"Raytheon wins a $1.7b Saudi defense contract" June 22, 2011|By Taryn Luna, Globe Correspondent
Defense contractor Raytheon Co. has won a $1.7 billion contract with Saudi Arabia to improve that country’s Patriot air and missile defense systems, the company said yesterday.
The deal was large even by defense industry standards, analysts said, and is good news for Raytheon, which is based in Waltham.
“This [contract] is part of what Raytheon has been assuming would make its year and now it’s in place,’’ said Howard Rubel, an analyst who follows Raytheon for Jefferies & Co., an investment firm in New York. “I think it shows that there is a very important cooperative relationship between the US government and Saudi Arabia.’’
That's relation$hip with a capital $.
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Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, said the United States has sold high-tech military weapons to Saudi Arabia for years; according to Raytheon, the Middle Eastern country has been buying Patriot missile equipment since the 1990s.
On the surface, the arrangement can be explained as the United States providing enhanced missile defense capabilities to an ally that is threatened by Iran, Bacevich said, adding: “Saudi Arabia depends on the US for its own security, and I think that a willingness to continually buy high-ticket items from us, thereby helping sustaining the military-industrial complex, is part of the way that Saudi Arabia stays in the United States’ good graces.’’
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