Arms companies at DSEi
In 2009, DSEi hosted arms companies from 40 countries, selling small arms, missiles, planes, tanks, military electronics and warships, as well as surveillance and riot control equipment.
This year, over 1300 exhibitors registered for DSEi 2011 (the list is available on the DSEi website). The list includes most of the world's largest arms companies. A few of the companies attending are briefly profiled below:
BAE Systems
BAE is the world's second largest arms producer. It makes fighter aircraft, warships, tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery systems, missiles, munitions and much more.
It is an international company with five "home markets": the US (the largest), the UK, Australia, India and Saudi Arabia. BAE is unlikely to prioritise UK interests: as its Annual Report has stated, its strategy is "to deliver sustainable growth in shareholder value".
Global sales
BAE's arms are sold indiscriminately around the
world, with military customers in over 100 countries.
Its focus over the past few years has been on increasing sales to the
US, specifically targeting equipment for the conflicts in Afghanistan
and Iraq, and supplying Eurofighters to the Saudi Arabia regime. BAE
routinely supplies countries the UK Foreign Office Human Rights report
considers as having "the most serious wide-ranging human rights concerns."
Corruption investigations
In 2004, the UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) began investigating BAE
deals with countries including Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Tanzania
and the Czech Republic. However, two years later Tony Blair quashed
the SFO investigation into BAE's multi-billion pound - and corruption-riddled -
deals with Saudi Arabia. A US Department of Justice (DoJ) investigation
into multiple deals including those with Saudi Arabia, continued.
In early 2010, the DoJ agreed a plea bargain with BAE. The company was sentenced "to pay a $400 million criminal fine, one of the largest criminal fines in the history of DOJ's ongoing effort to combat overseas corruption in international business and enforce U.S. export control laws." This covered corruption on arms deals with Saudi Arabia, the Czech Republic and Hungary, although BAE only had to admit to making false statements in regulatory filings.
The SFO was left with, as Private Eye referred to it, "the crumbs of a £30m settlement over BAE's corrupt Tanzanian radar system contract." In this instance, BAE only had to admit to false accounting.
More information on BAE Systems, including links to sentencing documents, is available here.
Heckler & Koch
Heckler & Koch is one of the world's largest small arms proliferators. It produces pistols, rifles, machine guns, sub-machine guns and grenade launchers, and its weapons are in use in 90 countries. Over seven million G3 rifles alone have been produced.
The company has an office in Nottingham in the UK, with responsibility for "international customer sales" outside NATO.
Global sales
Much of the manufacturing of Heckler & Koch weapons is carried out
under licensed production agreements, either for the armed forces of
the producing country or for export. Such agreements have been made
with a number of EU countries, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey, Burma and Iran.
Recently, Heckler & Koch weapons have been used by the Janjaweed in Sudan, and by corporate mercenaries Blackwater, in Iraq.
Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin is the world's largest arms producer and is particularly dominant in terms of fighter aircraft. It is also the prime contractor for long-range Trident nuclear missiles deployed on US Ohio and UK Vanguard submarines.
Global sales
Lockheed produces the ubiquitous F-16 Fighting Falcon, with
customers including: Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Jordan and UAE in
the Middle East; Indonesia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan
and Thailand in Asia; and Greece and Turkey in NATO. Lockheed Martin
is now manufacturing the F-16's successor, the F-35 Joint Strike
Fighter, along with Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems.
Israel possesses the largest fleet of F-16s outside the the US. These aircraft, as as well as Lockheed's Hellfire missiles, are at the forefront of Israeli assaults on the Occupied Territories and its neighbours.
Pakistan Ordnance Factories
POF is a group of fourteen factories that produce automatic rifles, machine guns, mortar and artillery ammunition, aircraft and anti-aircraft ammunition, tank and anti-tank ammunition, bombs, grenades and cluster munitions.
Global sales
It has a strong export focus, with around 40 countries on its export
list. There are very, very few countries it will not sell to.
Cluster munitinos
Pakistan Ordnance Factories was found advertising cluster munitions at
DSEi 2009. Both the POF
product list
and
munition pictures
feature the "Artillery Ammunition 155 Base Bleed DP-ICM" cluster munition.
Astonishingly, the same prohibited ammunition was promoted at DSEi 2011 (see "155 BB DP-ICM" on the product list). It was found by MP Caroline Lucas.
Rafael
Rafael is a major state-owned Israeli arms company which develops missiles, electronic warfare systems, radar and communications systems, often working in collaboration with other international companies. Its weapons include the Derby and Python air-to-air missiles, the Popeye air-to-surface missile. the Spike anti-tank missile and the Barak shipborne surface-to-air missile.
GlobalSecurity.org has stated that "The Rafael operation in Haifa is reportedly the location of a nuclear weapons design laboratory (Division 20), a missile design development laboratory (Division 48) and a weapons assembly plant."
Rafael has announced that it will display a range of arms at DSEi including its Iron Dome rocket defence system, helicopter weapons and avionics, Spike-ER multi-purpose missiles, and its Toplite surveillance, observation and targeting system.
The company has recently become notorious for appalling sales videos
Raytheon
Raytheon is most famous for missiles, including the Stinger family of surface-to-air missiles and the Tomahawk cruise missile. Both the Tomahawk cruise missile and the AGM-154A Joint Standoff Weapon can be equipped to deploy cluster submunitions.
Global sales
Raytheon exports billions of dollars worth of military equipment
each year with a client list that includes Israel, Egypt,
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea.
The Raytheon website boasts both the widespread sale and use of its missiles: "the AGM-65 Maverick is a precision-attack missile for more than 33 countries' air, naval and marine forces... More than 69,000 missiles have been produced to date, and more than 6,000 have been used in combat, with a 93 percent kill rate."
Give us feedback on this page
