There has been negotiations going back three years between the United States and Saudi Arabia involving an expected arms deal involving aircraft and weaponry. Initially this changes the balance of power greatly in the middle East, however reports suggest this arms deal is due to increasing military power from Iran with the idea that they are creating nuclear weapons.

The deal which is expected to be worth $60Bn (USD) is set to be a record of defence sales with armaments to the Saudis and the largest overseas deal package made by the United States. Making this deal seven times larger than any other deal with Saudi Arabia. The deal which is now being finalized by the Obama Administration is set to secure 77,000 jobs in the defence industry; with a large portion to Boeing. – This is due to the deal involving hugely a great part in combat aircraft, such as new/upgraded F-15 fighter jets (84 new and 70 upgraded), ‘Apache Helicopters’ and ‘Little Birds’ which are all vehicles which Boeing manufacture.

More deals potentially worth billions…

There however could be further armament dealings with the Saudis as they have expressed ideas of increasing the size and upgrading their navy (“Eastern Fleet Modernization program”) as well as increasing and adding missile defence to protect the oil-rich regions they operate in.

Implications

Generally relations around the world with Saudi Arabia aren’t too sour, after all they do hold the majority of the worlds oil, which the people today are sucking to a pulp. However since terrorist links to Saudi Arabia were found on events like 9/11, relations between the US and the Saudis went down hill. Though the Saudi’s really did not like the occupation/invasion of Iraq and that further took relations between the countries down hill. However with this deal you can only expect relations to go up, as the Saudi’s have something which the US requires (Oil) and the Saudi’s also require military technology which they aren’t able to produce to an advanced level like US companies today.

However the implications obviously will shift the balance of military power to the Saudi Arabian’s. Do any other of the countries like this change or increase in power? Or will it just cause tension? If you look at past disagreements where the US have sold arms, it has been countries such as Israel that have lobbied and hindered advanced arms being sold. Though it seems now Israel does not have any objections with this armaments deal, which is why here at armour.ws, we think the deal will go straight through Congress.

There are a lot of questions to be answered with very little knowledge out there on the subject however it is what type of negatives that this might bring to the region. There are also the positives however when dealing with weapons, there usually are no positives.