UAE to Buy Spy Planes as Opposition Swells

Date: 06 January 2021 - 21:52

News ID: ۸۶۲۹۹

DUBAI (Dispatches) – Swedish aerospace company Saab announced Abu Dhabi has placed a $1 billion order for two more GlobalEye spy aircraft.
The airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft is a modified Bombardier Global 6000 business jet with a long-range radar and other surveillance systems attached, and is reinforced against electronic attacks.
The announcement of the deal comes as a group moves to block another aircraft deal with the UAE from proceeding.
On December 30, the New York Center for Foreign Policy Affairs (NYCFPA) think tank announced a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying the sale of as many as 50 F-35 Lightning II stealth aircraft, as well as 8 MQ-9B Reaper drones and a variety of munitions, has been allowed to proceed against U.S. law.
According to the think tank, the deal has been rushed without guaranteeing Abu Dhabi won’t share proprietary information about the stealthy F-35 with China or Russia. The potential to buy the advanced F-35, which the Zionist regime is the only side in the Middle East the U.S. has so far allowed to possess, was part of the deal brokered by Washington last year that saw the UAE and the occupying regime agree to normalize relations.
Federal lawmakers failed in their own bid to block the sale last month, Sputnik reported.
"With this deal going forward, the U.S. is setting a baseline for a very dangerous proliferation of weapons in the region and is enabling an arms race to start in the Middle East.” NYCFPA Principal Director Justin Russell said in a news release, adding, "NYCFPA also calls on the incoming Biden administration to reconsider this deal for the benefit of peace in the region.”
Indeed, Biden has pledged to end U.S. support for the catastrophic war in Yemen, which has been waged by Saudi Arabia and its allies, including the UAE, since 2015. Outrage over news that U.S. forces had been operating in Yemen near the Saudi border and that the Pentagon had provided logistical support for the Saudi coalition caused the Trump administration to step back from some of that support in late 2018, but congressional attempts to block future weapons sales to Riyadh and its allies have been rejected by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Investigations of war materiel in Yemen have revealed extensive support by the UAE as well as Saudi Arabia, with multiple weapons systems sold solely to Abu Dhabi appearing in the hands of Yemeni militias, including al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Biden spoke out against the war in early 2019, calling on Trump to end U.S. support for Saudi coalition operations, and many of his senior staff picks are signatories to a 2018 open letter calling for the same.