WASHINGTON — Fast patrol craft, offshore patrol vessels and corvette-sized warships continue to dominate most naval needs in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region, even as political and financial instability concerns grow. Larger and more expensive programs, including frigate or submarine acquisition, remain an elusive goal for many navies.
"Our forecast for new spending on naval platforms in MENA market continues to show steady and substantial growth," said Amy McDonald, an international naval programs analyst with AMI International.
"However, looking at the region, we've seen little movement on most surface combatant and submarine programs since the March DIMDEX show in Doha," she added. "Most activity has been centered around small patrol craft or coast guard vessels."
Digital Show Daily: Complete coverage from IDEX 2015
Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Algeria together account for nearly 40 percent of the region's forecasted naval market investment, McDonald noted. Egypt and Israel make up another 20 percent.
Egypt made news Feb. 16 when leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi signed a reported US $5.9 billion deal in Paris to buy the Normandie, a FREMM frigate recently completed by DCNS for the French Navy, in a major buy that included 24 Rafale fighter jets. The deal marked the first export contract for the Dassault Aviation jet — a mainstay of the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle's air group — and the second overseas sale of a French FREMM.
The frigate Mohammad VI, second of the first group of FREMM frigates, was built under contract for Morocco.
The addition of a new, French-built frigate to Egypt's Navy, however, will complicate their logistics and training chains. Egypt already operates American, Spanish and Chinese-built frigates along with French, British and US-built fast attack craft. Supporting those older ships also presents opportunities for modernization, training and supply contracts — a situation common throughout the MENA region.
Al-Sisi's visit to France came just after he hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin for a two-day state visit to Cairo during which the two leaders announced agreements for Russian assistance in nuclear power plant construction, natural gas business and the creation of a Russian industrial zone along the Suez Canal.
The announcements came as Russia is making aggressive overtures to Egypt and elsewhere in the MENA region.
"Moscow's policies again have become markedly more active," Dimitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote in a recent paper for the Washington-based Century Foundation. "During his presidency, Vladimir Putin made trips to the region and paid a visit to Tehran, the first one since Stalin's wartime allied conference journey.
"However, Russia's policies are not yet embedded within some overall strategy and are largely driven by a set of pragmatic considerations," Trenin said. "Russia's principal objectives are to advance its economic interests and to counter threats to Russia's national security."
Russia's aims are both commercial and political, said Yury Barmin, a UAE-based Russian political and military analyst.
"Within individual countries, Russian influence [rests] almost entirely on its arms sales or military aid to allies in MENA," Barmin told Defense News in October.
"Moscow's entry point to the MENA market is through the former Soviet clients, such as Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Jordan," he said. "In some of them, old Soviet types of hardware are still in active use, while others have replaced them with US equivalents in the '90s when Russia disappeared from the international arena."
Russian companies have participated in every IDEX show. According to Rostec, the largest Russian defense systems manufacturer, this year's delegation will comprise more than 350 individuals.
31 Naval Programs
AMI International is tracking more than 31 naval programs in the MENA region, McDonald said, referring to programs where a government has taken official action to either acquire new ships or announced an intention to do so.
"Two-thirds of those 31 programs are expected to be awarded in the next two2 years," she noted, "but only time will tell if they actually move forward or continue to get pushed to the right."
Nine of those programs, she said, "have been in limbo, with no real progress made for quite some time."
The nine include a future corvette for Bahrain; corvettes, a support ship and a diving vessel for Kuwait; a corvette and amphibious landing craft for Qatar; and the big prize, Saudi Arabia's long-anticipated Eastern Fleet replacement program, which includes a small frigate-like vessel, medium-sized and smaller patrol and fast attack vessels.
Saudi Arabia reportedly furnished the US in January with a shopping list for its Eastern Fleet, but it is not clear what effect the recent change in leadership will have on the programs.
Awad Mustafa in Abu Dhabi contributed to this report.
