The Iran war is exposing the limits of Gulf defence dependence

The appearance of Chinese-made defence systems across the Gulf has attracted significant attention since the outbreak of the Iran conflict. Analysts have pointed to the deployment of Chinese counter-drone systems in the UAE and the growing prominence of Chinese unmanned platforms in regional arsenals as evidence that Beijing is gaining ground in a market long dominated by the United States.

Yet focusing solely on Chinese hardware risks missing the larger lesson. The war has revealed less about China’s rise than about the vulnerabilities embedded within the Gulf’s existing security architecture. For decades, Gulf states have relied on the US for military protection, advanced weapons systems, software support, sustainment and operational integration. The conflict has highlighted the strengths of that model. It has also exposed its limits.

The Gulf remains deeply dependent on US military technology. Saudi Arabia operates one of the world’s largest fleets of US-made combat aircraft outside the US. Patriot batteries remain central to regional air defence. THAAD systems form a critical layer of missile protection. US command-and-control networks continue to underpin the region’s most advanced military capabilities.

Saudi Arabia alone has faced a backlog of some 360 THAAD interceptors, with no deliveries from US production since 2023 as the supply chain prioritises replenishing America’s own stockpile, a gap not expected to close before 2027. The challenge has not been access to advanced systems, but access to sufficient capacity during a period of sustained conflict.

Saudi Arabia’s experience illustrates this challenge at the industrial level. The Kingdom has invested heavily in defence localisation under Vision 2030, seeking to move beyond a procurement-led model towards 50 per cent indigenous capability by 2030. Partnerships with major US defence firms have generated local manufacturing activity, maintenance capacity and workforce development programmes. Yet the most strategically valuable elements of these systems frequently remain under foreign control.

Lockheed Martin’s Riyadh Software Factory demonstrates this. Presented as a platform for sovereign software development, the facility enables Saudi engineers to develop applications for military command-and-control systems. Yet those applications operate within Lockheed Martin’s CommandIQ ecosystem. Saudi personnel gain valuable experience, though the underlying architecture remains proprietary. It is capability development inside a foreign framework rather than ownership of the framework itself.

A similar pattern exists in Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Boeing. The Kingdom has localised significant maintenance activity for its fleet of American aircraft. Yet software upgrades, interface design, systems integration and future modifications remain tied to Boeing’s engineering base in the US, a frustration for Saudi military personnel, as time-consuming maintenance delays can affect readiness and operational effectiveness.

These arrangements are not necessarily evidence of bad faith, but they reflect the commercial logic of advanced defence industries.

The result is enabled dependency, wherein local capability increases in narrow, lower-complexity domains, while the supplier remains indispensable for upgrades, systems integration, software development and the engineering expertise that underpins long-term military effectiveness.

The war has also renewed frustrations that have existed beneath the surface of Gulf-US defence relations for years. Several Saudi practitioners have expressed concern that Gulf partners do not receive access to the same level of technology provided to Israel. American research and development remains widely regarded as unmatched, yet restrictions on technology transfer are increasingly viewed as unsustainable. The US commitment to maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge has long limited the capabilities available to Arab partners, even those that form part of Washington’s closest regional security relationships. The IDF’s operations across Gaza, Lebanon, and the current conflict with Iran have sharpened these frustrations, raising questions over whether the qualitative edge policy remains compatible with the security expectations Washington places on its Arab partners.

This environment has created opportunities for alternative suppliers. China has benefited from this shift, though not because Gulf states are abandoning Washington. Chinese systems offer additional production capacity, lower political friction and greater willingness to discuss local manufacturing arrangements. Saudi Arabia’s earlier acquisition of Wing Loong and CH-4 drones reflected frustrations with restrictions on US drone exports, and reports in March 2026 of a $5 billion agreement between China’s AVIC and Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Military Industries to establish a Wing Loong-3 assembly line in Jeddah, with capacity for around 48 aircraft annually, suggest the relationship is moving beyond procurement towards industrial cooperation. The significance lies less in the platform itself than in the opportunity it provides for local assembly, maintenance and technical expertise.

The same dynamic explains growing Gulf interest in Turkish defence firms. Kuwait signed a $370 million agreement with Baykar for TB2 drones in 2023, while Qatar has been a Turkish UCAV customer since 2018. Since the outbreak of the Iran conflict, reports indicate that Gulf states facing ammunition shortages and persistent drone threats are increasingly turning to Turkish air defence systems as US production backlogs continue. Saudi Arabia’s own engagement with Turkish firms has deepened in parallel, with joint production agreements covering cruise missiles and anti-tank guided missiles now running alongside earlier UCAV purchases.

Despite being a country at war, Kyiv has signed ten-year defence cooperation agreements with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, and Ukrainian specialists are now deployed across five Gulf and Arab states, training local forces to counter the same Iranian-made drones that have struck Ukrainian cities since 2022. Ukrainian interceptors cost a fraction of the Western systems currently being expended against low-cost Iranian drones, and Kyiv’s offer of combat-tested expertise arrives at a moment when Gulf air defence networks are under sustained pressure.

Even Russia retains a foothold. The UAE’s Pantsir-S1 already sits within a layered air defence architecture alongside THAAD, Patriot and Israel’s Barak-8, while Saudi Arabia’s $2.2 billion Pantsir-S1M agreement from 2021 is now being accelerated to protect energy and desalination infrastructure.