Israel Continues Foriegn Sales By Selling UAV's To Russia

(MoneyWatch)  Israel has slowly built up a market for their rather sophisticated military equipment with the world. Recently they have been selling more goods to India for example. Now in what has to be a blow to Russian pride and industry that country has agreed to buy some UAV reconnaissance aircraft from Israel. AFP is reporting that the deal is worth about $50 million.

Russia itself since the disestablishment of the Soviet Union has invested heavily in developing higher levels of technology for their systems, both for their much smaller military and for export. Like some European and the future for American companies if the U.S. defense budget does begin a steep decline foreign markets can make up for and subsidize domestic development and production. The U.S. has done the same with some products using the overseas sales to reduce the cost to their services.

Either the Russians have a military requirement that cannot be met by a domestic producer or the Israelis are willing to take a chance that the Russians will reverse engineer the system. This is always an issue with a deal like this. The Russians and Chinese, as well as some other smaller countries, have demonstrated an ability to steal or purchase a foreign made system and try to make an accurate copy of it.