The Monarchy’s Missiles

Jeffrey Lewis 0:00

You know, don't hate the player, hate the game.

Aaron Stein 0:06

Hello, and welcome to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the only and therefore leading podcast on arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament. My name is Aaron Stein. I'm the co-host of the show, as well as an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

Jeffrey 0:20

And I'm Jeffrey Lewis. I'm the other co-host of the podcast. I'm the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog, and I am a scholar at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. This week we're going to talk about the Saudi Strategic Missile Force. We had done a podcast on this earlier, but it's totally unlistenable because of the terrible sound quality.

Aaron 0:41

I think that was our worst.

Jeffrey 0:43

It probably almost certainly was. But I have a new issue brief with Ala Alrababah that we wrote for the Nuclear Threat Initiative on the Saudi Strategic Missile Force. So that gave me an opportunity to revisit the topic with at least passable sound quality.

Aaron 0:59

OK, look, I know Allah. And in keeping with the arms control podcast tradition, I met him in some exotic locale, this time in Istanbul on a cruise. Not Constantinople. Not Constantinople. I don't know. It's better than you. I get France, Italy, all over these places. But he's unsigned in the piece. What's up with that? What's he doing these days?

Jeffrey 1:19

Well, so he's going to be a doctoral student at Stanford, but he is at the moment a junior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment. And the Carnegie Endowment does not allow junior fellows to sign pieces. Really? Yeah, and I know why. In fact, so Allah sends me this note that says, for some reason, I'm not allowed. I'm pretty sure I know the reason.

Do you?

Aaron 1:42

No, can you tell us? Or is this classified?

Jeffrey 1:44

No, no, no. So my friend Todd was a junior fellow in 1999, and he was a farsighted and ambitious young man. He was farsighted. Yo, this is great. He was farsighted in the sense that in 1999, he could see clearly the post-9-11 security concerns about Pakistan's nuclear weapons. And he was ambitious. And so he decided to write an op-ed for Defense News arguing in 1999, mind you, that the U.S. should declassify a bunch of information about permissive action links and other – Security mechanisms for nuclear weapons so that the Pakistanis and the Indians could make their own and integrate them into their arsenal, arsenals.

But being a young man, he was possessed of terrible judgment and didn't run this by anybody at the Carnegie Endowment. I did this.

Aaron 2:40

I got in trouble for this. Anyways, keep going.

Jeffrey 2:42

So you can imagine how delighted the nuclear, at the time it was the nonproliferation program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was to discover that they supported blowing a hole in the NPT to provide security assistance to the Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons programs.

Aaron 3:01

So Allah is being subjected to restrictions put in place. By my friend Todd. Thanks, Todd. Yeah, I even helped Todd with that op-ed, so I felt like directly responsible.

Jeffrey 3:16

So I cannot tell you that Allah is a junior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, but he will soon be a doctoral student at Stanford.

Aaron 3:24

And he writes a lot about Saudi missile, about the Saudi missile force.

Jeffrey 3:27

Well, he speaks Arabic, which I don't, which made this a lot easier.

Aaron 3:32

Right. I really like the piece, and we did talk about it in the last podcast, which nobody can understand, this new openness about Saudi missiles that keep coming out, sort of the intersection of open source. But I think you have a lot more funny stories that you could not include in the piece going back to the original missile purchase in the 1980s.

Yeah.

Jeffrey 3:51

So now there are three – I would call them memoirs. Two of them are memoirs. One by Bandar and one by Prince Bandar, who at the time was the Saudi ambassador to the United States, and another by General Khaled, who negotiated the purchase. But there's also a very nice book About Bandar by David Ottaway, who worked for the Washington Post, that includes, I think, information based on interviews with Bandar.

And so we actually have Saudi versions of this story, and we can kind of cross-check them. And some really... Really interesting things emerge. Oh, I should say right, so the memoir by Bandar, this is, you know, stuff I can't put in. The memoir by Bandar is not a memoir by Bandar. It's officially an authorized biography written by a guy named William Simpson. Okay, that sounds British. He's very British. I think they were at Sandhurst together. Okay.

And it's amazing for a bunch of reasons, but one of which is I'm reading through this, and there are these references to Chinese people, right? Right. And so there's a reference to the Chinese premier. Right. And there's a reference to the chairman of China. And, for example, all the names are wrong. The chairman is listed as Chaoping.

No. Yeah, it's Deng Xiaoping. And so as you read through and you realize all the Chinese names are wrong – It becomes exactly clear what happened, which is Bandar is basically telling the story to Simpson and he's just writing it down.

Aaron 5:34

Right. And Bandar can't remember the names of the guys.

Jeffrey 5:37

No, no. He's saying it with a Saudi accent. He's saying Chairman Xiaoping, but he's just saying it with a slightly Saudi accent with a British guy like transcribing it. So, you know, like on the one hand, it's not at all fact check. Right. And I think that there may be some I think Bandar's memory may not be perfect.

Aaron 5:57

Or he may be slightly exaggerating to make himself look good. There might be a little of that. OK, I'll say it.

Jeffrey 6:03

But it but it's it's from Bandar's mouth to the page, right down to the mispronunciation of the of the Chinese names.

Aaron 6:11

Okay.

Jeffrey 6:12

Which makes it reliable in a particular way. Right. Of course. I'd say so. You know, it doesn't get cleaned up. So it's very nice to have the Simpson book, which is really Bandar's account. And then to have the Ottaway book Which is partially Bandar's account, but fact-checked and cross-checked and with his recollection cleaned up. Together, they're very nice, and you have them with the Khaled memoir.

And we know a lot about the Saudis' mid-1980s purchase of DF-3 missiles from the Chinese, and it's great.

