Arms trafficking and arms transfers update
03/18/13
Latin America and the Caribbean
- About 2.2 percent of all weapons purchased in the United States end up in Mexico, according to a statistical analysis by the Igarapé Institute and the University of San Diego Transborder Institute.
- Brazil inaugurated a new shipyard and military base, which will host a plan, requiring investment of US$3.9 billion through 2017, to build and host five sumbarines (one of them nuclear) and 50 helicopters. The plan, carried out with French support, will produce the nuclear sub by 2023.
- Brazil’s Embraer aerospace company won a U.S. contract to provide Afghanistan’s air force with 20 Super Tucano light air support aircraft. The contract is valued at US$427 million but could go as high as US$950 million.
- Brazil’s defense ministry is recommending that the government buy Russian-made anti-aircraft systems: “We are interested in acquiring three batteries of medium level Pantsir-S1 missiles and two batteries of Igla missiles.”
- Connecticut-based Sikorsky Aircraft, maker of the Blackhawk helicopter, “is tripling the size of its in-country Blackhawk maintenance service team in Colombia, as the company repairs seven helicopters.” With more than 60 of the helicopters, which cost at least US$15 million apiece, Colombia has the fourth-largest Blackhawk fleet in the world.
- Of weapons that Colombian paramilitary members turned in during 2003-2006 demobilization ceremonies, the majority came from countries that have never officially sold arms to Colombia. The weapons’ top five countries of origin were the United States, Russia, Bulgaria, North Korea and China.
- Canada is amending its Automatic Firearms Country Control List (AFCCL) to allow expanded military hardware sales to Colombia. According to the Canadian foreign ministry, the intent is to sell armored personnel carriers to Colombia’s military.
- The French corporations DCNS and Thales have been carrying out a contract to modernize Colombian Navy frigates.
- In 2012, according to Colombia’s defense ministry, in 2012 the country’s armed forces and police trained “3,252 foreign students in different areas, among them 24 Mexican and four Dominican pilots.”
- With help from the U.S. Justice Department Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Guatemalan government’s National Forensic Sciences Institute can now use the “E-Trace” system, which determines whether recovered weapons were sold in the United States.
- Ecuador paid US$10 million for 107 Hummer vehicles from the United States: 100 for its army and 7 for its navy.
- Peru has ordered five Hovercraft amphibious patrol boats from the United Kingdom for about US$13 million. They will be used to “strengthen the fight against terrorism and narcotrafficking in the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro River Valleys (VRAEM),” a region where conflict continues with remnants of the Shining Path guerrillas.