WASHINGTON: Four years after Lockheed Martin inked a $11.2 billion deal to sell Saudi Arabia an upgunned variant of its Littoral Combat Ship, the company is starting work on the first vessel later this year, a company official confirmed Wednesday. The work on four Multi-Mission Surface Combatants will take place at Fincantieri-owned Marinette Marine in… Keep reading →

Croatia, a NATO member, was ready to sign off on the largest defense deal in its history: $500 million for 12 Israeli F-16 fighters. But the State Department didn’t like the looks of the deal.

Republican Senators erupted in outrage, and there are some indications that Turkey pushed Trump to withdraw support from its traditional foes, the Kurds. The British government issued an equivocal statement, while the Kremlin applauded the move.

The United States signed off on arms exports worth $192.3 billion over the past year, a full 13 percent increase from the previous year — even as the Trump administration keeps pushing hard to sell more weapons, more quickly, to more allies overseas.

WASHINGTON: Even as Congress inches toward cutting off arms sales to Saudi Arabia over the disappearance of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi and Riyadh’s grinding war in Yemen, the United States is preparing to ship $14.5 billion worth of arms to the increasingly embattled kingdom. Those weapons include “helicopters, tanks, ships, weapons, and training,” a… Keep reading →

The $55.6 billion represents closed deals, many of which had in in the works for years. But the focus of the Trump administration pumping up US arms sales to boost domestic manufacturing jobs has led to officials across the Pentagon and State Department to proclaim pushing American kit is a big part of their international engagements.

Japan and South Korea are getting new generations of sub-hunting and intelligence-gathering aircraft as China, North Korea, and Russia continue to push more assets into the waters of the Pacific.

WASHINGTON: A long-time State Department official who oversees critical security assistance programs is heading to the Pentagon, a move that may usher in another big change in the reworking of the acquisition and arms exports programs at the Defense Department. The unexpected announcement was made by Ellen Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment,… Keep reading →

Japan is in the middle of taking a hard look at its role providing security for the region, while it races to meet fresh threats from China and North Korea.

“The training we have given them we know has paid off,” Mattis said of the Saudis. “We have had pilots in the air who recognize the danger of a specific mission and declined to drop even when they get the authority. We have seen staff procedures that put no-fire areas around areas where there’s hospitals or schools.”