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Interesting.
I’m assuming they bring in a bunch of worker bees from places like Korea and Indonesia, and let their American educated managers run it.

Probably. I looked it up - 85% of their wealth/revenue is derived from oil and natural gas. It would be very wise of them to start building up these kinds of industries now rather than waiting until that revenue drops radically. Because of the environmentalist atmosphere in the US and elsewhere, they've got a leg up on us. They can buy off-the-shelf weapons and computer systems from us and the Europeans and Japanese and elsewhere, but their big advantage is the cheap labor, an incredibly business friendly atmosphere, and the lack of an EPA.

A lot of people talk about the Chinese building up a defense industry to take on the US militarily, but a lot of folks don't stop and think about the fact that in the long run, if more and more defense contracts go overseas, whether larger stuff to China or smaller stuff to places like UAE, we're in a much more dangerous situation. China is doing everything they can to undercut our defense and aerospace industries. It wouldn't take many contracts heading overseas before some of our biggest defense companies go under or have to lay of 10s of thousands of folks. Those kinds of jobs are almost impossible to replace.

Couldn’t agree more with af_vet_rr. The UAE has a pretty straightforward approach to business so companies can rapidly sign deals and set up infrastructure.

Another factor which a lot of people appear not to consider is the fact that the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region is fast growing and diversified defense/security market. Most have focussed on the defense aspect and tend to ignore the security part ; pretty much all Arab nations have requirements for upgrades to their police/intelligence gathering and domestic security apparatus. Some of them are off limits to European and American firms due to human rights issues, so countries like the UAE and Turkey smell a very realistic opportunity there.