[GZG] Military System Sales was Re: FTverse colinies

From: Tony Wilkinson <twilko@ozemail.com.au>

Yeah it could but who do you sell to? More often than not it will be just for
domestic use. The big suppliers can offer better prices and have more leeway
to cut deals. Also there's the security thing. Israel won't sell to anyone
just it case technical info ends up in the hands of their enemies.

--> Funny how it was an Israeli drone shot down over Abkasia then,
wasn't it? Hmmmm. Apparently they *do* sell some of their military technology.
And Russia, China, Germany, the US, Brazil, and others have been (over the
last 100 years) tremendous exporters of military hardware. There are obviously
other countries missing from this list. There is a reason Canada has a mix of
home brew, US, South African, German, and other technologies in its military.

Australia hasn't been able to sell the Collins sub (very bad press) and the
Bushranger wheeled APC (damn Yanks, Canadians and Frenchmen).

--> Well, having our own manufacturing plants for just such things, it
comes as no surprise to me that we'd manufacture the Coyote, Bison, etc.
locally. Why this should get one accursed is beyond me. And we did sell the
Aussies some old tank turrets at one point... (I won't
comment on how sad it was seeing Australia take Canadian hand-me-down
hardware...)

--> Ask yourself how many key subcomponent assemblies for military
systems have been sold by places like Japan? I'm betting an awful lot of
computers had chips fabricated in the Pacific Rim. This is another form of
military sales that bring in revenues. So if you develop an entire vehicle or
ship locally and part of that is key subsystems, then sometimes other forces
will want to buy those subsystems for retrofit or for integration into new
designs.

TomB