ABSTRACT
Nearly every country in the Asia-Pacific region manufactures some kind of arms, but the type, quantity, and quality of weaponry produced vary widely. In some cases, armaments production is relatively inconsequential, consigned to relatively “low-tech” types of weapons systems, i.e., small arms (rifles and pistols), ammunition, armored cars, aluminum-hulled patrol boats, and the like. Moreover, much of this manufacturing is based on the assembly of foreign weapons systems, such as the licensed-production of US M16 assault rifles or the putting together of imported kits for helicopters or armored vehicles. Consequently, most Asian-Pacific arms manufacturers could at best be described as “third-tier” producer-states, occupying the lowest strata in the global hierarchy of arms-producing states. That said, there exist a few countries in the region – so-called “second-tier” producer-states – that are heavily (or increasingly) engaged in arms manufacturing and which have built up quite extensive, and in some areas quite sophisticated, indigenous arms industries, capable of designing, developing, and manufacturing their own weapons systems.1 These are generally of three types: (1) technologically advanced industrialized countries that produce a limited array of state-of-the-art weapons systems (e.g., Japan); (2) newly industrialized economies containing modest (but growing, both in terms of range of production and military capabilities) militaryindustrial complexes (e.g., Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan); and (3) rising great powers with large, broad-based defense industries, but which are still lacking in certain areas of indigenous research and development (R&D) and industrial capacities when it comes to developing and producing highly sophisticated conventional arms (e.g., China and India).2 It is this rather catholic grouping of second-tier Asian-Pacific producer-states that we are most concerned with in this book.
