crisis, this time from Syria, is its lack of cash. As Abdulrahman al-Rashed, the head of Saudi satellite news channel Al-Arabiya, put it in his latest column in Al-Sharq al-Awsat, the Saudi state receives in a week from its oil what Jordan earns from its meager mineral industry in a year. This breeds complacency, or the so-called curse of the black gold.

Corruption is the virtual talk of the town in Saudi Arabia; the exact details do not have to be understood for most people to believe that it has a disproportionate hold on the top. The political impetus for change is not there among the business elite however, whose interests are intertwined with the royal family. However corruption could corrode a state legitimacy that, while about more than the Al-Saud, is bound up with their historic role as providers and territorial unifiers.

Unemployment is a real problem, yet the perceptibly progressive labour minister says 80% of the jobs in the country aren’t “suitable” for Saudis. The current succession crisis shows signs of being resolved by a switch to the next generation of competing relatives; this time it will shared between cousins not brothers, which could be a more fragile arrangement. The need for an institutional and rule-bound basis for determining the royal leadership – beyond personalities – is increasingly discussed among the non-royal elite, but such “solutions” look very far off indeed.       

I hired a bedu driver from Batta'

I hired a bedu driver from the the Batta’ area of Riyadh to take me 500kms to Qateef and Dammam on the Gulf. I haggled hard to ensure that this last minute change of plan for Friday did not rip a gaping hole in my budget. Begrudgingly agreeing to my price, Abu Abdullah has hardly gone 200 metres before he’s trying to up the price again. Halas, I shout, indicating that the journey was over. OK habeebi, ok, he reasons. But there will be an additional price to be paid. First it’s breakfast for us both, squatting on the floor eating foul (pronounced fool) as members of that amorphous genre rarely known as the Saudi working class file in and out, accompanied by the occasional Pakistani. The beans are damn good, as is the hot, sweet, milky tea. I relax, a little, despite the acute discomfort that an apparently fit middle aged guy feels adopting a seating position that Abu Abdullah, who I think is older than me but I really have no idea, finds effortless, even though he struggles to get his leg and his gut in and out of his own car. We then spend the next half an hour circling the area for other passengers so he can recoup his perceived losses from my hard bargaining.

Batta’ is a poor area of Saudis and Asian labourers notorious for some westerners and quite a few Saudis as the place that was hot with militant Islamism that occasionally fed acts of terror ten years ago. It is where BBC journalist Frank Gardener was shot. 

As we circle an abandoned car park and a series of abandoned buildings I get a frisson of excitement mixed with not a little dread as my understanding of the success of Saudi security forces in crushing Al Qaida at home gives way to the notion of a sudden revival in their capabilities. Abu Abdullah eventually gives up the ghost however and we are finally on our way to the capital of Saudi Arabia’s alternative reality: Qateef, an almost solely Shia city in a vast peninsula that, while peppered with different communities, is overwhelmingly Sunni, quite a few of whom embrace a highly conservative variant of it. If Abu Abdullah realised where he was driving me, I don’t think he would have agreed. I note later his comment that there is no where for him to pray.

Conversation is difficult as we begin to pick up the pace. He speaks Arabic, badly. I don’t really speak it all beyond very basic conversation. However Abu Abdullah’s version is so guttural that I can’t even understand the simplest of phrases – a bit like an American trying to get directions from a barely coherent Glaswegian. A series of entreaties are made, some genuine curiosity, others, I think, intended to encourage benevolence. However what really gets me is his attempt to get all the money up front. My worst side is brought out as I assume that he won’t wait the three hours required in Qateef as I conduct a series of meetings, and I have the possible prospect of hiring another driver or seeking a flight back. He gives way and accepts half up front.

In Dammam, a bustling and not especially prosperous looking Saudi city, even compared to much of Qateef and its surrounding villages, I meet with an old acquaintance, the brother of an influential cleric. Abu Abdullah is waiting for me as I take my leave of our meeting in the husseiniya. There then, inevitably, follows a long period trawling the bus station for extra passengers. Abu Abdullah strikes a hit, eventually, with two guys needing to get to Riyadh. He is hell bent on a third before I put my foot down, or rather suggest that he does. He obliges and we wend our way in what proves to be the wrong direction. Four exhausting hours later we are back in Riyadh. Of course he won’t be dropping me off where I am based, although he would for an inflated price. However the advantages of the anarchy that sits alongside conservatism in this part of the world is that he absolutely no qualms about forcing another taxi driver to stop his car in order to get me a more reasonable deal for the journey to my hotel.          