Aaron 6:47

Right. I mean, the 1980s, I mean, I think we should start right there. It was amid the Iran-Iraq war, We were starting to see the early signs of the War of Cities, which was the use of scuds against Iranian and Iraqi cities. And then you interject on top of this sort of Gulf rivalry and income the Saudis to say, we need missiles too.

Jeffrey 7:06

And this is a great point where it's a kind of detail that I couldn't get into in the piece. So the Iraqis had – the Iraqis had fired some missiles, right? At the Iranians. And by 1985, early 1985, the Iranians had started shooting back, right? That they, they had acquired missiles from the North Koreans or were on target to acquire them.

And so in very early 1985, you know, this term war of the cities gets used a lot of different ways and it's often used to refer to something that happened later. But by the mid 1980s, it was by, by early 1985, it was clear That Middle Eastern countries were going to do this weird thing, which was put conventional warheads on missiles and shoot them at each other, which previously we had not expected, right?

We thought missiles were for nuclear weapons, and they were too inaccurate for conventional warheads.

Aaron 8:01

Warheads, right? It's the whole basis for the MTCR was the presumption that all missiles are for weapons of mass destruction, right? And, and, and this innovation, which now is quite common, right? Like, what Middle Eastern potentate doesn't have conventionally armed ballistic missiles, right?. But in, in early 1985, this is like a new thing. Yeah, yeah, of course. It's game changer, which is nearly 30 years ago now. Right, right, exactly. And, yeah, no, it's fascinating. And then.

On top of all that, the Iranians and the Iraqis had acquired the expertise to produce them themselves by importing the entire missile lines.

Jeffrey 8:36

Yeah, although had that happened by 1985?

Aaron 8:39

Not by 1985. Not with the original thing, but by the end of the decade, yes.

Jeffrey 8:42

Right, right, right. So what I love about this story is early 1985, this is the – This is the moment of innovation. You know, like my buddy Mike Horowitz studies the diffusion of military innovations. He didn't do this one. He should. He should. How did the idea of putting conventional explosives on a missile become like a thing Middle Eastern dictators did?

And 85 is kind of that moment. So in 85, King Fahd, who was king of Saudi Arabia at the time, decides he wants to get some missiles too. And that's a very interesting decision because like where do you get them, right? Of course. And they – am I just going to tell this story?

Aaron 9:32

Yeah, tell it. I'm actually all ears here.

Jeffrey 9:34

Okay. So the Saudis had at that time a very large arms sale proposed by the Reagan administration that was before Congress.

Aaron 9:50

This is the famous APEC AWACS arms sale.

Jeffrey 9:54

I think it is the same sale, although there are a series of packages at the time. So I would want to exactly double check. But yes, that's the same period. Right. And yeah, the Reagan administration wants to sell the Saudis all this stuff. And Congress says no.

Aaron 10:19

Right. Yes. Presumably under pressure because of eroding Israel's qualitative military edge.

Jeffrey 10:25

Right. Right. Although this is, you know, back like in that like it's interesting because it's a it's a Republican administration that wants to do it. And it's a bipartisan opposition, as far as I can tell. You know, so. Well, they originally wanted the American Lance missiles, correct? Right. And the Reagan administration made absolutely clear to them, like, that's not that's not going to happen.

Aaron 10:49

So then they had to go elsewhere.

Jeffrey 10:50

Right, and they can't go to the Soviet Union. Nobody in Western Europe makes those missiles at that point. They're staring at the Chinese and they don't even have diplomatic relations with the Chinese. Saudi Arabia recognizes Taiwan as the legitimate government of China. The first question is, how do you even ask the Chinese if you don't have diplomatic relations?

Aaron 11:21

That would cause a problem. Who exactly do you pick up the phone and call in Beijing?

Jeffrey 11:25

The answer is you don't pick up the phone. So Bandar pitches Han Shu, the Chinese ambassador in Washington, at like a garden party. It's like a diplomatic reception. They're serving some wine. I'm sure Bandar's got sparkling water. No, Bandar probably drinks. I don't know.

Aaron 11:49

I don't think about Bandar.

Jeffrey 11:50

But I'm sure he walks... But we know he walks over to Han Shu, who's the Chinese ambassador, and is like, Say, would you be willing to sell us medium or intermediate range ballistic missiles?

Aaron 12:02

In Washington after we told him to take a hike.

Jeffrey 12:04

Yeah, yeah. And the best part of this story is this is Han's first month on the job.

Aaron 12:10

Okay.

Jeffrey 12:11

It's May 1985. That is the month he got there. Okay.

Aaron 12:16

So he gets something thrown in his lap very quickly.

Jeffrey 12:19

You know he is looking around like, are there cameras on me? Is this a provocation? Yeah. You know, I'd been briefed on the American television show Candid Cameras. Is this a joke? Like, he must have been just totally flabbergasted that this country that they don't have any relationship with, you know, the ambassador just walks up and be like, hey Would you tell me some medium or intermediate range ballistic missiles?

Because we'd really like to have some of those.

Aaron 12:43

Yeah, they're all the rage. They're all the rage. It's like a 1980s disco club.

Jeffrey 12:48

Right, and at this point, they don't even have diplomatic relations. So the first thing that has to happen is Bandar has to negotiate with the Chinese. And although the Saudis will end up recognizing China in 1990, they don't want to make it a quid pro quo. Now, I think the Chinese know exactly where this is headed. But the Saudis really don't want it to seem that they traded their recognition in exchange for the missiles.

Aaron 13:20

Right.

Jeffrey 13:20

And that's really important. And so Bandar has to work out the two tracks, which is, yeah, we want to buy the missiles. And so there's going to be money involved. And yes, the Chinese expect that this is a sign of an improved relationship. And the Saudis know everybody – everybody recognizes even at this point the US has diplomatic relations with the Chinese.

And so the Saudis are moving in that direction. But they have to work that out in a way that it doesn't appear to be a literal quid pro quo.

