Qatar Military

Qatar is a country located in Western Asia and is bordered by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, and the Persian Gulf. It has a population of around 2.7 million people and the official language is Arabic. The majority of the population are Muslim, with some other religious denominations such as Christianity also present.

The military of Qatar consists of three branches; Army, Navy, and Air Force. The total active personnel in the military are around 11,800 people. The Army has around 8,500 personnel with a focus on ground operations and border protection. It also has a Navy with 1,500 personnel for naval operations as well as 35 combat vessels for maritime defense missions within Qatari waters. The Air Force has 2,800 personnel with 85 combat aircrafts for air support operations and air defense missions within Qatari borders. Qatar is also part of NATO’s collective defense system as well as participating in United Nations peacekeeping missions. See naturegnosis to learn more about the country of Qatar.

Defense

The defense of Qatar encompasses (2010) 12,000 men enlisted and is organized into five mechanized battalions, seven fighters, 18 fighter aircraft and 20 armed helicopters. The material is modern and of Western, mainly French, origin. See clothingexpress.org for Qatar overview.

Defense costs decreased in 1985-2008 from 6.0% to 1.8% of GDP, compared to the period during the Kuwait War when they amounted to 14%. The United Kingdom has four transport aircraft stationed in Qatar. The United States has 300 men from Central Command and equipment for a mechanized brigade located in the country. Qatar participates in UN peacekeeping operations with observers in Lebanon (UNIFIL). To see related acronyms about this country, please check AbbreviationFinder where you can see that QAT stands for Qatar.

Qatar Army

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Qatar’s defense overview

Qatar has military service with 12 months of first-time service for men, and voluntary military service for women. Qatar is a member of the Gulf Council, but after the crisis in 2017, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties with the country linked to stronger defense political ties with Turkey. Qatar still has a military alliance with the United States.

The total force figures for Qatar’s armed forces are 16,500 active personnel (2018, IISS). In addition, about 5000 semi-military forces are arriving. The United States has 10,000 personnel, and bombers, reconnaissance aircraft, tankers, transport aircraft, drones, anti-aircraft missile batteries and radar systems in Qatar.

Army

The army has a workforce of 12,000 active personnel. Material comprising 62 tanks of a Leopard 2, 44 reconnaissance vehicles, 40 armored vehicles, 190 armored personnel carriers, 24 armored fighters, 52 self-propelled artillery, heavy artillery, and ballistic missiles short range and conventional warheads.

Air Force

The Air Force has a workforce of 2,000 active personnel. Material comprising 12 fighter central Mirage 2000, 18 transport, 27 trainers (which six central Alpha Jet, which can also be used as attack aircraft), and 46 helicopters. The Air Force also has short range air defense missiles.

The Navy

The Navy had a staff of 2,500 active personnel, including the Coast Guard. The fleet comprises 23 patrol vessels, 12 of which are in the Coast Guard.

Qatar’s ambiguous regional policy

Thanks to the credibility gained with al-Jazeera and the image of a small state with a harmless appearance, Qatar, under the leadership of Hamad bin Khalifa, has begun to carve out its own role in the region, weaving a dense network of international contacts and alliances, often also in apparent contradiction between them. Despite being an Arab country with a Sunni majority, with a prominent place in the Gulf Cooperation Council (Gcc), Qatar has business relations (aimed at sharing energy resources in common) with the Shiite state of Iran, which have recently been reduced due to the support offered by Tehran to the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. At the same time – and despite the freezing of relations following the ‘Cast Lead’ operation conducted in the Gaza Strip – Qatar is the only Gulf country to have cautiously opened up to the state of Israel, hosting an Israeli trade delegation on its territory. Although an important military base for US fighters arises just outside the capital, Qatar is home to one of the very few diplomatic representations of the Afghan Taliban. With the onset of the Arab Springs, Qatar intensified its diplomatic activity, taking the opportunity to gain a greater international position. In addition to having supported the intervention Born in favor of the rebels in Libya by sending its own special forces and fighters, Doha has poured billions of dollars into the coffers of revolutionary political groups close to the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia and Egypt, placing itself as a great supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood all over the world Arabic. In Syria, he supported the groups linked to them, becoming, until 2013, the main sponsor of the rebellion against the Bashar al-Assad regime and launching a direct challenge to Saudi Arabia for regional leadership and in particular the Sunni world. However, the fall of President Morsi in Egypt has reversed the situation allowing Saudi Arabia and UAE to take back the reins of leadership regional through support for the current Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and removing the leadership of the Syrian opposition from Qatar. In the following months, the tension between Doha and the other members of the GCC – primarily Saudi Arabia – reached very high levels, in particular with the temporary withdrawal of the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain from the Qatari capital in March 2014. Qatar has now settled on a more moderate policy and less in open challenge to the other traditional regional powers, while retaining some of the independence and activism characteristic of the last decades. As evidence of the renewed relations with Saudi Arabia, in 2015 he participated with about a thousand soldiers in the coalition led by Riyadh, which intervened in Yemen alongside President Hadi against the Shiite Houthi rebels.