Some of France's finest weapons exports.
Posted on 02/17/2005 3:29:14 PM PST by Cornpone
PARIS, Feb 17 (AFP) - Sales of French arms around the world are declining because of stepped-up competition by the United States, Russia and Israel, the French defence ministry said Thursday.
Although France remains the third biggest weapons merchant after the United States and Britain, its share of the market is slipping, a report by the ministry covering sales in 2002-2003 showed.
"The Americans' effort to export is much bigger than it used to be," a senior official in the ministry's arms procurement and sales section, Jean-Paul Panie, said.
He added that Russia was also moving beyond the former Soviet states in eastern Europe in search of clients and "Israel is now aggressively marketing its exports."
From 1994 to 2003, French arms sales accounted for 12 percent of the world's total, and brought in an average five billion euros (6.5 billion dollars) per year, the report said.
In 2002, however, sales were just 4.4 billion euros, and in 2003 they were 4.2 billion.
Together, the United States, Britain, France, Russia and Germany sell 90 percent of the weapons imported in the world, it added. The first three countries alone accounted for "more than three quarters of world arms exports".
Israel, China, Italy, Sweden and South Africa divided up most of the remaining 10 percent of arms sales.
France's biggest clients are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Greece, Britain, Pakistan and India.
Sale of "weapons that are not directly lethal" are also made to China, Panie said.
He added that surveillance equipment such as night-vision goggles were sold to Iran.
Libya was preparing to place an order for military equipment to shore up its defences badly eroded though years of recently lifted sanctions, he said.
Things have been going bad for France since losing that big Iraqi deal.
Thank you.
Providing modernized weapons is important for the survival of some countries and cultures. Without the new stuff, they will not be able to protect themselves from enemies.
Who will be the next country to use a nuke?
odds : EVEN Iran
odds : 3-1 North Korea
odds : 1,000-1 India and Pakistan
odds : 1 million-1 Everyone else
Clever parenthetical phrase about Chauchats in the title. An historical kudos to the first Freeper who can explain it.
Semper Fi,
Does that include me?
All the world needs now is competition to see who can sell the most WMDs. Does it occur to anyone that war profiteers' selling these weapons to ANY uncivilized third world country is not a good idea? How many times have wew been attacked by our OWN weapons? How can one control where said weapons go after being purchased? I am not a fan of domestic gun control, but tanks, bombs and other weapons should NOT be shipped will-nilly across the globe.
The Chauchat was possibly the worst designed general purpose machine gun ever fielded. Rube Goldberg would have been amused by its mechanism and its unreliability. It was vulnerable to dirt, misassembly, random malfunction and mischevious demons. It serves as an example even today of how NOT to design a weapon.
Oh come now, they demonstrated their weapons quite well on the Ivory Coast. First rate at wacking unarmed crowds.
Chauchat Gun
Updated - Saturday, 3 May, 2003
The Chauchat comprised France's primary light machine gun throughout the First World War, although many regard it instead as an automatic rifle.
Developed in 1907 (and revised in 1915) the Chauchat weighed around 10kg; its lightness ensured that it was the French infantry's predominant close-support weapon. It is estimated that 250,000 8mm Chauchats were produced during the war using revolutionary new metal stamping techniques - making it the most widely manufactured automatic weapon of the war - and that 50,000 remained in operation within the French Army at the end of the war.
The Chauchat was also adopted by other Allied armies in spite of a somewhat poor reputation; in trench conditions it was regarded as unreliable, with dirt entering via the magazine. The weapon's most common malfunction manifested itself in a failure to extract spent shells.
Somewhat unusually the Chauchat operated on a long recoil principle in which the entire barrel recoiled against a spring when fired. During its recoil the barrel was unlocked from the bolt which continued to recoil. At this point the spent shell was ejected with the barrel returning to its starting position. Given such a violent recoil the weapon proved problematic to fire in anything other than highly trained hands.
The American Expeditionary Force, awaiting delivery of their intended primary weapon, the Browning M1917 machine gun, intended to adopt the Chauchat as an interim measure, purchasing 34,000 in 1917. In order to make the transition to the Browning easier the Chauchat was modified to use 0.30 inch ammunition. However the French manufacturers used incorrect chamber measurements with the result that the weapons performed poorly.
In the event the AEF largely used French, i.e. unmodified, versions of the Chauchat rather than the U.S. model until the Browning became available.
The Skeptician (www.skeptician.com) reports that the French are good for something after all:
Faced with the overwhelming firepower and military might of the U.S. led coalition forces poised on its border, Iraq asked the French Government today to send so-called "surrender experts" to Baghdad. According to Iraqi Vice President Tariq Aziz, the experts will "instruct the Iraqi military in all forms of surrender. Obviously, no country on earth has more experience with surrender or is more qualified in training others in this key aspect of warfare."
Iraq sought the French help so that they could surrender more quickly in this conflict than in the First Gulf War. According to Skeptician military analyst Rip Rowan, "During Operation Desert Storm, the Iraqi Army tended to make orderly and calm surrenders. They would walk slowly towards the Coalition forces with white flags."
"The French style of surrender, however, is much quicker. The French will teach them how to simply throw their weapons down and run screaming towards coalition lines, beg for forgiveness, and then roll over on their backs and ask for their tummies to be scratched."
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin (who is a man) could not be reached for comment. Various news reports said that he was under his kitchen table, hiding from his dog, Vichy.
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