Aaron 13:50

And they could also pierce a very lucrative arms market. I mean at that time, I'm not familiar. Did China have any sort of major arms control markets for its weapons abroad outside of Pakistan or something like that?

Jeffrey 14:01

Well, Iran, which is another wonderful wrinkle to this story about how the Saudis hide the purchase. But maybe I should just – so what happens is – so Bandar makes a number of trips to China, including one in July 1986. And David Ottaway has this amazing – So one of the places Bandar goes is Xi'an in order to see the missile, let's say, in the wild.

I guess actually there's a factory there. By sheer coincidence, a New York Times reporter named John Burns decided that he and a colleague, even though they didn't have travel permits, and back in the day in China you couldn't just drive around, you had to get a travel permit, China had been loosening up and people had been traveling without permits and not getting in trouble.

Aaron 14:54

And they basically start off on a motorcycle tour of China. I see where this is going. No way.

Jeffrey 14:59

Yeah. And so – and by the way, I double-checked. I actually pulled all of the news stories, right? So Bandar tells this story that he is in Xi'an and like – Burns shows up on a motorcycle. And apparently, I forget now Burns' version of events, but he's going town after town after town, and he shows up in Xi'an and goes in to ask for directions, and it turns out it's a police station.

And they're like, Oh, foreigner paperwork, you know, and initially they're not the local police because they don't know anything is up. They don't care. They just sort of like like you. You have to go home now. Like this is not OK. And so they they whatever sent him home. And he did this before he was set to leave.

Right. He didn't do this in the middle of his tenure. He knew he was going home. And so he goes a couple of maybe days or maybe a couple of weeks later to get on an airplane to go home. And the Chinese arrest him. Really? Yeah, and it's because he was in Xi'an at exactly the same time Bandar was.

And the Chinese thought that he had gotten wind and had motorcycled all the way down to Xi'an.

Aaron 16:09

Meanwhile, he's just an American hippie on his motorcycle tour. Yeah.

Jeffrey 16:13

And so the Chinese hold him for like a long time. I mean, you know, not years or anything, but like the New York Times has to negotiate to get him out. And I'm guessing it's when the Chinese realized that he didn't know and it was just a coincidence. They let him go. Ottaway, by the way, the post reporter, checked that story with Burns and Burns had no idea.

But, you know, I actually double checked all the dates and Bandar's recollection of the meeting.

Aaron 16:38

It's exactly the same time that Burns was Burns was there. Motorcycling through Xi'an.

Jeffrey 16:43

Yeah. So that's, that's a great story already. Right.

Aaron 16:46

Right.

Jeffrey 16:49

And eventually, the Saudis receive a delegation from the Chinese in like December of 86. And that's at that point, Khaled, who is a kind of longtime defense figure, he had set up Saudi Arabia's air defense force. Which is a missile-related activity. So he was like the missile guy, whether they're surface-to-air missiles or surface-to-surface missiles. It's a pretty similar skill set.

And he'd handled a negotiation with the French for a surface-to-air missile. And so he takes over at this point. He goes to China, I think, in February of 87.

Aaron 17:26

How are they explaining this to the United States?

Jeffrey 17:28

So this is beautiful. I mean, this is just absolutely beautiful. So Bandar gives over to Halad. Halad goes, and he has a bunch of visits. And they have to be super sneaky about the whole thing, right? Right. And Halad has all these funny stories about how sneaky they are. But the real question is, so once they agree to the shipment, and the shipment will come in mid-87, right?

How do you... How do you hide Bandar and Khaled's trips? And how do you hide the shipment? And Attaway tells this story, which is from Bandar. And I actually was able to confirm this, which I just think is amazing. So at the time, the Chinese are selling all these armaments to the Iranians, which the Iranians are using on the Iraqis.

And we are very unhappy about this. And so Bandar says... I love Bandar. Bandar says, oh, you know what? We'll take care of that problem for you. I'll go to Beijing and I'll negotiate an arms sale with the Chinese. And so we'll buy all of the armaments that they were going to sell to the Iranians in this next shipment.

And we'll buy them on behalf of the Iraqis. So you will occasionally see the – The U.S. and UNMOVIC were always very cagey about this. You'll see that there are all these Chinese weapons systems like silkworm missiles that showed up in Iraq. And then they always say sort of, oh, the Iraqis acquired these in the mid-'80s. Well, that's this.

So what Bandar does is says to the Americans, I'll go negotiate a weapons sale with the Chinese on behalf of the Iraqis. And he does, right? Yeah. But what he doesn't tell them is, oh, by the way, some of those ships, you know, are going to be carrying Chinese DF-3 missiles for Saudi Arabia. And then the kicker is he says, you know, I know, by the way, it's really hard.

You know, Iraq doesn't have great ocean access. So no problem. We'll have the Chinese ship all the quote unquote Iraqi weapons to us. Yeah. And then we'll truck them overland to Iraq.

Aaron 19:46

This is off topic, but big companies still do that. If you want to get in big products that can't ship to Iraq directly anymore, you go through Saudi Arabia.

Jeffrey 19:53

Right, right, right. And they just sort of don't mention that some of those ships have DF-3 missiles and those go to a different place. So I found in the Washington Post this great story from June 1987. Okay. And it's headlined, China sends new weapons to Iraqis. Okay. And it says a new shipment of Chinese made arms, including Badger bombers and Silkware missiles has arrived in Iraq.

According to Pentagon sources, the supplies complete a large new order of arms purchased from the Chinese at a time when the Iran Iraq war is accelerating. The sources said,

Aaron 20:25

So the Pentagon leaks this while they're being bamboozled?

Jeffrey 20:28

They're gloating.

Aaron 20:29

The Pentagon gloats while being bamboozled.

Jeffrey 20:32

Yeah, they're gloating. They're like, you know, and they have to be careful. They're like, oh yeah, now the Chinese are selling to the Iraqis. It's like, well, how do you guys know? It's like, because Bandar told us and we believe Bandar.

