BEIRUT: Arab states seemed on the right track to improving their ability to operate together in battle in 2018 after creation of the Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA), which includes the six Gulf Arab states, plus Egypt and Jordan.

Interoperability, the ability for military equipment — from radios to refueling systems –to work together is a simple one, but achieving it remains a holy grail that even alliances as august as NATO find hard to achieve.

“Arab states are far behind NATO in this regard, and again the GCC record is distinctly unimpressive,” Yezid Sayegh, senior fellow at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center told Breaking D .

The first and most significant challenge for the MESA countries is the absence of a cross-national doctrine aiming at standardizing operations and facilitating readiness through common ways of accomplishing military tasks. Although MESA’ idea of creating “regional capabilities centers” covering air sea and ground domains could do the job, it remains off the table for now.

“This will remain a mission impossible if Arab states don’t get rid of the sense of distrust they share,” said retired Kuwaiti Air Force Col. Dr. Zafer Alajmi, who also stressed the importance of working on a unified culture of combat doctrines and battle readiness to achieve better communication in times of crisis.

Another challenge is the simple fact that Arab forces rarely coordinate their weapons purchases so they boast diverse weapons platforms. For instance, Saudi Arabia and the UAE mainly operate American and European platforms, such as the F-15SA, Eurofighter Typhoon and Mirage aircraft. Egypt, on the other hand, operates many Russian-made platforms.

How to fix this?

“Forces should work together to receive and share friendly force tracks, optimize mission effectiveness and consequently allow commanders to utilize the full combat potential of their combined forces,” Kuwaiti defense expert Ali AlHashim told me.

This only happens if open source networks and common military standards, such as a command and control system designed for universal standardization, bridge the gap between traditional stove-pipe systems.

“Take NATO members for example,” he said. “Many of them were – at some point – relying on Eastern equipment (read Russian), but had to make it more compatible with the Western ones. Today however, it has become possible to pass information during air-to-air missions between a Russian MiG-29 and American F-16 or vice-versa.”

Nevertheless, Sayegh believes that interoperability requires fielding equipment that is “similar or compatible, on similar or compatible ways of using it, on institutional capacity mainly combat support systems, including logistics and real-time information-sharing and planning.”

But equipment is only part of the magic. Training together is crucial but the MESA countries rarely engage in regular joint military exercises. Although some Arab forces have operated with U.S forces, they do less with each other.

“Probably only the UAE and Jordan have any genuinely useful experience through joint maneuvers with the United States,” Sayegh told me. “The Saudi-UAE intervention in Yemen has also shown little genuine joint operations at the tactical level, combined, or at least coordinated command at the operational level, or strategic management.”

For Alajmi, MESA needs “regular steadiness as they facilitate deeper integration.” He points to the North Thunder exercises – hosted by Saudi Arabia with the participation of 20 Arab and Islamic countries – which are “a one per decade example” of joint Arab co-dependency. That’s not enough to really ensure interoperability.

The best driver for the Arab states to train and buy together is the growing threat from Iran.

On one end, it remains critical for Arab countries to secure their regional waters, as all of them depend on the sea for the export and import of most of their vital strategic products. However in the real world, the force posture of Arab Gulf states in the maritime domain shows limited interoperability especially when defeating non-state and non-traditional actors and short-range rockets fired from the coast at chokepoints or at sea from small craft.

“Little meaningful progress has been made toward creating a collective or common mix of capabilities to respond to Iranian hybrid naval warfare capabilities,” said Aram Nerguizian, Senior Associate, Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

On the other hand, there has been little progress to layering missile and air defense capabilities across the region to defend against Iran’s sustained investment in precision missiles and unmanned combat systems. “This is despite the fact that Iran ultimately remains weak militarily in conventional terms, with a vast mix of obsolescent and unsustainable weapons systems,” he explained.

The MESA countries may face a conventionally ineffective military in Iran and its surrogates such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, but they are unlikely to work hard on interoperability as long as they operate under the American military umbrella. “Arab Gulf states will also continue to rely on the American military deterrence to offset their limited ability to integrate their mix of increasingly modern combat systems and equipment,” Nerguizian said.

For many Arab Gulf states, the “glitter factor” remains a prevalent driver in force development and acquisition patterns, “often to the detriment of standing up sustainable national capabilities, let alone meaningful interoperability,” he concluded.