Fifty dollars and a respectable-looking business card are enough to gain admission to the five-day Dubai Air Show that begins this Sunday. Organizers expect to draw 50,000 people and 900 exhibitors, up from 45,000 and 850 in 2007. Then, regional governments purchased an incredible $100 billion in new aircraft, both commercial and defense-related. With Gulf economies emerging from the global recession against a backdrop of a Yemeni-Saudi border conflict and the apparent rising specter of Iran, this year’s show is likely to exhibit two broad trends: commercial orders will be down and military orders will be up.
Emirates Airline and the aircraft leasing firm LCAL, both Dubai-based, are exploring the postponement and cancellation of orders of Boeing 787 Dreamliners in advance of the show.
Meanwhile, the attention-getting Eurofighter Typhoon, Europe’s most advanced fighter jet, is making its first appearance in Dubai. Saudi Arabia already has 72 of them from a 2007 deal worth $8.86 billion. As in years past, there will be more than a little bit of keeping up with the GCC Joneses in evidence for 2009— Qatar, the UAE and even Oman have all expressed an interest in placing orders for the Eurofighter.
The Dubai Air Show follows the 9th International Defence Exhibition and Conference (IDEX), held every other year in Abu Dhabi, the largest such event in the Gulf. Journalist Robert Fisk penned an account of the 2001 IDEX in his book “The Great War for Civilisation,” (something of a doorstop, the description begins on page 926 out of a total 1283 pages). Fisk spares little effort in hiding his disgust. He stops to talk with Mikhail Kalashnikov, the aging inventor of the AK-47, then manning a stall in the Russian pavilion. Kalashnikov suggests a time in the future when his weapons “will be no more used or necessary.” To say the least, Fisk is doubtful. The author then moves on to the Iranian pavilion where he finds an arms dealer, Morteza Khosravi, selling a missile called the “Horror of Death.” Khosravi repeats a line familiar to contemporary Iranian discourse: Iran, a peaceful state, has weapons and will also sell them, but each is true only for the purposes of self-defense.
At present, Russia is considering the sale of S300 missiles to Iran. The S300 is capable of shooting down cruise missiles and aircraft— under pressure from Washington, and to the exasperation of Iranian officials, the order has been held up for months. Russia is also weighing sales to the other side of escalating tensions—Saudi Arabia may soon spend $2 billion on S400 missile defense from the Kremlin.
In an October 10th interview, former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal explained, “We are concerned not just as a government but as a people because geographically Iran is next door to us.” As the receipts for military hardware pile up in Dubai over the next week, one could be forgiven for losing their sense of scale. Theories of deterrence may well drive sales but they will also go ignored— Iran’s annual military budget is a paltry $7.31 billion. That amount of money, even with some impossibly deft maneuvering around sanctions, is merely enough to buy Tehran several dozen Eurofighter Typhoons.
-SW