Aaron 20:42

So they get their missiles in 1987. Well, they get the first shipment of missiles in 1987. And what happens is in January 88th, The Chinese show up and start building the missile bases. Right. Okay. And that's when we catch wind of this, correct?

Jeffrey 20:59

Well, I guess initially we noticed that not everything went to Iraq and some of it like went out into the desert. And this part's a little, cause this is all from Bandar and I haven't been able to confirm it, but apparently the initial Saudi story is, oh yeah, the Iraqis weren't ready for everything. So we're putting things at a depot in the desert.

Right. Yeah. So they're just like stalling and buying time. But when the Chinese show up in January, they start building a missile base. Yeah. Right. And it looks, you know, the second part of this conversation is the force today. I mean, those bases to this day still look like Chinese missile bases.

Aaron 21:39

Well, one would expect if you have Chinese engineers building missiles, Chinese missiles, that your bases would look Chinese.

Jeffrey 21:45

So they show up in January. Shortly thereafter, you know, we get satellite photographs. It works its way through the bureaucracy. And Richard Murphy, right, ends up in March confronting Bandar with the satellite pictures, you know. And it's very funny because the descriptions, it all sounds – I struggle to convince my students of this. My students are like convinced the meeting went down like – Bandar, we have some very disturbing satellite pictures. Oh, really? You know, but I'm certain there must have been yelling and profanity, right? I would assume so, right? Because they felt totally bamboozled.. They realized that no, this isn't an arms depot, this is a military base. And my suspicion is they initially thought maybe they were nuclear armed, right.

Aaron 22:32

That comes to the second point of this, is that conventionally armed missiles don't make sense, at least these types of conventionally armed missiles.

Jeffrey 22:37

Right. And what's wonderful is – so this is a huge blowup. It leaks. It's a big deal. And then in the spring of 1988, there's a second shipment.

Aaron 22:50

Yeah, I think it was in April, right?

Jeffrey 22:52

Yeah, probably April. Because at this point, now some of the cables are declassified. I mean, we're kind of paying attention and we're looking for this stuff. And there have been declassified documents that say it's a second shipment that replaces the mid-87 shipment with more accurate missiles. But this is a great story, too. Yeah. So, and, and, and Ottaway tells a little bit about it, but there were stories in the Sunday times in April of 1988 before the shipment.

But then the post picked it up in May. Do you know who did, did we mention this in the piece? Who who modified the DF three? So it was more accurate.

Aaron 23:43

I, I, I, I think you mentioned, I can't remember offhand, but if I had to guess, I would say it was Pakistan because they're pretty active all throughout Saudi Arabia in their defense force.

Jeffrey 23:51

So much better?

Aaron 23:52

No, I'm wrong? It's not Pakistan?

Jeffrey 23:54

Israelis on Philippine passports.

Aaron 23:57

No.

Jeffrey 23:57

Yes.

Aaron 23:58

This is not in the piece.

Jeffrey 23:59

Yeah, well, it's kind of buried then.

Aaron 24:02

Israelis show up in the kingdom?

Jeffrey 24:06

No, no, they don't go to the kingdom. Well, there are some reports they may have ended up in the kingdom, but they went to China on Philippine passports. Yeah, so basically the Saudis sell the DF-3s. I mean the Chinese, rather, sell the DF-3s to the Saudis.

Aaron 24:23

Okay.

Jeffrey 24:24

And then the Chinese turn around and go to the Israelis in apparently like November of 87 and say, you know, we sold some of these missiles. They're not super accurate. We're kind of interested in conventional missiles. Maybe you could help us. Using our technology. Yeah, using, using, yeah, right. Using whatever technology you have in Israel.. And the Israelis, and again, it's not clear whether this is something the Israeli government signed off on or these were just enterprising Israeli business persons. The Israelis have a shady history of selling some of our stuff to China, so I wouldn't put it past the government. So, but the point is, these people show up in, you know, apparently they show up in.

You know, in very late or early 1988, and they helped the Chinese with a... New guidance system. Yeah, with a new guidance system.

Aaron 25:18

Probably modified from one of our missiles.

Jeffrey 25:21

Right, and so when the Sunday Times story comes out in early April, Israel in secret missile deal with China, right?

Aaron 25:29

It was presumed that the Chinese had already shipped

Jeffrey 25:34

Right? The missiles, because the story had broken March. And so that was a shipment that happened in the past. And that, that story was like on April 3rd. And by the end of April, there is a new shipment of Chinese missiles in Saudi Arabia. And so in May, the post breaks the story that like, yeah, it's the same, it's the same guidance.

Right. So yeah, it apparently the Israelis either deliberately as a matter of policy or because of the act of some contractors Worked on the same DF3s in early 1988 that then in April, at the end of April, got shipped in the second shipment.

Aaron 26:14

Right, and then we confront them, and then we somehow get assurances that they're non-nuclear.

Jeffrey 26:19

Well, we confronted them in March and got the assurances that the first shipment were non-nuclear. Right. And that's kind of the end of it. And then we see the second shipment. And we're annoyed. But what are we going to do, right? Right. So that's the 80s. So I think it's an amazing story from Bandar pitching the Chinese ambassador at a garden party.

Right. It is like first month on the job. Right. You know, to Bandar saying like, oh, hey, you know, we've got a great idea. We'll help you out. We'll go to the Chinese and we'll buy those weapons intended for Iran and we'll ship them to Iraq instead.

Aaron 26:59

We'll do you a great favor. Then they bamboozle us and send some out into the desert.

Jeffrey 27:05

Yeah, and it's not until the Chinese start building the missile base in January 1988 that we're like, hey, wait a minute. You lied to us. Then there's the second shipment that's been modified by the Israelis. Right, right. And it's very unclear if the Israelis realized that those were going to end up in Saudi Arabia.

