Posted on 07/23/2005 6:33:43 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
The Pentagon authorizes the sale to Spain of cruise missiles Tomahawk
Rumsfeld communicates by letter the minister Bono who the operation has green light
BALD JOSE MANUEL - Washington
THE COUNTRY - SPAIN - 21-07-2005
The Pentagon sent the last week to the Spanish Ministry of Defense the green light so that Spain can acquire cruise missiles Tomahawk, that they only have, in addition of the Armed Forces to the United States, those of the United Kingdom. The request of the Tomahawk was formulated by the previous Government and yes it finishes taking place by means of a letter of the Secretary of Defense of the U.S.A., Donald Rumsfeld, to his homologous Spanish, Jose Bond. Like all the sales of arms of the U.S.A., this one needs a communication to the Congress. After to have surpassed to have surpassed the approval of American Navy and the freezing of the political relations between both governments, the operation depended on the Donald, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, who in last May had a very warm interview with the holder of Defense, Jose Bond, in Washington.
The last week, Rumsfeld sent to Bond letter of releasibility, the document that authorizes the delivery or export, according to indicated three different sources consulted by the COUNTRY.
"It is the letter of answer to the previous one, in which Spain showed its interest in buying the Tomahawk missiles. This answer is the O.K. From now on, meets technicians and discusses, at that level, the terms of the contract, to produce what it is called letter of supply and acceptance, or LOA, according to their abbreviations in English ", explains one of the sources, that the shipment of the letter confirmed.
The following steps have to do with the details: "What is what it is bought, in what conditions, what takes annexed, what downtimes it has, and which are the conditions. They are subject sensible arms to very strict controls with respect to which it can and what it is not possible to be done with them. The U.S.A. always controls the level of spare parts, the maintenances and the configuration of each equipment. Actually, the Americans have a very high control of all the related one to this type of arms and of which it is possible to be done with them ", she indicates the first source, that she concludes: "What one has occurred now it is political the green light, and as of this moment one begins to negotiate the contract. When one reaches an agreement, that will be arrived, because that is only technical question, was signed ' ".
The Spanish Navy aspired to the purchase of 60 units of Tomahawk, usable from surface ships and submarines. One is cruise missiles designed to fly to altitudes low and supersonic speeds, reason why they are very difficult to detect by radar. Guidances with the help of navigation satellites these missiles were released in the Gulf War of 1991.
In principle, the Tomahawk would go destined to the four F-100 frigates that Navy has, although also can adapt to the four new S80 submarines whose construction is predicted to begin this year.
"They are surface-to-surface arms, missiles ship-to-shore, within the new concept of use of the fleet in case of conflict, that it does not have anything to do with the previous concept of oceanic naval battle", it indicates to another expert source of the operation and specialist in these subjects.
The price of the missiles oscillates, according to its version, its components and their reach, between 575,000 dollars and a million. "What distinguishes to these missiles is not as much the price, but its capacities, the control by satellite and the possibility of course change, if it is necessary. The system of the missile is reading the heights of the ground and it is it comparing with a digitized plane. It knows, therefore, which is its situation, and corrects to arrive at the target that has marked to him ", adds the specialist.
The British precedent
British Navy signed now in 1995 the first one and until only agreement of purchase of Tomahawk by a foreign navy, 65 operational missiles from 1998. "the fact that Spain is going to have these missiles is, politically, very important", according to a specialist. "Militarily, to have something they only have the British, also is very important, because he means that the Navy of the U.S.A. considers that the Spanish Navy, with which has you magnify relations, has incorporables capacities to hers. Now there is a built-in Spanish frigate to a North American group battle that will be able to take the Tomahawk ", adds
Well, that was an interesting read...
To whom will they surrender them?
Shouldn't that F-100 have a Ford emblem on it?
HAHAHA nice...
The interesting fact here is that it will be the first time non-nuke subs will carry the Tomahawk if the S80 does deploy it.If the Spanish sale does go ahead,Australia & the Netherlands & probably Germany may be next in line for the Tomahawk.
PS-the S80 is actually a modification of the French Scorpene design!!!!!
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To buy off terrorists.
BEIJING, July 20 (Xinhuanet) -- China and Spain here Thursday inked a dozen agreements to cement their cooperation in justice, industry, tourism, finance, seismological study, railway and civilaviation.
Visiting Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who arrived in Beijing Thursday on a three-day official visit to China, and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao witnessed the signing of the agreements following their hour-long meeting.
The two sides will strengthen political dialogue through a mechanism between foreign ministries of the two countries, according to an agreement.
The two sides will each establish a cultural center in the other country.
China will buy 20 Airbus A330 jetliners, according to a framework agreement signed by the two sides.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said the two sides reached wide-range consensus on developing bilateral relations between China and Spain as well as on regional and international issues of mutual concern.
Wen Jiabao highly praised the Spanish government's plan to strengthen relationship with China and other Asian-Pacific nations, adding that China attaches equal importance to its relationship with Spain.
The Chinese premier proposed that the two countries should step up their cooperation in areas of politics, economy, science and technology as well as culture.
The Chinese premier pledged that China would increase imports from Spain.
China-Spain trade reached 7.2 billion US dollars last year, up 38 percent from a year ago. The trade volume added up to four billion US dollars in the first five months of the year, up 48 percent.
In addition, Wen highly appreciated the Spanish government's adherence to one-China policy and its stance to oppose "Taiwan independence".
For his part, Zapatero stressed that Spain wants to be a friendof China, and that it supports China's economic development and national reunification.
The Spanish prime minister said Spain hopes to increase consultations with China on major regional and international issues, and upgrade the level of economic cooperation.
In addition, he said Spain would help promote the development of EU-China relationship.
My question exactly. What could they possibly do with it except reverse engineer and sell the tech to the Chinese? This is a damned stupid sale - countries that won't fight don't need our weapons.
Spain plans to build a future EMPIRE in Africa?
Impossible...
/sarcasm
I hope the electronics are hard-wired to honor a "self-destruct" signal from any American platform. Who knows where they will end up?
I read somewhere that any export variant of the Tomahawk would only have GPS guidance & not the goodies used on American variants & hence would be akin to a very longrange JDAM.About the Spanish hawking it to the Chinese,well im not too sure.The US has always had pretty tough preconditions when selling weapons like the AMRAAM,ATACMs & Tomahawk like dispatching the weapons to the customer in the event of a crisis or having joint launch codes.Besides the French are developing a cruise missile of their own,while Germany & Sweden have their own joint weapon(purchased by the Spanish airforce)-makes sense for China to buy from them.Moreover,China is building it's own cruise missiles.
Careful: What's the projected date on which Spain goes majority Islamic?
There, that's better.
I love Spain, but I think it is a very unstable country now (thanks to Zapatero) and selling them high technology is a stupid idea. Spain has been running all over the world trying to sell its ships, planes, etc. to people like Chavez, Castro, various Arab nations, etc.
However, about 2 weeks ago, our ambassador met with ZP and after the meeting, a statement was made to the effect that ZP would not engage in arms sales in our hemisphere without US permission. Perhaps this was part of the deal.
Still, I think the US would be out of its mind to trust Spain under the Zapatero government. They're tied in with everyone from Chavez and our enemies here, to Morocco and Iran. ZP is a hard-line Socialist who got elected by accident and is making the most of whatever time he is going to have in La Moncloa. And he's no friend of ours or of the West in general.
This makes me wonder whether China has already stolen the technology for cruise missiles and no further damage can be done.
Strange picture: is that a photoshop job where a model ship was placed on a real picture of the ocean? It looks like a model and there are no sailors onboard.
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