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[smithy]

Poor old France and Germany. Now they can't sell weapons to Saddam any more, they're now on the look out for new markets. It seems China is one. And what with China threatening that not selling them arms will "affect" their relationship, they now have another reason beyond money. Let's just hope these weapons aren't used against NATO and alliance forces in the future...

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[Wilse]

Let's just hope these weapons aren't used against NATO and alliance forces in the future...

Let's hope they aren't used against anyone at all.

[KennyR]

Ironic isn't it? The Chinese armed with Euro weapons, the Taiwanese armed with American ones. There could be showdown there fought entirely with bootleg Western weapons.

Oh, and if it should spill out onto the Pacific Islands too, no problem...many of their nastier regimes are sold arms to by the British.

[whabang]

Nothing new. The Swedish arms industry is making a fortune of Pakistan and India.

[PMC]

To quote Winston Churchill during World War One:

"It's fortunate that the Turks bought their artillery shells from Britain..."

Had the Turkish army purchased higher quality artillery shells fro Krupps of Germany, they would have exacted a far higher toll on Commonwealth forces at Gallipolli as British suppled shells often failed to detonate.

[KennyR]

In 30 years the Chinese technological level will have surpassed Europe's anyway, at the rate they're going. Maybe that's what the Americans are more afraid of than Taiwan - the Chinese matching their military technology in 15 years instead of 30.

Of course, nobody should really be selling arms to a brutal police state - but then again, there isn't a country in the west that doesn't. It's big money now the Soviets are out of the picture. I wonder how many East Timorese were killed with British and Australian ordnance.

[PMC]

Since Sino-Russian relations thawed duriing the late 80's, Russia has sold China licenses to build Su-27 warplanes. China has also bought a Russian carrier for scrap, which has been heavily studied as China makes no secret of it's intention to construct it's own carrier fleet.

China is also developing a new fighter plane in co-operation with Isreal, who sold them the blueprints for the stillborn "Lavi" aircraft, itself borrowing technology from the US F16. Coincidentally, Pakistan is a customer of Chinese armaments and also supplied one of it's F16 fighters to China for reverse engineering.

Morality seldom mixes well with arms trading. Traditionally, the Swedes seem to have had more of a conscience than everyone else but it's a dirty business...

[whabang]

According to Swedish law, it is not legal to sell weapons to anyone actively involved in an armed conflict.
The opportunity of selling 40 Griffins to Pakistan will change this, however.

[PMC]

whabang wrote:
According to Swedish law, it is not legal to sell weapons to anyone actively involved in an armed conflict.
The opportunity of selling 40 Griffins to Pakistan will change this, however.

Yeah, probably because British Aerospace are marketing Gripens.

Wasn't Sweden in negotiation to sell Gripens to Hungary, Czech Republic and Poland? AFAIK at least one of those nations has troops stationed in Iraq... But I supposed there's a difference between "Armed Conflict" and "Peacekeeping Duties".

[whabang]

Exactly! :-P

South Africa is also planning to buy them...