Aaron 27:23

Yeah. It's a great story. And then we don't hear much about them. During the 1990s, we just sort of hear bits and pieces about the story. But as you make clear in the piece, now we're learning more and more because stuff is showing up on social media. Right. It's intersecting with open source. Now we're able to learn a little bit more about these things.

Jeffrey 27:40

Yeah, so the Saudis are totally quiet about them. They build these two bases. They build one near a place called Al-Harik, which sometimes is called Jaffar in Western publications. And they build a second base. I can't. Like in true Arms Control Wong podcast tradition, I'll massacre all of these Arabic names, which is why I have Allah to help me out.

Aaron 28:07

Right.

Jeffrey 28:10

They build a place, a second base near a place called, they say Wadi Ad-Dawasir. Okay. But it's sometimes called Sula Yil, Sula Yil, I guess. Okay.

Aaron 28:23

Okay.

Jeffrey 28:23

Yeah. And so there are these two bases. And for a long time, these are the only two bases. And then kind of in the late 90s, it's clear that there's now like a third base near a place called Rania, Rania. Yeah. Which has a bunch of underground facilities. And then, my colleague Sean O'Connor at Jane's finds what looks like two more bases that have been built in recent years.

Aaron 28:51

Right, so more bases suggests more missiles.

Jeffrey 28:53

Right, well, so there are then... What happens is now we start looking and there's this flood of open source information. One thing that's really interesting is the... Strategic. So the Saudi military used to control schools at bases. And every Saudi missile base, I should say, has a tactical area where the missiles and the propellant and warheads are.

And then they have a physically separate residential area. And these can be many, many kilometers apart, you know, 40 kilometers apart in some cases. And so you live on the base and then, you know, you drive out. So the schools at the residential areas – the Saudis are very proud of the schools and they were run by the military.

Recently, they turned control of the schools over to the education ministry. So the schools start showing up on government websites.

Aaron 29:47

Which I find bizarre.

Jeffrey 29:49

Well, and I think – That's one of the things I – Yeah.

Aaron 29:51

I find that bizarre. How does that happen?

Jeffrey 29:53

Well, because it's now just a school. And they don't bother to change the name. So it's like, suddenly it's the base 511 school. And they have this numbering structure. The bases are 511, 522, 533, 544. And so when... Or sometimes it'll say military school. And so when the schools start showing up, then all of a sudden you can start cross-correlating things because you've got a place and you've got a number.

And sometimes in Saudi media, they would refer to the base by its number or by its place, but they wouldn't give you too much detail. But initially, the schools allow you to decode the numbering system. And it reveals, among other things, that we knew about 511 and 522, and we'd had hints about 533, but it reveals 544 plus one more base, which doesn't have a number, but maybe 566.

Yeah.

Aaron 30:53

Okay, so three extra bases than the original two that were built.

Jeffrey 30:56

Right. Although, I think of it as two plus one plus two. They built two, they waited about ten years, they built one, they waited about ten years, and they built two. Got it. Interesting. And then the second thing that happens is, in addition to the education ministry, Saudi contractors are very proud about the work they do.

Aaron 31:17

This is the open source nightmare or our goldmine.

Jeffrey 31:20

Well, and they try to be careful, right? So they say, oh, well, we worked at a military site near Dawadmi or Dawadami. I can't, again, Arabic. It's not my strong suit. We should have had Allah on the podcast. I know. Like a good doctoral student, like we're going to have limited to only to correcting my pronunciation. Without a title.

Right. With no title. Right. Maybe we can have Carl dub him in. All of a sudden my Arabic is perfect. So the contractors are posting information like the people who built the road for the 511 base between the tactical area and the residential area. You know they built a 40 kilometer road and they were like super happy about it but that's like really useful for me right it's a 40 kilometer military road so I'm like measuring the roads like oh yeah that's the one and in some cases they have pictures of the residential units they built you can find the people who built the water supplies the power supplies and so you know I think it's pretty easy on the basis of that kind of information to sketch out and order a battle for them There's also, I mean, I shouldn't laugh, but I find it hilarious.

A 511 base made a visit to the local religious police. Okay, really? And there's a picture. I mean, it doesn't actually tell you anything about the location of the unit other than that it's near Al-Harik. But the religious police have a display of scanty women's clothing.

Aaron 32:59

I know, I'm looking at the picture in your face right now.

Jeffrey 33:02

And it's like, yeah, this is for educational purposes only. And you know the base 511 guys like go home and the religious police are, you know, like. Right. I won't say what, but.

Aaron 33:14

Yeah.

Jeffrey 33:16

It's an educational display.

Aaron 33:18

That's right.

Jeffrey 33:19

Educational purposes. We've got skimpy ladies garments. With the missile base.

Aaron 33:26

Yeah, that's right. So you could sketch out the order of battle based upon the location of these bases and where you found them out in the desert.

Jeffrey 33:36

Yeah, and then now it raises this question. That's a lot of bases for a country that hasn't bought any missiles yet.

Aaron 33:47

Since 1988, right? Right. So there must be more missiles.

Jeffrey 33:50

And then interesting stuff starts happening. So the Saudis build a new headquarters. And they release a picture of it. You can find it in satellite photographs. So there's this like... One thing that's happening is the strategic missile force is getting this much higher profile. So there are all these hints that the strategic missile force is not real, at least initially.

So the commander of the strategic missile force has an air defense patch on his uniform. Doesn't have a strategic missile defense force. The strategic missile force receives students from the air defense college. Which makes sense. It makes sense, but it implies that it's not really independent.

Aaron 34:34

Right. Exactly. Like a subsidiary thereof or a unit that falls underneath the general command.

