Al Yamamah is the name of a series of record arms sales by the United Kingdom to Saudi Arabia, paid for by the delivery of up to 600,000 barrels (95,000 m3) of crude oil per day to the British government. The prime contractor has been BAE Systems and its predecessor British Aerospace. The first sales occurred in September 1985 and the most recent contract for 72 Eurofighter Typhoon multirole fighters was signed in August 2006.
A central part of the Al Yamamah deal was the sale of Tornado fighters to the Royal Saudi Air Force.
BAE Systems plc is a British multinational aerospace, defence and information security company, based in London, England. It is the biggest manufacturer in Britain as of 2017. It is the largest defence contractor in Europe and the seventh-largest in the world based on applicable 2021 revenues. Its largest operations are in the United Kingdom and in the United States, where its BAE Systems Inc. subsidiary is one of the six largest suppliers to the US Department of Defense. Its next biggest markets are Saudi Arabia, then Australia; other major markets include Canada, Japan, India, Turkey, Qatar, Oman and Sweden. The company was formed on 30 November 1999 by the £7.7 billion purchase of and merger of Marconi Electronic Systems (MES), the defence electronics and naval shipbuilding subsidiary of the General Electric Company plc (GEC), with British Aerospace, an aircraft, munitions and naval systems manufacturer.
Supermarine, the manufacturer of the Spitfire, was a predecessor company of BAE Systems. It was purchased by Vickers-Armstrongs, which itself was merged into the British Aircraft Corporation in 1960.
The Astute-class submarine project caused BAE to issue a profit warning in 2002 and invest £250 million to overcome its difficulties.
BAE's £2.5 billion purchase of United Defense in 2005 added the M2/M3 Bradley family of armoured vehicles to its product line.
BAE Systems Maritime – Naval Ships built the Type 45 destroyer. Other subsidiaries of BAE supplied the naval gun and SAMPSON and S1850M radars for the class