Long cultivated by the major aerospace and defence firms as an emerging market, countries in the the Middle East have continued to defy the global slowdown in defence procurement terms and continue to spend lavishly on platforms across the air, land and sea sectors and, increasingly, on advanced missile defence systems. While past trends focused on modernising outdated and outmoded systems, the region is now becoming a crucial forum for some of the most sophisticated and technologically advanced systems on offer, from missile defence to aircraft. Much of this is due to an intra-regional arms race, with each of the members of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) - southern Gulf states Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emir- ates (UAE) - loathe to be left behind by their neighbours.
展开▼
