$20 million is the reported value of a BAE Systems facility in New Hamphsire, where the publisher of a local newspaper defended the dubious propriety of his BAE-funded blogging trip to Afghanistan—shortly after defending the company against politicians who accused it of war profiteering. Union-Leader publisher Joseph McQuaid is pictured, playing golf in Afghanistan. “I come cheap,” he writes.
$105,075 is the minimum BAE’s American employees have donated to federal campaigns so far in the 2010 election cycle, a contest in which “Afghanistan is a non-issue.”
$878 million is how much BAE agreed to pay earlier this year in penalties in the US and UK over corruption in its deals to sell military aircraft to Saudi Arabia.
$2.5 billion is the estimated value of China’s planned purchase of 50 Russian-made fighter jets, according to the US Defense Department.
$6.4 billion is the value of US arms sales to Taiwan announced earlier this year. The deal, which includes Black Hawk helicopters and Patriot missile defense systems, caused China to call off military exchange programs with the US, threaten sanctions against US defense firms and promote “calls by some People’s Liberation Army officers to dump US Treasury bonds.” The governments are trying to patch it up now.