Jeffrey 34:40

Right. Well, Khaled is like the patron of both. He sets up the air defense force and he sets up the missile force. They've got the same arm patches. They use the same military college. But now the strategic missile force gets a new headquarters building. Right. And the graduation for their not their college, but they're like short kind of sort of graduate level courses.

Those graduations start getting a lot of play in the press. And at one point, the then deputy defense minister shows up at the brand new headquarters building, which I've been able to ID because of the carpet and sconces.

Aaron 35:24

They're very distinct.

Jeffrey 35:26

They really are. And once you see the inside, you can nail that room. I want to get invited to Saudi Arabia just so I can go to this conference room.

Aaron 35:33

I don't think you will be after this podcast.

Jeffrey 35:35

You know what? I think you should give up the dream. We'll talk about why they're doing this. I think it's partly intentional. So the deputy minister of defense poses with a glass case with a gift, a souvenir of his visit that has three missile types in it. Of three different sizes. Three very different sizes. The large one, to me, clearly looks like a DF-3 from China.

But it raises this question of what are the other two. Right. And that's – you know, it's hard to know. A couple of years ago, there was this guy, Jonathan Shirk. He's worth talking about. He was – Interesting character. A very interesting character. He's in a lot of legal trouble at the moment. He self-publishes this memoir that says –

Aaron 36:18

Self-publishes a memoir. I find that hilarious.

Jeffrey 36:20

Self-publishes a memoir without submitting it to the – he was a contractor to the CIA who worked on the Saudi missile account. And he says that at that time, Saudi Arabia was buying DF-21s from China.

Aaron 36:34

Okay.

Jeffrey 36:36

And he's the guy who shows up at the meeting and is convinced that they must also be buying nuclear weapons from Pakistan. Okay. And he won't let it go.

Aaron 36:48

So he's the guy banging the drum.

Jeffrey 36:50

Right. So he I mean, according to his according to his events or his version of events, he's the guy who's like, you know, like speaking truth to power. But now there's this story by Jeff Stein, who's a longtime reporter, who says that apparently the Saudis told the U.S. intelligence community about the purchase. And so my guess is, you know, he's a guy saying, we got to do something about this.

But he's probably not cleared to know that, like, actually, we have done something about this. And so you just like need to shut up.

Aaron 37:24

The alleged sale took place during another Republican administration, George W. Bush, and I think the ties between the Bushes and the Saudis are well known. It's the right time frame to at least have a sympathetic administration to where if they were to approach them quietly, I doubt they would actually come up with any huge roadblocks.

Jeffrey 37:42

Well, and it gets to the question of why the Saudis are being so open about their missile force, right? Because we have Iran now, and so, you know, I mean, look, I'm against proliferation, but The Saudis replaced the DF-3s. It's not clear to me it's the worst thing in the world for regional stability, but we can talk about that.

I've read his account carefully. He knows some things. I was able to confirm some of his claims about Chinese ships that visited Saudi ports. And his account is clearly from memory and there's some things he gets wrong. Like he has a barbecue in the winter, which seems unlikely, but on the other hand, it's sort of reassuring because there are places where he's like clearly right about things.

And if he was an amazing, fabulous to his double checking things, he probably wouldn't make these other mistakes. You know, so I, that, that's a, that's a, I think DF 21 is a very strong hypothesis. That they bought a DF-21 from the Chinese. But then there's this other thing, which I found in a declassified U.S. NIE, that apparently after the Saudi purchase of the DF-3s, we thought they had a contract in place with the Chinese for M9 and M11 missiles, which is what the Chinese sold to the Pakistanis.

OK. And so I wonder, you know, it's really hard to make out those missiles in the cases. I mean, in the case, they're very blurry and not very clearly defined. So I wonder if it's related to that. And of course, the problem is if a Shaheen one or Shaheen two, which are like the Pakistani missiles that came out of Chinese assistance, you know, if they show up in Saudi Arabia, it's hard to know if the Saudis got them from the Pakistanis or the Chinese.

Aaron 39:33

Right. I mean, exactly right.

Jeffrey 39:38

Did you get your Chinese missiles from Pakistan, which bought them, or did you get them from China?

Aaron 39:41

Yeah, so did you get the knockoff Pakistani brand, or did you go straight to the source? Right.

Jeffrey 39:47

And it's really hard to tell, but the point is they have all these missile bases now. They clearly have bought new stuff.

Aaron 39:56

Yes, of course. It's just a matter of what that stuff is. Exactly. Yeah. And so it's also gaining in prominence. I mean, I think we should just go right to it there. Why do you think it's gaining in prominence? Signaling to the Iranians, sort of a quick pro quo with the United States. What's going on here?

Jeffrey 40:11

Yeah, I think it's Iran, Iran, and Iran, right?

Aaron 40:14

Yeah, triple underlined.

Jeffrey 40:16

Yeah, the Iranians have a really big missile program. The Saudis feel threatened by it. You know, I think the Saudis now, the strategic missile force is probably a lot more capable.

Aaron 40:27

Yeah, I mean, one would assume.

Jeffrey 40:29

They're probably a lot more proud of it, so they're not so embarrassed to show off the DF-3. For a long time, there have been rumors that they might use Pakistani or Chinese mercenaries to operate them. I'm not sure that was ever true.

Aaron 40:43

They might use it to service them. I mean, that's what's known about the Saudi Air Force in general is that they live on Pakistani contractors.

Jeffrey 40:49

Well, and that may be true, and they may live on Chinese contractors. There's some evidence in the declassified literature that the Chinese would send maintenance teams.

Aaron 40:59

That sounds right about what I know about Saudi Arabia.

Jeffrey 41:02

Well, and it's – but I don't know that that's just the Saudis. I mean the UAE, which is another podcast we'll do, has – Yeah, save that. I know, but they have two purchases of Scud missiles from North Korea, and there's evidence that the North Koreans occasionally show up to maintain things.

