Elbit Systems Ltd. announced yesterday, that it has filed a lawsuit in the High Court of Justice of the United Kingdom against the Government of Georgia for an amount of approximately $100 million.
The lawsuit was filed as a result of the Georgia’s failure to pay amounts due to the Company in connection with deliverable items under several contracts signed in 2007, understood to include some 40 UAS. In August 2008 Elbit Systems stopped deliveries of offensive weapons to Georgia at the demand of the Israeli government.
Elbit has lost out twice on this deal. The fact that the former Soviet republic of Georgia was able to use Elbit’s long-endurance Hermes 450 for battlefield reconnaissance during the brief 2008 war with Russia apparently caught the Kremlin’s attention. In January we reported that IAI has delivered a dozen UAS, including the short-range Bird-Eye 400 and I-View Mk 150 aircraft, and the longer-range Searcher II, as part of a $400 million deal between IAI and Russia’s Oboronprom OPK Group in October 2010.