Andean Group - March 2008 (ISSN 1741-4466)

On 27 February the US's top two intelligence officials claimed that Venezuela was buying more arms than it needed. After making so strong a statement, however, the two intelligence officials were notably cautious about guessing what President Hugo Chávez was going to do with this weaponry. Significantly, they rated Venezuela only as a concern for the US, not a threat to it.

The two officials, who were testifying to the Senate's Armed Forces Committee on future threats to US security, were much less wild in their claims than the politicians who were questioning them.

Neither John Michael McConnell, director of National Intelligence, nor General Michael D Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, assented to the proposition, advanced by Senator Mel Martí­nez (R, Florida), that Venezuela was seeking to destabilise US allies such as Colombia by supporting the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc).

The officials admitted that this could be happening, but said they did not have clear evidence that it was. Nor did the intelligence officers agree that President Chávez was using the weapons to arm his supporters to intimidate the domestic opposition to his government.

McConnell, who is responsible for the Central Intelligence Agency, said that Venezuela was probably buying "three or four times" the amount of weapons it needed. He said that Venezuela was now seeking to buy submarines and anti-aircraft missiles after spending at least US$3bn on Russian aircraft and guns. McConnell said that these deals were worth much more than the maintenance contracts agreed with Iran, but he added that Venezuela was seeking advice on nuclear technology from Iran.

It is worth noting, however, that Venezuela's armed forces are still numerically small. The army comprises 34,000 men, but only just over 20% of that number (7,000) are regulars. The rest are conscripts. Colombia, by contrast, has 114,000 regulars and a further 30,000 conscripts.

Venezuela is making up for this by buying better equipment. It is interested in Russia's most modern fighter jet, the Sukhoi-35, which Russia has just started to market to customers in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

Venezuela has already ordered Sukhoi-30s and had announced that it would be interested in Sukhoi-35s whenever the Russians started to sell them. With the international oil price back at US$100 per barrel, Venezuela has the cash to buy at least a squadron of the fighters, which will further alarm the US.

The Sukhoi-35's key test flight was on 19 February. Mikhail Pogosián, the head of Sukhoi production team, said that the company should have aircraft to sell by 2010 or 2011. Currently there is only one prototype that has been built.

Separately, a report in a specialist journal, Military Procurement International, claimed that the Venezuelan air force had been upset to find that its Sukhoi-30s were second-hand and had previously been rejected by the Chinese air force. Algeria had also been annoyed to find that what the Russians had sold to it as new MIG-29s were in fact cobbled together from old planes. As a result, Algeria has stopped buying weapons from Roxoboronexport, which markets Russian military equipment.