Tanks, their sale and export.

[Liquid_Cow]

Originally Posted by BloodBane611

This is a special situation, so this isn't going to happen very often.

Yeah, like the Stingers we gave to our buddy Osama when he was fighting the USSR, the Hawkeye SAM's we gave to our buddy Saddam, the M-48 tanks we gave to our buddy Noriega in Panama, all the jets and armor we left for our good buddies in South Vietnam, and I'm sure the Kingdom of Saudi Arbia will always be an ally and we'll never get to test out Abrams vs. Abrams in combat.

I think this happens a lot more often than one might expect, especially on the Soviet side.

[GeZe]

Originally Posted by [R-DEV]Rhino

really? interesting.

Yes, they indeed do have 38 CR2s according to the 2006 edition of the IISS's The Military Balance

They also have 37 Scorpions, 13 Spartans, 6 Spartans and 10 Stormers.


How interesting Muttrah v2 would be if the MEC were armed as Oman actually is, it would sort of be a UK v. US battle in terms of vehicles.

[Expendable Grunt]

...we going to get those Stormers or Spartans? Or the Scorpion?

[Saint]

Originally Posted by Fireblade

Well they are never going to use them, let's face it

They were used in the Kosovo conflict... and well lets really face it... its the ueber tank

[BloodBane611]

Yeah, like the Stingers we gave to our buddy Osama when he was fighting the USSR, the Hawkeye SAM's we gave to our buddy Saddam, the M-48 tanks we gave to our buddy Noriega in Panama, all the jets and armor we left for our good buddies in South Vietnam, and I'm sure the Kingdom of Saudi Arbia will always be an ally and we'll never get to test out Abrams vs. Abrams in combat.

I was speaking about the fact that we sold high tech planes to a friendly government that was overthrown from the inside. Generally we give away crappy equipment we are getting rid of, but when we sold the F-14s they were very advanced. The only other seriously advanced systems we have given out in dangerous numbers are the stingers given to Osama, which were very effective at kicking the russians out. As far as I know, there haven't been any reports of their being used against us currently, as SA-7s are quite prevalent enough.

The reality is that the US (and most other countries) don't actually sell their most advanced equipment very often. They sell you their old junk at inflated prices, or give it away free to allies. Even the high tech arms sales to saudi arabia are so limited as to be useless to the saudis. The saudi population is so small that they can barely sustain a standing army, and to actually engage in a full scale war they would need a draft. Though we may eventually have to face our own technology in the field, the amount of advanced technology being sold to countries that are against us in negligible. The F-14 sale was quite large, and the sale of such an advanced fighter was a very rare occurrence.

[Liquid_Cow]

Originally Posted by BloodBane611

Generally we give away crappy equipment

I think much of what we export is not as good as what we use ourselves, its still pretty good and some places like Japan and Isreal actually make it better. Saudi Arabia worries me, they have some of the very best we have, and while you are right they can't muster enough of an army to protect themselves against the likes of Iraqi, my concern would be an Islamic revolution which results in a pan-Arabic state which incorperates several nations hostile to us.

as SA-7s are quite prevalent enough.

There are still no confirmed shoot downs of allied aircraft from a SAM in either Iraq or Afganistan, though there is pleanty of evidence they are around, I think a lot of them have gone "stale" from age and the terrorist lack the capabilities to refurb them.

[Twix101]

As I've heard, Stingers go a limited time of use due to batteries, once you have passed a certain period you will be unable to use the missile, so, it is unlikely to see Stingers from 80's era being shot at coalition aircraft in Afghanistan, there might be some black market ones but not the old ones.