Abu Dhabi Ship Building Co to deliver 3 UAE warships by 2016

(MENAFN- Arab Times) ABU DHABI Feb 23 (Agencies): Abu Dhabi Ship Building Company will deliver three Baynunah warships to the United Arab Emirates Navy by 2016 and is in discussions with other buyers to sell more its chief executive said on Monday. ''There are discussions with some of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries as well as other international ones. Hopefully there will be something in the future'' Khaled al-Mazrouei said on the sidelines of the Naval Defence Conference.

The fall in oil prices has put pressure on government spending across the Gulf region. But authorities are also facing political instability in Iraq and Syria which has meant they have continued to spend on new military hardware.

The UAE one of the countries taking part in air strikes against Islamic State targets unveiled new defence contracts worth 9.48 billion dirhams ($2.58 billion) during the biennial IDEX event in Abu Dhabi of which the Naval Defence Conference is part. Three of the Baynunah warships ordered by the UAE have already been delivered and a fourth vessel is due for delivery in April. The fifth and sixth will be delivered in 2016. The first Baynunah vessel was built in France but the last three will be built in the UAE from scratch according to Mazrouei.

The company also builds another smaller warship Ghannatha and is due to sign a contract within a few weeks with a GCC client for the sale of nine ships including the Ghannatha model. ''That contract is for nine boats of different sizes. Some of them small military and some of them for logistics transportation'' Mazrouei said declining to give a value for the contract.

The UAE government set up ADSB in 1995 with shipyards to refit and repair commercial vessels. It then diversified into repairing military ships building commercial boats military speedboats and amphibious landing craft. Meanwhile an official in the United Arab Emirates says the Gulf federation has reached a deal valued at just over $1 billion to buy satellite systems from European manufacturers Airbus and Thales. The deal was announced Monday the second day of the International Defense Exhibition in the Emirati capital Abu Dhabi.

Deal Exhibition chairman Obadi al- Ketbi says the deal for the satellites and related equipment is worth 3.75 billion dirhams ($1.02 billion) part of roughly $2.6 billion in equipment purchases announced by the Emirates. He did not give details on the satellites'' use.

The seven-state Emirates federation has been investing heavily in space technology and last year announced plans to send the first unmanned Arab spaceship to Mars. IDEX is the largest expo of military equipment in the Middle East. In another report the United Arab Emirates is still in talks with both BAE Systems and Dassault Aviation over the possible multi-billion-dollar purchase of fighter jets a spokesman for a major UAE defence organisation said on Monday.

Speaking at the biennial IDEX defence conference in Abu Dhabi Obadi al-Ketbi chairman of IDEX''s organising committee was asked if there was any progress since the previous event in 2013 on talks with both companies. ''Talks are still going on no update'' Ketbi told reporters at a media event on the sidelines of the conference. Negotiations over fighter jets between the UAE and Western defence firms have been long and tumultuous with talks going on with various degrees of seriousness for years. A source told Reuters last week that the French firm had resumed discussions with the Gulf state over sales of Rafales.

Dassault was publicly rebuffed in December 2011 over a deal to buy 60 of the multi-role combat jets by Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed also deputy supreme commander of the UAE armed forces who called Dassault''s terms ''uncompetitive and unworkable''. Meanwhile a $9.8 billion deal for 60 Eurofighter Typhoon jets was declared dead in December 2013 by BAE.