Pushing sales of deadly weapons to foreign countries is key part of Trump administration “economic growth strategy”-Defense News

“The Trump administration has made pushing foreign weapon sales a key part of its economic growth strategy, pushing out a new conventional arms transfer policy to make it easier to sell defense articles abroad.” 

10/9/2018, “America sold $55.6 billion in weapons abroad in FY18-a 33 percent jump,” Defense News, Aaron Mehta, Washington 

“The U.S. inked $55.6 billion in foreign military sales during fiscal year 2018, easily smashing past the previous year’s total— and the Pentagon’s point man for security cooperation expects more in the future. 

“This is a 33 percent increase over last year and I’m very optimistic that this positive trajectory will continue,” said Lt. Gen. Charles Hooper, the head of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, during a speech at the AUSA conference. “Our partners know a good thing when they see one.” 

Included in that total are $3.52 billion for cases funded by the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing program; $4.42 billion for cases funded under Defense Department authorities; and $47.71 billion funded through pure FMS [Foreign Military Sales] cases, per the State Department. 

In FY17, the U.S. sold $41.93 billion in FMS deals, and the Pentagon has not been shy about hyping the final dollar total for this year. In July, [2018] Hooper said the department had already inked $46.9 billion in deals, and a Pentagon report released last year [2017] said that the U.S. had inked $54.45 billion through the end of August. 

Sales totals are volatile year over year, depending on what partner nations seek to buy. In FY16, sales totaled $33.6 billion, while FY15 totaled just more than $47 billion and FY14 totaled $34.2 billion. 

While this year’s total still falls short of FY12’s all-time record, there is reason for Hooper to be optimistic this is not a one-time boost. 

In FY18 the State Department cleared roughly $70 billion in potential FMS deals, spread over 70 individual requests. Those are not hard dollars, but rather a listing of the potential agreements that the State Department has ok’d; if Congress does not object, those potential deals then go into negotiations. Among those requests are a Saudi request for THAAD ($15 billion) and a Polish request for Patriot PAC-3 batteries ($10.5 billion), either one of which would give a massive boost for a potential FY19 total if completed on time. 

In addition, the Trump administration has made pushing foreign weapon sales a key part of its economic growth strategy, pushing out a new conventional arms transfer policy to make it easier to sell defense articles abroad. 

And Hooper is not alone in his optimism. Speaking to reporters in September, Andrea Thompson, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said, “I would anticipate-I am an optimist and a realist-that next year’s [2019] numbers will be higher than this year’s numbers.””

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Added: Trump ratchets up weapons exports: 

“The focus on grants and loans to grease the wheels of similar sales is expected to be a key feature of the Trump administration’s arms-export policy."

9/4/19, “US ratchets up focus on incentivizing arms exports to allies," Defense News, Sebastian Sprenger, Washington 

“U.S. officials are pointing to the recent sale of eight F-16 fighter jets to Bulgaria as an early success in their efforts to export American weapons to countries caught up in a [so-called] great power competition between the United States, Russia and China. 

The sale, which was in abeyance earlier this summer because Bulgaria deemed the price tag of almost $1.7 billion as too high, eventually went through because the U.S. government offered the aircraft under a Foreign Military Financing package with a $60 million grant, according to R. Clarke Cooper, the U.S. State Department’s assistant secretary for political-military affairs. 

The Bulgarian government had previously considered Saab’s Gripen jet as a competing option. 

The move follows a new policy by the Trump administration aimed at pulling countries still using Soviet-era equipment into the United States’ sphere of influence through long-term weapons deals. 

According to Cooper, Bulgarian leaders identified the F-16, made by Lockheed Martin, has a preferred option early on, but were running up against a price the country couldn’t afford. 

“How can they get the airframes they want without breaking their entire defense department’s budget?” Cooper said of the Bulgarian leaders, speaking to Defense News on Wednesday

at the Defense News Conference. 

Part of the eventual deal, in the spring of this year, included a discussion about crafting an aircraft package that would meet both capability and cost standards. “We had to be candid with the Bulgarians about their requirements,” Cooper said. 

The focus on grants and loans to grease the wheels of similar sales is expected to be a key feature of the Trump administration’s arms-export policy. To that end, the State Department plans an FMF budget of $8 billion and to push through a number of administrative changes to ease future exports. 

Speed is a key consideration in those reforms, with officials looking to make bureaucratic steps simultaneous that are now worked sequentially. 

“It’s a constant competition,” said Cooper, referring to the global weapons marketplace. “If we don’t get ahead of our adversaries [whom do you consider "adversaries" and why?], the vacuum will be filled.””

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