As Qi Yiming had expected, the National Day military parade demonstrated China's military power and national defense equipment construction level to the outside world, and also triggered a small wave of arms exports.
At this time, Kuwait ordered a considerable amount of army weapons from China. The order included 20 VNll tracked infantry fighting vehicles and 20 VT-IA main battle tanks. The total contract value was US$600 million, which is high quality and low price. Originally, Chinese weapons also faced some competitors in Kuwait. For example, Kuwait was originally more inclined to purchase the Soviet Union's BNP2 infantry fighting vehicle. However, after an on-site inspection of the Chinese-made VNll, it was believed that the VNll has stronger combat effectiveness at a similar price and in terms of workmanship. In terms of precision, quality reliability, and electronic level, BNP2 and VNlIf are not from the same era at all.
In fact, it is essentially correct. VNll is the main product of Norinco in the second decade of the 21st century in another dimension. The gap is as much as 20 to 30 years.
The competitor that the VT-IA main battle tank faces is Yugoslavia's M84 main battle tank. This tank is actually developed from the Soviet-made T2. It has certain advantages in firepower and on-board systems, but its foundation is still that of the T2. Compared with the standard third-generation tank like VT-IA, the Adou, which cannot be lifted up, is still far behind. Even the price of VT-IA is not much more expensive than T2 and cheaper than the M84 sold in Yugoslavia, so the Kuwaitis naturally chose Chinese tanks.
After Qi Yiming learned about it, he felt that there were some other factors involved. Last year, AVIC independently participated in a bidding event for the Kuwait Air Force. The Xiaolong produced by them competed with the A180B fighter jointly launched by McDonnell Douglas and Northrop for this large order of nearly US$200 million (including weapons systems).
There is a little problem with AVIC's positioning. It is still playing the low-price card here in Kuwait. Although after improvements, the price of Xiaolong has gradually risen from 800,000 to Bc11's 1.06 million and then to l1 million, but it is still only about B18 Half the price of a Bumblebee. If Xiaolong fights against Bumblebee, in a pure dog fight, the winning rate is probably less than 6, which is slightly weaker than Bumblebee, but compared with the cost performance, Bumblebee is far behind.
But Kuwait was not short of money, and finally gave the order for 40 fighter jets to the Americans. Cheng Fei was very unhappy when he saw that the order of 1.9 billion US dollars fell into the pockets of the Americans.
After China has repeatedly made a splash in the international arena, many small countries have positioned China as a powerful object that needs to be currying favor with. Especially small but wealthy countries like Kuwait must engage in more balanced policies and serve several big countries well. After learning that China was dissatisfied with the loss of its air force order, Kuwait became more inclined to Chinese products in the subsequent army bidding, and finally gave the US$600 million order to China without much trouble, which was somewhat of a compensation. .
Qi Yiming also has other concerns. In a few days, Saddam will attack Kuwait. Kuwait will inevitably be defeated by then. It is impossible for Kuwait to master combat effectiveness in such a short period of time. If these infantry combat vehicles and main battle tanks fall into the hands of Iraq, it will obviously be unpleasant and may affect the image of China's export of weapons. Therefore, Qi Yiming decided to delay the delivery as much as possible, or else Just deliver part of the small batch first, and don't let the war affect your arms business.
Another close neighbor of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, one of the main export markets for Chinese arms, has once again taken a fancy to high-quality and low-priced Chinese arms. Although Saudi Arabia did not go through Prince Sultan's old method this time, but replaced people from the army to purchase weapons, Shenghua still meant it and gave some relevant people some money, but the amount was not as huge as Prince Sultan's. . It seems that corruption is not a big deal without enough status.
What Saudi Arabia is interested in this time is the infantry fighting vehicle produced by China. The increasingly chaotic regional situation has made Saudi Arabia more and more eager to build a powerful army that can defend itself and maintain its regional status. There has gradually been a recognition in the military circles that That is, the Chinese Army is the strongest ground force in the world. They have strict discipline, advanced tactics, and weapons and equipment that are obviously better than other countries. Therefore, even Saudi Arabia is unwilling to allocate too many weapons orders to China. , but they believe more in buying powerful Chinese infantry fighting vehicles, rather than choosing the Piranha from Movague in Switzerland.
In fact, the Piranha is not bad, and multiple models of the Piranha armored vehicle are sold around the world, and the US military is also its main service target (the US military model L20, and later the Stryker infantry fighting vehicle was developed based on the Piranha. Piranha) The secret to the continued success of the Mermaid armored vehicle lies in its optimal load-carrying ratio and internal and external space ratio. Many armored vehicles are much larger than the Piranha and Stryker, but the internal space is more cramped than the Piranha, and the Piranha also has excellent features. The design of the power system and suspension device also takes into account many possibilities, such as airborne and terrain adaptability.
