R. Clarke Cooper, left, Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs.
WASHINGTON: The US and UAE might finalize the first of several contracts on a controversial $23.3 billion arms package before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20, a top State Department official said today.
“Everything’s in the trajectory for conclusion,” R. Clarke Cooper, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, told reporters Friday. “The sales, of course, have been well put together by the interagency and have cleared our Congress as well.”
The deal, which includes 50 F-35A fighters worth $10.4 billion, 18 MQ-9B drones at $2.97 billion, and $10 billion worth of air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions, drew criticism from some lawmakers, who worried about the possible erosion of Israeli military supremacy in the region.
Biden’s nominee to be Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, told reporters in November the pending sale “is something we would look at very, very carefully, and make sure that the QME (Qualitative Military Edge) is preserved and also — very important — that Congress play a role.”
Blinken met with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for the first time today, a State Department official confirmed.
A bipartisan group of senators led a failed charge to block the sale late last year, introducing four resolutions to stop the deal in its tracks. Democrats Bob Menendez and Chris Murphy teamed up with Republican Rand Paul. The vote to deny the drones and munitions deal failed 46-50, while the effort to block the F-35s deal went down 47-49.
Such a complicated deal won’t come to fruition with one stroke of the pen, however. “There’s not one contract,” Clarke added, “so they’re going to be happening at different timelines. It’s like with any other number of sales…They’re going to be different contracts, signatures, different productions and different deliveries. You’re talking about different prime corporate elements and different members of the defense industrial base, and also the conditions that are associated with a particular platform or system. But yes, everything’s in the trajectory for conclusion,” by the 20th of January.
Why cloud modernization is critical to multi-domain operations
JADC2 is a forcing function, driving digital transformation of network infrastructure.
Navy jet trainer fleet operations remain paused after engine mishap
One week after the incident, a Navy spokesperson says the service is continuing to assess the fleet’s ability to safely resume flight.
