{"id":425,"date":"2007-09-26T04:41:51","date_gmt":"2007-09-26T12:41:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bbrace.laughingsquid.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2007\/09\/26\/thailand-to-buy-foreign-arms\/"},"modified":"2007-09-26T04:41:51","modified_gmt":"2007-09-26T12:41:51","slug":"thailand-to-buy-foreign-arms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/?p=425","title":{"rendered":"Thailand to buy foreign arms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thailand&#8217;s post-coup government has approved the 6.7 billion baht purchase of Israeli guns, Ukrainian armoured vehicles and Chinese missiles, a cabinet spokesman said.<\/p>\n<p>The army would spend 960 million baht on 15,000 rifles and 259 million baht on 992 sub-machine guns from Israel, Nattawat Suthiyothin said after a cabinet meeting.<\/p>\n<p>The cabinet also approved 3.9 billion baht for 96 Ukraine-built BTR-3E1 armoured personnel vehicles, produced by state-owned Kharkiv Morozov Machine Building Design Bureau, after heavy lobbying by Russia, China, and Canada failed.<\/p>\n<p>The navy would pay 1.6 billion baht for ground-to-ground missiles from China, Nattawat said without giving further details.<\/p>\n<p>The military, which ousted elected Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a bloodless coup last year, has faced criticism for buying new equipment at a time when Thailand&#8217;s economic growth has slowed due to post-coup political uncertainties.<\/p>\n<p>Defence Minister Boonrawd Somtas told Reuters last month the military needed new tanks, ships, fighter jets and helicopters after the 1997\/98 Asian financial crisis had capped annual defence spending at 80 billion baht in the past decade.<\/p>\n<p>Next year&#8217;s budget allocates 143 billion baht to defence spending.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thailand&#8217;s post-coup government has approved the 6.7 billion baht purchase of Israeli guns, Ukrainian armoured vehicles and Chinese missiles, a cabinet spokesman said. The army would spend 960 million baht on 15,000 rifles and 259 million baht on 992 sub-machine guns from Israel, Nattawat Suthiyothin said after a cabinet meeting. The cabinet also approved 3.9 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","spay_email":""},"categories":[10,11,23,38],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}