Spanish-built combat vehicles for Latvia to carry Israeli turrets despite arms embargo
A Spanish arms company has begun delivering infantry fighting vehicles fitted with Israeli weapons systems to Latvia, despite the Spanish government declaring an arms embargo on Israel last year, Israeli business daily Globes reported on Thursday.
According to the report, Latvia ordered 84 of the vehicles last year from General Dynamics European Land Systems-Santa Barbara Sistemas (GDELS-SBS), which is headquartered in Madrid, in a deal worth around €800m ($929m), with all the vehicles due to be delivered by 2029.
The infantry fighting vehicles, called Mednieks, are equipped with unmanned turret systems, called UT30 MK2, which are produced by the Israeli arms company Elbit Systems.
“The delivery of infantry fighting vehicles is a significant step toward strengthening Latvia’s defence capabilities,” Latvia’s Defence Minister Raivis Melnis said last week, adding that the Mednieks would reinforce his country’s armed forces “as well as promote cooperation between the National Armed Forces and Nato allies”.
According to the GDELS-SBS website, local Latvian industries are expected to take part in at least 30 percent of the manufacturing of the vehicles, which were “developed to provide significant firepower, modular protection and interoperability with the equipment of the Latvian National Armed Forces and Nato Allies”.
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SBS was a government-owned company until the early 2000s, when it was privatised and sold to the US corporation General Dynamics, which integrated the Spanish company into its European branches.
This deal comes more than a year after the Spanish government, led by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, announced a wide-ranging arms embargo on Israel due to its genocidal war on the occupied Gaza Strip.
The embargo, which was passed as a bill in the Spanish parliament, included bans on importing and exporting military equipment, products and technology from or to Israel, and further prohibited trading fuels and materials that could be used militarily.
Last year, the Spanish government, one of the most vocal critics of the Israeli government in Europe, terminated three major arms deals with Israeli companies, which were worth hundreds of millions of US dollars.
However, at the beginning of 2026, Sanchez’s government came under fire for considering the purchase of military systems from a company that is partly owned by Israel’s Rafael arms company.
Madrid said in February that it was working toward “zero technological dependence” on Israel, with Spain’s secretary of state for defence, Amparo Valcarce, saying this would be achieved by “systematically and progressively replacing any component, system, or technology that may exist in certain very restricted areas”.
Record orders
Since the genocide in Gaza began three years ago, Israel’s arms companies have been reporting record revenues, with Elbit Systems generating $7.9bn during 2025, as Elbit’s president and CEO, Bezhalel Machlis, said the company showed “excellent financial results”.
“The strong momentum in the second quarter was sustained,” Machlis said in August as the company released its second-quarter summary of 2026, with the company registering a record high of $32bn worth of orders.
Israel has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since October 2023, wounding more than 175,000 people, according to the Gaza health ministry. Most of the casualties are women, children and the elderly.
While Spain under Sanchez is a leading force opposing Israeli policies in occupied Palestine, the country has a history of trading arms with Israel.
According to a 2024 analysis published by the University of Navarra, Spain began buying arms directly from Israel around 2008, spending more than $10m that year.
Despite government assurances that the arms trade with Israel had been suspended after 7 October 2023, Spain awarded contracts to Israeli companies or their Spanish subsidiaries in the weeks that followed, including a €697m deal for the SILAM rocket launcher system with a consortium that included Elbit, and a €287m deal for Spike anti-tank missiles with a Rafael subsidiary, the analysis found.
In April 2025, several months before the Spanish embargo, Elbit Systems announced that it had signed a contract worth approximately $100m to supply GDELS-SBS with unmanned turret systems.
Yehuda Vered, general manager of Elbit Systems Land, said after the deal was signed that Elbit valued the collaboration with GDELS-SBS on a project that offered “advanced turret solutions, which enhance firepower, protection, and operational effectiveness”.
“The systems will be installed on the Ascod armoured fighting vehicles and supplied to a Nato European country,” the Israeli arms manufacturer said last year.
Now, more than a year after the deal, Israeli-engineered weapons systems have been installed on Spanish-made armoured fighting vehicles provided to Latvia.
While relations between Israel and Spain remain tense, Latvia’s Melnis visited Israel in September and met his Israeli counterpart, Israel Katz, in what the Israeli defence ministry described as meetings aimed at “advancing defence cooperation between Israel and Latvia”.
According to Globes, General Dynamics’ foothold in Europe greatly helps Israel export arms and other military components and technologies to the continent, because of the close ties between the US and Israel.
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