UK’s BAE Systems sold £15b worth of arms to Saudis during Yemen aggression

Britain’s leading arms manufacturer BAE Systems sold £15 billion worth of arms and services to the Saudi military during the last five years, the period covered by Riyadh’s involvement in the deadly bombing campaign in the war in Yemen.

Figures taken from the company’s most recent annual report and newly analyzed by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) reveal the British arms maker generated £2.5bn in revenues from the Saudi military during the whole of 2019, the Guardian reported.

That takes the total sales of BAE arms and services to the Saudi military for the period between 2015 and 2019 – including the period from the start of the Saudi bombing in March 2015 – to slightly over £15 billion, or 17.3% over the five years.

Andrew Smith of CAAT said, “The last five years have seen a brutal humanitarian crisis for the people of Yemen, but for BAE it’s been business as usual. The war has only been possible because of arms companies and complicit governments willing to support it.”

Thousands of civilians have been killed since the war in Yemen began in March 2015 with indiscriminate bombing by a Saudi-led coalition that is supplied by BAE and other Western arms makers. The kingdom’s air force is accused of being responsible for many of the 12,600 killed in targeted attacks.

Last week the Saudi-led coalition claimed they were halting military operations in support of UN peace efforts and to avoid further spread of the new coronavirus in Yemen, Press TV wrote.

Yemen’s Houthis, however, reported days afterward that it had been forced to repel several Saudi-led assaults on various fronts in just one day.

The data also reveals that the true value of British arms sales to the Persian Gulf kingdom is far greater than the £5.3 billon total value of UK export licenses since the Saudi-led coalition began its campaign in Yemen.

The apparent discrepancy is caused by the fact that official export total does not include the value of arms sold to Saudi Arabia via so-called open licenses, which allow a wide range of hardware to be included without their cost recorded.

“These figures expose the cozy relationship between the Saudi regime and BAE. But they also imply that the value of UK arms sales is far greater than government figures show,” Smith added.

Sales of UK-manufactured arms to Saudi Arabia have been called into question since the war began, although a succession of British ministers, including Boris Johnson when he was foreign secretary, have signed off on exports to the kingdom despite mounting evidence that civilians were being killed in airstrikes.

At other times, British support for Saudi Arabia has been overt.

Exports of British arms to Saudi that could have been used in Yemen were halted in the summer of 2019 when the Court of Appeal ruled that in June 2019 that no formal assessment had been made by ministers to see if the Saudi-led coalition had committed violations of international humanitarian law.

The UK government has appealed to the Supreme Court to have the judgment overturned, but the Court of Appeal judgment remains valid until the UK’s highest court completes its review of the high-profile case.

BAE maintains and supplies Tornado jet aircraft to the kingdom’s air force and provides “operational capability” to the country’s air and naval forces. Sales to Saudi Arabia accounts for 35% of the company’s air division, the largest single destination for its military aircraft.

The company’s relationship with Saudi Arabia is structured via massive multiyear contracts signed between the UK and the Saudi governments, in which BAE is effectively a subcontractor, its revenues partly guaranteed by the involvement of the British state.

The Saudi military is BAE’s third-largest customer overall, after the US Department of Defense and the UK’s Ministry of Defence. In 2019, revenues from the Pentagon – the world’s largest buyer of arms – accounted for £6.5bn, while in the UK, where BAE builds and maintains ships for the Royal Navy, the figure was £3.9bn.

A government spokesperson said, “The government takes its export responsibilities seriously and assesses all export licenses in accordance with strict licensing criteria. We will not issue any export licenses where to do so would be inconsistent with these criteria.”

A BAE Systems spokesperson said, “We provide defense equipment, training and support under government to government agreements between the UK and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.‎ We comply with all relevant export control laws and regulations in the countries in which we operate and our activities are subject to UK government approval and oversight.”