Aaron 41:20

Well, we'll talk about the UAE later down the road in the new year. Stay tuned.

Jeffrey 41:24

Yeah, that's that's going to be a fun one. But the point being, I think that the Saudis are no longer worried that people are going to think that this is a Potemkin missile force. And in fact, or I'll say this, I'll say it this way. They are worried that people will think it's a Potemkin missile force, which is why they want to release more information about it, because it's not.

They're not worried you will discover that it's fake. I think they're worried that we'll think it's fake and be wrong. So hence the parade.

Aaron 41:52

Yes, and so in our last podcast, they unveiled some of these in the parade. I can't remember. They were the DF3s. Yes. They brought out of storage, and they ran them down the paradeway there.

Jeffrey 42:02

Yep, and nice, big, clean shots. I actually, with my students, sat down, and we took a very careful look. Even the transporters and the erectors, they're all perfect matches to things built in China. So, yeah.

Aaron 42:20

And so one thing I found funny in your story, and it brings back to the people who modified the missiles in the 1980s, is that they're – what you say is that they're pointed at two different people, probably Tel Aviv and the other one is Tehran. So you have Israeli engineers who may have made the missiles more accurate to hit Tel Aviv.

Is that what you're telling me? Right.

Jeffrey 42:40

Well, here's what I think. I think the Saudis – I think the Saudis are kind of honor bound to point them at the Israelis. I do too. You can't be the Saudis and be pointing missiles at the Iranians. And I think Yemen is in their calculation too.

Aaron 43:00

Yemen's far more accessible to them just by airstrikes. I mean they've already engaged in airstrikes in Yemen.

Jeffrey 43:05

True, but Yemen also has a pretty healthy ballistic missile force. That's true. Of North Korean and – I don't know where they got the SS-21s. But the Yemenis have a bunch of ballistic missiles and if that government – I think they were – I think when the – how do you say it? Is it Houthis? The Houthis, I think.

I actually don't know how to pronounce it. Well, you're the regionalist, not me. When they took the capital, I think they moved the missiles. But you can imagine those missiles falling into hands that are pretty threatening. I think the Saudis care about the Iranians first and the Yemenis second, but that they can't not put the Israelis on the list.

Aaron 43:52

Yeah, even if it's just one.

Jeffrey 43:54

I mean it's embarrassing if they don't and would be prudent anyway. But I don't think the Israelis are driving this openness. I think it's – yeah, wanting to deter Iran.

Aaron 44:09

I completely agree. And one thing I would have added to your piece is the cruise missile aspect. We're a big fan of cruise missiles on this show. We are. And I've been the guy covering that missile sale as best I can. I know. So you have a few posts for it, sort of vintage arms control from the archives.

Yeah. About their import of cruise missiles as well. So I think you call this a strategic dyad.

Jeffrey 44:32

Yeah, you know, one of the things that really struck me with the Storm Shadow purchase, and the Saudis were really cagey about that, right? So the UK and France make this fancy cruise missile called Storm Shadow in the UK and Scalp in France. If you look at the comments, Francois Heisberg apparently takes credit for naming it Scalp.

Scalp? Yeah, well, because we had a tomahawk. And his thought was that that was very American to be focused on the object. And he was focused on the objective. And if you have a tomahawk, what is it you really want? It's like you want a scalp.

Aaron 45:12

For all this time, I thought it was some French acronym that I could never understand.

Jeffrey 45:16

It is a French acronym, but he picked it because he wanted to echo tomahawk.

Aaron 45:23

Okay, and then they sell this thing to Saudi.

Jeffrey 45:25

Well, so the French sold Scalp to the UAE under the name Black Shaheen, and it clearly violated, in my view, the MTCR. And we objected, and there's a whole back and forth. We can talk about it. We were nominally upset because of the MTCR, but I think we were really upset because it has some stealth characteristics. And there's some reason to think that the French may have sold a non-stealthy version to the UAE.

So that's a whole other thing. But then the Saudis were like, hey, wait, if you're going to sell this to the UAE, what about us? Yeah. And so they bought them via the British.

Aaron 46:04

Right. And one thing I found, it's for delivery via their American-supplied aircraft, correct?

Jeffrey 46:11

Or British? British. British. Okay. Although I think they would – what I think they would – yeah, it was for their tornado. It's part of the tornado sustainment program. Okay. But what the Saudis are doing, which actually I don't blame them for one bit, is they're using these purchases to lever – Capabilities out. So if the British had said, no, we won't give you storm shadow, then I think the Saudis would have said, Hmm, maybe we don't need the Tornado upgrade.

Maybe we'll put that money toward a different fighter that we'll buy from somebody altogether different, right?

Aaron 46:55

And then the British are like, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Jeffrey 46:57

You said Storm Shadow. Yes, yes, yes. That'll be quite fine. Yeah, that's fine. And I know they do that to us, too.

Aaron 47:06

And, you know, I don't blame them, right? I mean... They got the biggest purse in the region, you know? You get a little discount when you buy in bulk.

Jeffrey 47:13

Yeah, you know, don't hate the player. Hate the game.

Aaron 47:16

I don't hate... It just brings to think we have a whole bunch of conventional missiles now in Saudi Arabia. What does it mean? I mean they have air launch cruise missiles and now ground-based and medium-range ballistic missiles.

Jeffrey 47:28

Yeah, so this goes back to something Khaled said in his book Desert Warrior, which is mostly an account of his time as the commander in the Gulf War. He was the – he's nominally Schwarzkopf's equal, right? Although – Well, I'll just say he was nominally Schwarzkopf's equal. Yeah, enough said. He said that when the Iraqis started firing missiles at the Saudis, obviously that was the point at which you would, like, take out the DF-3s and retaliate, right?