However, Piranha¡¯s competitor is the highly integrated and modular NIP multi-functional infantry vehicle. Basically, NIP has all the advantages of the Piranha armored vehicle. However, NIP also has capabilities that Piranha does not have. So?It is the ability to replace task packages in a short time. In as little as eight hours, the NIP of a personnel carrier mission package can be replaced with an air defense mission package or an anti-armor mission package. There are more than ten different types of mission packages to choose from, which means that as long as you purchase these car bodies, you can actually be qualified for several or even a dozen jobs.
And in terms of price, the multifunctional infantry vehicle is basically at the same price point as the Piranha, but in terms of advanced features, the Piranha cannot be compared with the NIP, so it is natural for the Saudis to choose the multifunctional infantry vehicle produced by China Shenghua.
This order is also an eye-catching big one. Saudi Arabia¡¯s overall plan is to purchase a total of 156 wheeled armored vehicles within ten years, including B-wheel, 6-wheel and 4-wheel vehicles of different shapes. This is very important to Qi Yiming. It is not a problem, NIP can choose to adjust to six wheels or four wheels.
It is indeed normal for such a large quantity to take ten years to manufacture and deliver, but even if Qi Yiming does not fully use the manufacturing capacity of the base and only uses the production capacity of domestic military enterprises to supply Saudi Arabia, it will not take that long. Therefore, Qi Yiming took the initiative to shorten the delivery time during the negotiation, which also surprised the Saudis.
RNIPV is priced at US$1 million, and Saudi Arabia plans to purchase 700 units; UNIPV is US$20,000, and Saudi Arabia plans to purchase 60 units; HNIPV is priced at US$560,000, and the purchase quantity is 30 units. The total contract value is US$200 million. Shenghua promises to deliver all NIP multifunctional infantry fighting vehicles within four years.
In fact, based on the output of the base, if all the tank factories are fully activated, these infantry fighting vehicles can be manufactured in about two or three days. However, that is too amazing, so Qi Yiming did not allocate a quota for the production of the base. It is to supplement the production capacity of the base, because he signed a relatively strict delivery agreement with Saudi Arabia. If the manufacturers under Shenghua cannot deliver all the goods on time, then Qi Yiming will start the base to produce the missing infantry fighting vehicles in that phase. Complete.
The reason for this is that such large orders will promote the entire industrial chain, including steel, electronics, military industry, composite materials and other industries that are in chaos. They will create a large number of jobs and allow these companies to quickly accumulate experience and mature. , the lives of employees in companies with good profits will be improved, and tax revenue and profits will also be created. If it is left to the base, Qi Yiming will basically pocket all the US dollars sent by Saudi Arabia, and there will not be much benefit, and all he will get is financial returns.
It is worth mentioning that the NIP sold to Saudi Arabia is also a downgraded version, and there is still a big gap with the full version of the NIP from the real base. For example, the armor strength produced by the base is at least as strong as that of the products produced by Shenghua Military Vehicle Factory. More than double, the bigger gap lies in electronic products. Although the version obtained by Saudi Arabia also has relatively excellent inter-vehicle communication and data link systems, the base-produced version has a more powerful mission computer and more convenient functions. Attack The ability improvement effect is obvious.
It is said that the NIP obtained by Saudi Arabia has a data link system called "Sand Scorpion". There is no additional charge for the data link terminal on each multi-functional infantry vehicle. This is also a point that the Saudis are satisfied with, because if there are thousands of sets of data link The terminal and the entire system will require additional calculations. Once you calculate this amount, you will know that at least Saudi Arabia will have to pay more than 100 million US dollars.
The Sand Scorpion integrated data link system is actually a military-wide integrated data link system developed by Qi Yiming's base specifically for export to Saudi Arabia. It is about two generations lower than the current Chinese tactical data link system "Feilian" and is similar to The US military's Ltuk6 is about the same level. This new set of data links can be integrated into weapons such as fighter jets, rocket launchers and infantry fighting vehicles sold by China to Saudi Arabia, and only requires a simple system upgrade. Of course, to complete the upgrade of the data link system, it will naturally cost an upgrade fee. Considering that Saudi Arabia is equipped with approximately hundreds of Chinese aircraft and a large amount of other equipment, it may cost as much as B600 million to complete the upgrade of the Sand Scorpion system.
Of course, the money spent is definitely worth it. If the Sand Scorpion system is integrated into all Saudi equipment, it will at least increase the combat efficiency of the Saudi army by more than half. In fact, this Sand Scorpion system was foreshadowed by Qi Yiming. If Saudi Arabia purchases any more weapons, it will have to use the power of Chinese military industrial enterprises to integrate the Sand Scorpion data terminals. Obviously some countries will not be happy to let China control them. product parameters. Then the best option is to buy Chinese products directly.
For example, the Saudi Army uses the same system for infantry fighting vehicles and artillery. As a result, the main battle tanks cannot communicate effectively because they are American-made, which causes a lot of waste and losses. So Qi Yiming did something like this. The purpose of giving Saudi Arabia a data link system common to the entire military for free is to completely tie Saudi Arabia to tanks with Chinese-made weapons.