International media sources said that Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the past months to purchase advanced weapons from international companies, and has contracted with other foreign companies to purchase security services, with the aim of protecting the NEOM project.
In the same context, newspapers indicated that Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman contracted to purchase a group of drones for the same reason, which is to protect the city of Neom, which was announced by the Crown Prince in 2017 during the conference on his 2030 economic plan, during which the Crown Prince said it is a dreamy vision aimed at transferring Kingdom’s from being completely dependent on oil to diversifying sources of income; a plan from which the Crown Prince has not completed any projects so far, due to his preoccupation with liquidating his opponents and those standing against him in order to take over the rule of the Kingdom after his father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz, who took power after the death of King Abdullah, January 2015.
In 2017, Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman announced that among the projects of Neom city was the establishment of private security companies to protect the city, but during the recent deal of the drones, he had contracted with experts in the field of cyber defence and security information centres.
On January 10, 2021, the Saudi crown prince launched his new project “The Line”, which he said extends 170 km north of Saudi Arabia, and that the city won’t have roads or cars as a model for cities that can preserve the environment.
He said that while he has not yet finished the city Neom, which he spoke about for years, and suddenly stopped working on it, after the kingdom’s budget was unable to meet NEOM’s financial needs, and the announcement of numerous investors’ refusal to work in the city after the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi
in his country’s consulate in Istanbul.
Intelligence Online, a French intelligence website, said that the city of Neom, which the Saudi crown prince is located between the Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Israel, has its own fleet of unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, which is linked to the central security headquarters in the region.
The operations of these aircraft are led by Craig Mushet, a company specializing in drones, and it is the same company that previously announced the management of a research program with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).
The Saudi Crown Prince announced earlier the establishment of the Saudi Security Services Company (Saif), a company that is 100% owned by the Public Investment Fund in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Turki Al-Thunayan is the chairman of the company due to his experience in the intelligence field, as well as assuming the position of Security Director for Saudi Aramco, which provides security guards, in addition to establishing and operating security operations centres in Saudi.
Foreign management of Neom
The Crown Prince selected Michael Wadsworth for the position of Security Administration in Neom, a former security commander in the US Army, who served in Iraq during the American war against it, and worked with the American company “TechWise” for military training; Where he took over the management of Gulf contracts.
The Crown Prince has also appointed a number of foreign TechWise executives to operate the NEOM command and control centre.
If the city of Neom is going to be located between four countries that have four armies, namely Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Israel, what is it that scares the Saudi crown prince that much and make him spend hundreds Millions of dollars for security and information services in a tourist entertainment city in the heart of the desert and the Red Sea coast?
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