Page 14 - ADT JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2021 Online Magazine

as its builds up its military strength. In September, the country hit reportedly also developed a submarine large [ REPORT ]
international headlines when it became the first country without enough to carry ballistic missiles and is working
nuclear weapons to develop and successfully test a conventional on a railway-based missile launching system.
submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). According to sources,
the missile is a variant of the country's ground-based Hyunmoo-2B
ballistic missile, with a flight range of about 500 km. The test of the Sensing an Opportunity
SLBM follows the 2020 development of the Hyunmoo-4 missile, The eagerness on the part of other nations in
which has an 800 km range and is capable of carrying a 2-ton the region to counter China by buying arms
payload. is welcome news for defence contractors
around the world. With international sales of
South Korea has also unveiled other new missiles, including a U.S. military equipment falling to US$138 billion
supersonic cruise missile. in the latest fiscal year from US$175 billion, a
significant fall of 21 per cent compared to the
The country also has plans to build three submarines, with reports previous year, companies in other regions sense
indicating that one of them, the largest, could be a nuclear sub- an opportunity, especially since arms exports
marine. The first two will be powered by diesel engines and will by Russia and China have declined in the 2016-
have a displacement of 3,000 tons and 3,600 tons respectively. 2020 period. According to the Stockholm
As part of a larger plan to increase its capabilities in space and to International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI),
cooperate with the U.S. in the domain, plans to launch a spy satellite export of weapons by Russia, which accounted
by the late 2020s are also on the anvil. Meanwhile, North Korea, for 20 per cent of all exports of major arms
which has, over the last two years, successfully test-fired an SLBM from 2016–2020, dropped by 22 per cent to
from the sea and unveiled a new SLBM design. The country has about the same level as in 2006–10, mainly
due to a 53 per cent fall in its arms exports to
India. China was the world’s fifth largest arms
exporter in 2016–2020, but the country, which
mainly sold weapons to Pakistan, Bangladesh,
and Algeria, saw exports fall by 7.8 per cent
during the period.

The U.S. is still the largest arms exporter, even
after the decrease in the last year, and Russia
is second, with France and Germany occupy-
ing the third and fourth places. In 2016-2020,
France increased its exports of major arms by
44 per cent and accounted for 8.2 per cent
of global arms exports while Germany saw its
export of arms shoot up 21 per cent during
the same period. Interestingly, India and South
Korea were among the countries receiving the
bulk of weapons from France and Germany.

14 | January/February 2022 WWW .GBP .COM.SG/ ADT