research How to find the weapon in-service date for countries recieving exported weapons

[Pikey]

Hi,

If you wish to know when a non-US country first had access to a specific weapon, read on. You might want to pick a specific year for a country and Wikipedia doesn't tell you anything more than the native country's in-service date. E.g. AIM-9L in-service 1976, sold to Egypt in 1983-87 and Israel 1980.

DCS Historic mode generally finds the in service date for the native producer of a weapon. However, a lot of third world (cold war non-aligned) countries made purchases and were provided with older weapons than the US deemed current.

The period of the Cold war saw a lot of exporting of military equipment in order to satisfy political policy. So historical mode is often inaccurate for dates that apply to the importer. Not surprising, the details of this are painful to find.

May I present, The Stockholm International Peace Research Institue (SIPRI) https://www.sipri.org/

Thanks to these folks, you can check the versions, arrival year and quantity. Sometimes there's bonus material in the comments like which airframe the missile was intended for. For example, Israel received 376 AIM-7E's from 1976-1982 but the comments say they were intended for their F-15 stock.

So there's two simple steps for getting a list of exports sales from the Sipri database before you can nerd away with your scenarios.

To download a list of exports from one country to another

1. Visit https://armstrade.sipri.org/armstrade/page/trade_register.php

2. Enter the Supplier, Recipient, year range and weapon system type
3. Check the radio box Print register of Suppliers
4. Download the rtf file.

The rtf file is a load of unreadable garbage to any word processor built this century, so we need another set of steps to convert it to a readable PDF.

To convert the rtf file to something readable

1. Visit https://products.groupdocs.app/viewer/total

2. Drag the rtf file from your browsers download folder onto the groupdocs app viewer where it says 'or drag it in this box'.
3. Once processed, In the top right of the screen will appear download PDF.

You can now work out questions like, "Did Egypt have access to AIM-7E before 1979?" Or, "What version of Sidewinder did Iran have?" And use a source that, whether it's wrong or right, is not worth contesting without a lot of effort. Answer the nerd call! Know things! Sound like a CMO database in human form! Then wonder why the USAF say the AIM-9J in service was 1977^^ https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104557/aim-9-sidewinder/ .

Enjoy!