Saudi Arabia ranks first with its whopping $66.1 billion defence spending, followed by Taiwan ($20.6b), Egypt ($9.7b), South Korea ($8.8b), United Arab Emirates ($7.8b), Kuwait ($7.6b) and Israel ($7.2b).
Pakistan, despite its impoverished conditions, is slightly behind Iran at ninth position ($4.7b) and China at eighth ($5.9b).
Just as expected!
The annual payments for all those missiles from Korea and China have to be made. Otherwise, they will sue at ICJ for re-possession.
http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/hehe.gif
This is how a nation becomes missile poor!
Now the interest rates are so low, it will be advisable for Pak to go for second mortgage
http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/hehe.gif
A nation that performed a circus (euphemistically said - left to your imagination) to get a loan of 288 million dollar tranche approved for 9 months, had to spend so many billion dollars in arms purchases (and they talk of big power ambitions of India). And that is how a 36 Billion foreign debt zoomed to a 38 billion monster in junst under one year, more than 200% of annual average forex reserves.
In terms of percentage of GDP, Pakistan sets a bad example of how NOT a nation should spend for defence. Let us see how long this will last.
We are ready for a marathon, are you?
[This message has been edited by kumarakn (edited April 25, 2001).]
Does anybody have any stats on per capita defense expense made by Pakistan, China, Usa, UK, France, Australia, Israel or India?
per capita defence expenditure on PPP terms would be much greater (I know I am getting greedy here)
So India spends less than Pak on defence import?? I am surprised. Maybe situation changed recently cuz before tehelka went to bite Fernandes, new defence deal was declared every day in Delhi.
I wonder about the source of these figures. Not that it matters, but I wonder how USA has escaped the top 10 according to this survey. And the figure about israel is equally erratic. And not that I care about whether Pakistans expenditure is more than india or not, but its highly doubtful that it is.
As usual, these figures are followed up by smartalec comments from our political pundits. For once, talk about something real and constructive.
And then u folks ask why Pakistan is obsessed with India:)
[quote]
Originally posted by Akif:
*I wonder about the source of these figures. Not that it matters, but I wonder how USA has escaped the top 10 according to this survey. And the figure about israel is equally erratic. *
[/quote]
US is not 'net' importer as far as defence equipment is concerneed. It definitely imports more than 5 billion or whatever Pakistan does. But exports way more than that.
Israel also exports a lot of defence equipment, otherwise figure should be comparable to Taiwan.
And as always, rvikz has shied from writing the source. I never understand this. But I dont doubt the numbers much.
The survey, as mentioned above, is about defence expenditure.....not imports minus exports.
Defence expenditure would undoubtedly put US and Israel at the top two spots...i have no doubt about that. And india would certainly be ahead of Pakistan as well.
I think Pakistan is the biggest ordnance exporter in south asia, even though we export small to medium ordnances.
Anyway, such figures are misleading, since the defence expenditure of a country is always proportional to the situation it is in. If canada is threatened by the US militarily, its defence expense will balloon to the highest in the world in a matter of days. All about needs.
on arms purchase i see this report http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/acda/wmeat95/95armimp.htm But it is outdated (in 95). I think in post-kargil period, india is importing more than pak.
there is difference between imports and expenditure. people do not get so outraged in india if arjun tank fails of GSLV does not fire since they believe that thousands of its own men are earning bread and butter through it and hope that they will succeed later. however, paying russia for substandard equipment where engine does not provide power promised on paper is issue since u r paying outside. so that is different.
If Pakistan and other surrounding countries didn't feel the need to respond to India's ridiculous notions of becoming the leading military power in the region then we could probably afford to spend less.
As for importing weapons, there is nothing wrong with that if the capability isn't there to manufacture indiginously. India pays Russia only because it has to for state of the art technology, not because it wants to boost the Russian economy.
Rvikz link please.
I doubt anything posted by you indians ever since Mohabbat tried to say that iran was anti-pakistan from and irani newspaper and then disappeared when it turned out it was a fake.
So again link please.
CROIRE A L'INCROYABLE
The article is about defence 'imports'.
Big difference between 'defence imports' and 'defence expenses'.
I personally believe high defense expense is a bigger evil compared to high defense imports. However, in this day and age, it is a neccessity for just about any country in the world.
Saudi arabia's expenditure is so high because they buy 'everything'. They hardly build anything indigenously, hence every weapon in their arsenal is imported..hence the high imports. USA doesnt buy much.....but what they manufacture indigenously amounts to much more than Saudi Arabias $66 billion.
There is no arms race
Brian Clougley
There is no arms race in the subcontinent. Pakistan has frozen its expenditure, and India, in spite of increasing its military outlays over the last three budgets by 10% plus 28% plus 14% to a whopping $13.6 billion a year, has barely got a major weapons system that works, and won't have for years. It isn't a one or two horse race: it's a no-horse race.
Over half the Indian Air Force's combat planes are either unserviceable, inadequate or dangerous to try to fly, and the jiggery-pokery that went on in contract arrangements for the Su-30 'multi-role' aircraft has not only affected air force morale but dented credibility all round. The affair is scandalous, not only because there are questions about who took what in brown envelopes, but because Russia did not provide aircraft to the specification agreed. The Comptroller and Auditor General recorded that "acquisition of Su-30 aircraft approved by government in 1996 at a cost of Rs6,310 crore as replacement of the retiring fleet leaves much to be desired. Barring delivery of eight Su-30K air defence aircraft in May 1997, not a single Su-30MK multi-role aircraft had been delivered even by the end of 1999, despite investment of Rs2,432 crore and delay of 24 months."