Arms and the Middle East

Saudi Arabian military and security officers were out in force at the biennial “defence and security equipment international” sales exhibition, DSEI, held at Excel Stadium (part of ADNEC, the Abu Dhabi exhibitions company) in London’s Docklands in mid-September. Hundreds of companies from literally around the globe were represented. It was a strange event, a bit like a cross between a rock memorabilia convention and the UN. Like the latter, it was also replete with prostitution of the overt sexual variety. A number of impossibly sexy Russian women had been shipped in to tout their wares alongside their fellow countrymen.

Saudi Arabia did not have its own exhibition area as it is not quite in the market for selling its wares. It is though in the market for big purchases. The US$100 bn extra spend announced in May by King Abdullah includes a large allocation to the interior ministry – a logical response to the Arab Spring, and this will not just be a boost to manpower. In addition the National Guard, run by Abdullah’s son Miteb, are in the midst of an extensive modernisation programme (and a stabilisation programme in Bahrain), and the Saudi defence ministry (MoDA), are apparently moving to actualise the large US contract announced two years or so ago. The Bahrainis were also in town, although much of their defence, internal and external, is effectively contracted out to the post-British successor protector state, Saudi Arabia. Saudi ambitions to develop indigenous defence industry capability seem to be largely focused on the partnership with BAE SYSTEMS, who employ 5,000 people in country and have set up a tail fin assembly facility for the EuroFighter (Typhoon) in the Kingdom. MoDA has also long run a small defence manufacturing outfit, but this is far from cutting edge.

Much optimism was in the air at DSEI as far as sales in general and specifically in the Middle East were concerned. UK defence procurement minister Gerald Howarth was lively first thing in the morning, wowing assembled UK defence journalists and British civil servants with morally uplifting talk of the virtues of the country’s defence industries. Defence secretary Liam Fox was due to speak later in the day. However two UK government ministers in one day would have been a bit much to take, so I had made my excuses before he hit the stage.

Cassidian, a Welsh company that forms part of the French-led Euro consortium, EADS, boasted, a tad ironically perhaps, of “defending world security”, and hosted on the spot briefers to talk to industry issues. BAES had a large display on one side of the stadium, including an array of armoured vehicles. Needing a breather I went dockside and witnessed Sonardyne’s “Sentinel” sonar detection technology in a simulated threat to the British warship HMS Tyne, which had berthed at DSEI alongside some fellow NATO craft. This was disappointingly dull as a large number of DSEI attendees crowded around television screens on a wind-swept poop deck. However one of Sonardyne’s PR people put impetus into proceedings when he indicated that the sonar could be used to induce vomiting or even a blow akin to being hit over the head by a baseball bat, should an intruder be foolish enough to get too close to the mammoth vessel. Then suddenly the presentation conducted by UK naval personnel in partnership with officials of British company Sonardyne was rudely interrupted by a heavily American accented robotic voice announcing that there was a “suspicious diver at 3 o’clock”.

In terms of Middle East-produced wares, Jordan had a large exhibit, mostly revolving around KADDB, a company founded in 1999 to develop indigenous defence engineering capabilities. Two of the model armoured vehicles on display, I was told by a Jordanian officer on the stand, were designed and made in-country at the 100% Jordanian staffed company. I guess that goes for the life size versions too. One of these may be “under development”, but, if wholly true, this seems an impressive and rare feat in that part of the world. Rare, that is, apart from the Israelis, who were, so to speak, out in force. Uzi and other sub machine guns were menacingly pointed at punters (see picture), while a freely distributed English language journal, Israel Defense, talked of “a return to the southern front” in light of changes in Egypt following the so-called Arab Spring.

The event was (almost) disappointingly free of protestors – they had been rerouted upriver to the House of Parliament, while the police, transport and regular, were heavy on the ground. In terms of the protestors’ concerns, some of the kit could no doubt be used to put down domestic opposition, whether in Jordan, Israel, the Gulf, or, for that matter, Europe where economic woes and criminal ambition are motivating civil disturbances. Whether that is a reason not to sell seems a moot point. Much of the kit could also be used to undermine another country’s national sovereignty, whether blessed by the UN or not, but that does not seems to be mobilising the anti arms trade people so much these days.