Right. Like, what are they for if not for, like, oh, hey, we're being hit with conventional missiles. We should retaliate. Khaled argues that they, although they took the DF-3s out and got them ready, they didn't fuel them, which would have required firing them. His argument was the king decided that they were too inaccurate. He didn't say it quite that directly.

He said the risk of civilian casualties was too high. But he made the argument that There was that reluctance to use them. And so that would suggest to me the reason to pursue both new ballistic missiles that are much more accurate, because even though these had the new improved Israeli guidance sets, they still weren't that accurate, or to buy something like Storm Shadow.

And so now they have these two conventional systems that are reasonably precise, which would allow them to hold targets at risk. I should say, by the way, as proud as I am of following the Storm Shadow sale, Doug, I guess it's Barry, at Aviation Week, did a great job of covering this and wrote a ton of stories about it.

And so he should totally get credit for being the best source on this.

Aaron 49:17

Well, how do you think that then they would use them? We'll probably wrap up here. It's like, how would they then use the strategic dyad? So we know how they're going to use highly accurate conventional cruise missiles, you Command and control, leadership bunkers, you name it. What about these medium-range ballistic missiles?

Jeffrey 49:35

I think they will try to use them in exactly the same way. I mean, I think they want to be able to threaten... They want to be able to threaten the supreme leader and the IRGC so that if they muck around with the Saudis, that they have some capacity to target them. And I think they look at what Saddam did with the War of the Cities, and I think terrorizing the people of Tehran doesn't really appeal to them.

And so they don't want to do that.

Aaron 50:04

Hence the need for accuracy.

Jeffrey 50:05

And hence the need for something that they have a reasonable – Believe could disable a runway or destroy a port or knock out a headquarters building. And so I think they'll use those in a complementary way, which is why I think of them as a strategic dyad. Although I'm sure the Air Force and the Missile Force don't think of them as complementary.

They think of the other one as being redundant to the national capability that they have.

Aaron 50:36

Because that's the way I was thinking about it. You know, it's It's that the air force is – they have capable weapons. They would probably think of themselves as being able to carry out those missions with airstrikes either from gravity bombs or from cruise missiles. Do you think that it's possible that these missiles serve as a way of conventional deterrence?

So don't fire a missile at our cities because we can hit your cities too. Sort of in the way that we had it with nuclear weapons albeit on a conventional level.

Jeffrey 51:07

Yes, except for I think that the Saudis have now concluded that the ability to target a city is not an effective deterrent for them because they will be restrained by the fear of civilian casualties. So yes, they want to say don't rocket our cities. If you do, we'll blow up your palace. Right. That's the nature of the exchange, which I think is really interesting because if you go all the way back to this in the early 1980s, We didn't think countries would be interested in conventionally armed missiles because they were too inaccurate.

And then we were surprised that these countries were suddenly interested in conventionally armed missiles, even though they were inaccurate. And what's interesting about the story is now those countries, having been interested and acquired them, have said, hey, you know what? You were right all along. We need more accurate missiles than the ones we bought in the 80s.

And they're acquiring them. And they're acquiring them. And so it's a wonderful... Story, I think, about a diffusion of a particular technology that follows a set of beliefs, right? So we didn't think that Middle Eastern dictators would be psyched by missiles. It turns out they were. The missiles had precisely the downsides that we said they did, but that didn't stop them.

But over time, they've come to agree with us that they were too inaccurate to be used, and they've tried to replace them with increasingly more accurate missiles. And, you The Saudis, I think, are actually converging on a set of strategic conventional capabilities that actually might be useful.

Aaron 52:47

Yeah, and they have friends in the Gulf who are doing exactly the same thing, but that's for another podcast. That's a teaser for the new year.

Jeffrey 52:54

Yeah, new year. We're going to have some fun stuff about their friends in the Gulf.

Aaron 52:59

That's right. So we always try to end on a positive note except for last week's one, which was gloomy. It was the European movie ending. What's the positive note here? I mean where is this going with the new Saudi missile force out in the open? What are the big takeaways you think we should have here?

Jeffrey 53:14

Well, you know, I don't know if it's positive or if it's negative. I just think that it's interesting that the Iranian missile capabilities have provoked this response in Saudi Arabia. And I think we often have this kind of very alarmist response that, oh, the Saudis are going to build nuclear weapons. And then maybe down the road they might or they might be interested in it or they might consider it and dismiss it as too hard.

But I think while we focus so much on this long-term possibility that the Saudis will proliferate, we kind of ignore what the Saudis have really done, right? Which is the Saudis went and acquired really capable, conventionally armed missile systems. And I suspect that because we ignored them and because those systems are more capable, that the Saudis have now decided like, hey, you didn't get the message with the glass case?

Okay, we'll do a parade, right? And maybe if the parade doesn't get through, maybe we'll get a test launch or something.

Aaron 54:08

To be honest, I find it to be – it's like evolutionary in the way we fight wars. I even think in the 1980s, I mean we were still talking about nuclear war in Europe. I mean now that – well, the idea that you would use such an indiscriminate weapon to achieve military objectives nowadays is just unfathomable. And it seems like it's dropped down to other countries, even the ones that don't have nuclear weapons as well.

So is this sort of on the trajectory of nuclear weapons becoming more obsolete in favor of highly precise conventional weapons?

Jeffrey 54:44

Boy, that sounds like a paper you're writing, Aaron.

Aaron 54:46

It does because that's my stanton. But what it is is I just find this fascinating, this whole thing. If the Saudis really believe this, they actually think it's a positive thing, not a negative thing. It's good for proliferation. Maybe next week on the Arms Control Wonk podcast. We're going to end it there on that teaser because it's somewhat a positive note.

Decrease in emphasis on nuclear weapons, increase on conventional. At least less people will die.

Jeffrey 55:15

That was fun.

Aaron 55:16

Yeah. All right. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Thanks, Jeffrey, for guiding us through Saudi Arabia here. And make sure to check out this piece on NTI.