Russians playing with Javelins: US Army, Russia display weapons yards apart in the desert

IDEX 2023 — If there is one weapon that has become synonymous with Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion, it’s the Javelin — a US-made anti-tank weapon that has been so effective against Russian tanks that it has spawned a whole popular iconography.

So seeing a Russian weapons contractor hoisting one up at a US Army booth must have been a strange sight indeed. 

So it goes at one of the world’s largest weapons shows. Here, under the hot Middle East sun, two countries on opposing sides of the ongoing war inside Ukraine stood virtually side-by-side at the Naval Defence & Security Exposition in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, the sister show to IDEX 2023.

Looming large near the end of a long cement dock was a dark blue building declaring “Russia” in bold letters on the side. Inside were Russian small arms, missiles and models of larger weapon systems. Outside, a variety of full-sized Rostec helicopters sat on display. The Russians weren’t officially listed as exhibitors for IDEX, but announced days before the show they’d have a “separate pavilion,” one larger than all the others outside.

None of it seemed to matter much to a few smiling US Army soldiers, who were manning their own, much simpler tent just a few yards down the dock, showing off a Javelin and an operational Patriot launcher. Over in the US Army’s makeshift display, a white canvas sign, devoid of any US military insignia, listed the bullet points about the “fire and forget” Javelin launcher, while two soldiers donning 116th Cavalry Brigade unit patches fielded curious passersbys’ questions about the weapon. Those interested in trying it out were invited to slide in and look through the weapon’s viewfinder. 

In fact, one soldier told Breaking Defense, a large number of Russians had come over from their booth to check out the US stand — and the mood was, perhaps surprisingly, jovial. So much so, he said, that he traded patches with one Russian.

With dozens of countries and hundreds of exhibition areas at NAVDEX and nearby IDEX, it isn’t abundantly clear how these two foes ended up virtually next to each other this week — separated only by a Turkish boat display. But one US military official not at the event told Breaking Defense the Army’s tent was not planned to send a “strategic competitor” a message.

Col. Armando Hernandez, a public affairs officer with US Central Command, noted that the Army did not select where its display would be located this year, and for shows like this, US services show off capabilities fielded in the region. 

In this case, that meant the Javelin was positioned a stone’s throw from the kind of Russian kit it has helped kill in Ukraine. So was the M903 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) Missile Segment Enhanced, with trainers mounted, “that is operational and provides [a] crucial air and missile defense capability in the USCENTCOM area of operations,” Hernandez added. The Ukrainians are scheduled to get a Patriot in the future, explicitly to defend against the kind of weapons on display just yards away.

International arms expos mean forces on opposing sides of geopolitics can end up in the same place. It’s just not usually quite so striking that two sets of equipment, directly used against each other on the battlefield, would meet just yards apart, one year into the hottest war Europe has seen since 1945.