Changes to US weapons sales practices should emerge later this year, says Pentagon official

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is making progress on its revamped version of the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) process, but a Pentagon official involved in the changes says not to expect major shifts in the near term.

“So we’re on time and on target with regards to everything that was tasked to us within” the America First Arms Transfer Strategy, Michael Cadenazzi, the assistant secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy, told reporters last week after a Center for a New American Security event. “We have a series of initiatives that are tied to it, the sales catalog, and all those kind of things… and so we’ve delivered our portion of it.”

But because there are so many moving pieces to this overhaul, initial changes are unlikely to roll out until later this year. And even then, the changes won’t be a “one year kind of thing” but rather more incremental, he said.

Cadenazzi’s comments follow US President Donald Trump’s executive order in early February that called for national production interests to be taken into greater account when the US sells foreign nations weapons, as well as prioritizing arms sales for countries who invest more in their own defense spending. In that document, Trump outlined a series of steps that needed to be completed within 120 days, a timeframe that lapsed earlier this month. 

Some of those tasks included having Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, along with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, draft a “sales catalog of prioritized platforms” that the US will encourage allies and partners to buy from, while a future “Promoting American Military Sales Task Force” will be stood up to work on an implementation plan.

“The hardest part is just to time phase it, because there’s so many things hitting the enterprise all at once, and so we’re seeing the impact of that here,” Cadenazzi added. Some of those changes include creating a “single tracking system” for arms sales and identifying possible production challenges that require an intervention.

The overhaul of the entire process of selling weapons to allies and partners comes at a time when Trump administration officials have publicly assailed some of those countries, while some buyers voice concerns about long US production queues, and being notified of possible delays so the US can backfill weapons spent against Iran.

Earlier this month, Lt. Gen. Piotr Błazeusz, Poland’s military representative to NATO, said European nations are facing a “Catch-22” when it comes to the question of buying American weapons.

The issue, he explained, is that the US is putting pressure on European capitals to invest heavily in defense, but when those European militaries try to buy from Washington, the delivery timelines prove too long and too uncertain.

“When they come to the US and say, ‘We would like to buy the system’ …they are told, ‘Okay, but [it will be delivered in ] 2029-2030 and you know, it still could be delayed,’” the three-star general said at a Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress event.

As a result, he added, Europeans “look around” to see what else is on the market, whether produced in Europe or elsewhere.