The picture is becoming grimmer for the IAF, for there are enormous problems affecting every aspect of Su-30 procurement: rebuild of the current 18 sub-standard aircraft is gravely behind schedule, the purchase of a further 32 depends on in-service upgrade which is as yet unplanned; and preparation for construction in India of another 140 is nowhere near definition stage. The construction deal is said to be for $3.3 billion, excluding $1.8 billion already agreed and partly paid, but standardisation of the current holding and of the 32 to be delivered will not be effected until 2004 at the earliest. Given that Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd is supposed to be rebuilding 120 clapped-out MiG-21s during the next three (plus) years, as well as trying to produce the 'indigenous' Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) in quantity, the extension and construction of new facilities to make a totally different type of machine will be difficult and costly. Probably impossible and costly. It is likely a compromise will be reached, in that the Su-30s will be supplied in kits and assembled in India with a 'Made in India' plate on them, but this is still expensive, and it seems the programme has not been thought through, either in terms of force structure requirements, budgetary projections (for there is no rolling programme of budget forecasting; everything is done on an ad hoc basis), or in technical aspects such as ensuring compatibility between avionics obtained from foreign sources.
The Su-30 affair was shoddily managed, and the Comptroller and Auditor General observed that "The manufacturer (Russia) violated contractual provisions and supplied old, used and unserviceable items. "which is an appalling state of affairs that has, alas for India's defence forces, become only too common. The MiG-21 rebuild programme is also a disaster, because it is many years behind target and conflicts with the ambitious and chaotic project to build the LCA which flew for the first time in January.
The LCA will never see service in any but token form, but it is allocated vast sums because it is supposed to be 'Indian' and it cannot be admitted that it is a failure. In fact it isn't 'Indian' at all, because it has an American power plant, and avionics and other technology from Israel and France. The Indian 'Kaveri' engine has testbed problems and it is unlikely that it will ever power the LCA unless there is drastic re-engineering with major foreign support. The project is estimated to cost $4.6 billion dollars. This would be $21 million a copy if the planned 220 are produced without any cost overrun an impossibility. It would have been better to have taken the French offer for Mirage 2000-5 at $30 million each while cancelling all orders of suspect Russian planes, and, especially, stopping the LCA project India would have found itself about $3 billion dollars ahead of the game, even if middlemen got themselves a comfortable ten per cent, which seems to be the going rate at the moment. (Not as much as a certain Pakistani husband got from the French submarine deal; but not bad; not bad.)
Then there is the 'indigenous' Arjun tank, which is too heavy for its German engine. The army has been forced to take 124 of these slugs which could not survive on a modern battlefield. There is no space to go into detail, but it should be pointed out that the T-72 tank rebuild programme is in chaos and that the purchase of 310 T-90s from Russia is suspect in both technical terms and brown envelopes, and that these will not be in service for another three years at least.
On paper, India is supposed to have 3,400 main battle tanks, but it can muster less than a thousand in battle condition. Its Vijayantas and T-55s are scrap-worthy, and it is insulting to the proud Armoured Corps to have to operate them. Arjun was supposed to replace them, but is the collective bad hair day of world tank development. The T-72 build, rebuild and upgrade programmes could have ensured that India's armoured regiments would be decently equipped for the next two decades, but have been allowed to disintegrate into an unstructured, stop-go-stop-start again non-programme over which nobody has control. Neither the army, nor the Defence Research and Development Organisation (Pakistan's secret weapon), nor the Ministry of Defence knows what is going on.
On April 9, General VP Malik, the last Army Chief, published an article describing inadequate procurement procedures. It is not the first time he has spoken out, for with considerable courage he did so while still serving, thus irritating senior civil servants who are the main obstacle to reform of the present chaotic process. Indeed he states that because they "lack military background and technical knowledge they take a long time in 'establishing the necessity' of a new weapon or equipment," and that "The file-pushing from one office to another goes on endlessly." In summary, the general says that the procurement system is "not responsive to the needs of the military", which is a terrible indictment of his country's approach to national defence. But the key issue in all this is that India's defence forces are not prepared for war. They are undoubtedly professional, dedicated and competent, but they lack the equipment necessary to fight effectively. There is no command system in place that is capable of coordinating nuclear forces, such as they are, and conventional weapons are manifestly inadequate. A sorry state of affairs.
The message for Pakistan is that it need not commit itself to trying to keep up with Indian military spending. Pakistan's armed forces are just as competent as those across the border, but have the advantage that their planes, tanks and ships actually work and that its rebuild and upgrading programmes are demonstrably effective. It is worrying, however, that Pakistan's nuclear attack capability is so much in advance of that of India, for if there were to be war there would be considerable temptation to take advantage of India's inadequacies in that regard.
There is no arms race in the subcontinent, but it is not because India does not wish one. After all, one of its influential hawks has said that it would be a good thing to outspend Pakistan, just as the US outspent the former USSR, thus hastening its collapse. There is nothing to be complacent about in India's defence posture, because it is forced upon it by systemic incompetence rather than benevolence. The plus side for Pakistan is that it can continue to maintain and refine its present defence forces within a modest budget, which is all to the good for other and much more important priorities in the social sphere.
The author is a commentator on political and military affairs
ZZ after Kargil India's exports increased. Specially after the ammunition depot was blown up and India had to rush to South Africa to as it ran out of ammunition. India did a lot of other deals, e.g. hawk, SU-30 Mig 29's etc. I am prety sure that India imports way more defence related stuff than what Pakistan imports.
unity, faith, discipline
like we care !!!
No matter who spends what.. it’s not the weapons, it’s the men behind them..
nobody on earth knows how to use these weapons better then the Pakistanis
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“Courage our Weapon – Victory our motto”