Missiles for sale

The ILA Berlin Air Show - which took place from May 20 - 25 - was a grand day out. Children clutching ice creams and airplane enthusiasts munching bratwursts admired the bi-planes as they looped languidly through the blue sky. Or else they wandered around the airstrip behind the German capital's incomplete new airport and admired the Eurofighter Typhoons, the immense US and Russian cargo planes, and the Bundeswehr's drone launchers.

Each aircraft came with its own ground crew, standing around in the sunshine in their sunglasses, only too happy to answer questions: "She's an old bird," one British crewman said proudly of his RAF Tornado fighter. "She flew in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya - pretty much anywhere where there's conflict the first thing they send in is the Tornados."

The pavilions, meanwhile, were filled with the latest hardware: German Tiger combat helicopters, new surveillance drones, whose automatic avoidance sensors were demonstrated by an officer from the Federal Office of Bundeswehr Equipment, Information Technology and In-Service Support (BAAINBw). The aerospace pavilion, on the other hand, contained weapons for shooting down aircraft - many exhibited by Turkish companies, Turkey being ILA's partner country this year.

Business before pleasure

For as well as being a family day out, the ILA is also a military trade fair. There's no ice cream to be had on first three days of the fair's six-day run, because it's closed to the public so the arms deals can be signed in peace. Among these was a "Memorandum of Understanding" between the German arm of European missile manufacturers MBDA and Turkish company Roketsan.

The deal means that the two companies will exchange "business and technical information for a guided weapon system" - so that Roketsan's 70mm missiles can be fired from Germany's Tiger helicopters. Roketsan's laser-guided rockets are said to be a more accurate upgrade. "It's been discussed for some time that the Bundeswehr wants to integrate a laser-guided rocket into the Tiger," MBDA spokesman Wolfram Lautner told DW. "MBDA Germany has good knowledge of the Tiger platform because we also integrated other missiles on to it."

Closed for business

The MBDA pavilion was closed altogether, though the ILA visitors were welcome to inspect the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) - air defense rocket launchers mounted on a truck outside, as well as the missiles displayed around it. Jürgen Grässlin, veteran peace campaigner and author of "Black-book Weapons Trade - How Germany Profits from War" was definitely not a welcome guest. "They recognized my name on my pass, but they couldn't really place it, then they told me I could come back later when some presentation was over," he told DW. "When I came back they said they'd done some research, and there was no way I could go in. They said I'm the kind of person that thinks only in black and white. So I said, 'well, let's talk about the gray areas.' "

As Grässlin puts it, "MBDA isn't just any company." It is one of Europe's leading arms exporters, and not only to Germany's allies in the EU or NATO. The press release that publicized the Roketsan deal announces, "With more than 90 armed forces customers in the world, MBDA is a world leader in missiles and missile systems."

"We stick to all the relevant laws, both in France and in Germany," Lautner told DW. "In Germany there are clear laws on where things can be exported. And we only do deals with the permits from the authorities and the ministries."

The company representative at the pavilion wanted to convince Grässlin that MBDA's systems - such as MEADS - are primarily defensive. But he was not so sure. "The problem is if these so-called air defense systems are set up in Poland or elsewhere by NATO, then the Russians always say, 'they're really close to us so they can fire at us," he said.

Libyan affair

In 2013 alone, the MBDA group - which includes plants in Germany, France, Britain, Italy, and the US - sold military hardware worth 10.8 billion euros ($14.7 billion) around the world. One of its most problematic sales was of a consignment of shoulder-mounted MILAN rockets in 2009 and 2010 -"Lethal against all visible targets at ranges up to 3,000 m," as the brochure boasts - to Moammar Gadhafi. The Libyan dictator's army duly used these against the rebel forces when the Arab Spring broke out in 2011.

At the same time, says Grässlin, "MBDA also sold weapons to the emirate of Qatar, who sent them to the rebels in Libya - in other words, both sides were firing at each other with exactly the same MBDA weapons." Meanwhile the firm's joint largest shareholder Airbus manufactured the Eurofighters and Tornados that NATO used to bomb Gadhafi's forces when it imposed its no-fly zone.

Lautner denied that the firm had ever sold directly to Gadhafi: "The systems that turned up in Libya - it hasn't really been cleared up which countries sold things to Libya," he said. "We can't judge that as a company." Nevertheless, as Grässlin pointed out, they didn't sue him when he included this episode in his book. "They unscrupulously do arms deals with dictators and rebels and NATO - there's no company more uninhibited than MBDA," he said.