DTN News: France's EADS Wins Contract To Provide Border Security System For Saudi Arabia

DTN News: France's EADS Wins Contract To Provide Border Security System For Saudi Arabia

*Sources: DTN News / AP By Greg Keller 8:56 AM PDT, July 1, 2009

(NSI News Source Info) PARIS, France - July 2, 2009: European aerospace and defense contractor EADS NV has won a major contract with Saudi Arabia to supply a border security system covering 9,000 kilometers (5,600 miles) of the kingdom's land and sea frontiers, the company said Wednesday.

The European aerospace and defense contractor said the system will be put in place over the next five years. It didn't disclose the size of the contract, but the French weekly news magazine Le Point said it was worth about euro2 billion ($2.8 billion). A spokeswoman couldn't immediately be reached. EADS Defense & Security will carry out the contract with Saudi Arabian partner Al Rashid group for construction works.The company, a division of European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. NV, beat out French, British and U.S. rivals for the contract, with Thales SA, BAe Systems plc and Raytheon Co. also having reportedly been in the running.

EADS already had been awarded a contract for security along Saudi Arabia's border with Iraq. The planned security system "will ensure border coverage is visible and managed at the sector level, whilst simultaneously providing situational awareness at the regional and national level," EADS said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia's defence spending has been growing at one of the fastest rates in the world in recent years thanks to the oil price boom earlier this decade.The kingdom spend $38.3 billion on defence last year, and this is forecast to rise to $43.5 billion this year, according to Jane's Defence Budgets.

The United States, Britain and France have been Saudi Arabia's largest military suppliers, and in 2006 Saudi Arabia was France's largest defence customer with total sales of euro890 million, accoring to Jane's Industry Quarterly.

Saudi Arabia is slightly more than one-fifth the size of the U.S. The smuggling of weapons and narcotics across the Saudi border with Iraq and the Saudi border with Yemen has been a big problem.

Saudi officials believe most of the weapons used in militant operations in Saudi Arabia — including some suicide attacks — were smuggled from Yemen, an impoverished country at the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula that has long been awash in small arms.

Securing the 1,300-km border with Yemen is a top Saudi priority, especially after militants announced in January the creation of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, a merger between the terror network's Yemeni and Saudi branches. Several senior members of the group are Saudis who slipped over the border after going through a militant rehabilitation program in Riyadh.

In April, Saudis discovered a cave tucked in the remote Saudi mountains near the Yemeni border that was clearly a way station for Islamic militants.

The Saudi border with Iraq is inhospitable for militants: Its flat, desert terrain is equipped with image-recognition technology that can detect movement across the frontier.