RIYADH – An army band with bagpipes marched past displays of machine gunsand laser-guided missiles in Riyadh this week as international defencecompanies showed off their hardware.

Hours later, the Saudi government announced that several top commanders hadbeen removed, including the chief of staff and the heads of ground and airforces.

If recent months have all been about Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’scrackdown on business elites, now he’s turned to the military as he extendshis authority over the kingdom. The purge of top brass comes as SaudiArabia is struggling to get a grip on the proxy war with Iran inneighboring Yemen.

But, like everything in Saudi Arabia at the moment, it comes back to thecountry’s finances and the the prince’s much-vaunted revamp of an economytoo dependent on oil.

Executives from Raytheon Co., Boeing Co., Rheinmetall AG and otherinternational companies were at the exhibition to talk about how they fitinto his “Vision 2030.” The new era for defense includes developing adomestic industry so that the world’s biggest importer of US weapons canmake hardware itself in conjunction with foreign manufacturers.

For companies specializing in military equipment, it could mean billions ofdollars in contracts as the kingdom spends decades building an industryfrom scratch. At the exhibition in Riyadh, dozens of companies marketedtheir cyber weaponry, combat vehicles and communications systems.

“There is a lot a business potential over the next five, 10 years, 15years,” John Bottimore, vice president of international businessdevelopment at the U.S. unit of British company BAE Systems Plc, said in aninterview at the exhibition. “We won’t have a position in Saudi Arabia longterm if we don’t work with partners and transfer capability.”

The announcement on Monday of the change in military personnel came thesame day as King Salman approved a plan setting out a “vision and strategy”for the Defense Ministry. In another major shift, the government also saidmilitary jobs at the rank of soldier would be open to women for the firsttime.

The country’s sovereign wealth fund established Saudi Arabian MilitaryIndustries, or SAMI, in May. The company plans to manufacture equipment andprovide maintenance services across units, including air and land systems,weapons and missiles, and defense electronics, mainly in joint ventures.

“Saudi Arabia is seeking a degree of military self-sufficiency bydeveloping a local defense industry and putting in some of the buildingblocks it would need should it decide that it needs a nuclear capability,”said James Dorsey, a Middle East specialist at Singapore’s NanyangTechnological University. U.S. President Donald Trump’s opposition to Irangives the Saudis a “window of opportunity,” he said.

The ultimate goal is to “localize” 50 percent of Saudi procurement from 2percent now, according to SAMI’s chief executive officer, Andreas Schwer.That will create jobs and generate $10 billion a year in revenue for SAMIby 2030, he said in an interview at the exhibition.

Saudi Arabia started the exhibition in 2010 to develop its domesticmilitary industry. The event, attended by Saudi companies and governmentofficials, helps international companies find a local factory or servicethat they can use for their supply chain, said Major General Atyahal-Malki, general director of the general directorate for industrializationsupport.

Inside the hall, Saudi officers check out new uniforms, body armor,all-terrain vehicles and military-industrial components on display fromcompanies as diverse as Ankara-based Roketsan Roket Sanayi Ve Ticaret AS,South Korea’s Hanwha Corp. and Oshkhosh Corp. Outside, there were armoredpersonnel carriers, fire trucks and an artillery cannon.

Raytheon Saudi Arabia is one of the US defense companies working with SAMI.At the exhibition center, the company’s executives guided visitors on avirtual tour of a military city where the viewer flies above buildings andwalks through training centers.

Raytheon anticipates it will finalize details of a joint venture with SAMIover the next couple of weeks, according to Michael Pottier, vice presidentof business development. The company estimates it will generate $7 billionof revenue through the localization of defense projects in Saudi Arabiaover the next five to seven years, Pottier said.

It’s all part of Prince Mohammed’s with-us-or-against-us plan to drag SaudiArabia into the 21st century globalized economy.

The drive to create a domestic defense company is one of the pillars of”Vision 2030,” along with building new cities and developing anentertainment industry. The plan also includes selling stakes in stateassets, including oil giant Saudi Aramco and creating the world’s biggestsovereign wealth fund.

The purge of the military command announced this week was reminiscent ofevents that happened last year. Two weeks after the crown prince hostedsome of the world’s leading investors at the palatial Ritz-Carlton hotel inRiyadh in October, he turned the property into a luxury prison for dozensof the kingdom’s most prominent princes and businessmen.

Schwer, who headed combat systems at German arms firm Rheinmetall beforejoining SAMI last year, said there’s an unflinching resignation to get thejob done, provided the country can hire the right people.

“There is the commitment of the government, the king and the crown prince,”said Schwer. “As we are one core pillar of ‘Vision 2030,’ failure isn’t anoption for us.” BLOOMBERG