The
United States Department of Defense's Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program facilitates sales of U.S. arms, defense equipment, defense services, and
military training
Military education and training is a process which intends to establish and improve the capabilities of military personnel in their respective roles. Military training may be voluntary or compulsory duty. It begins with recruit training, proceed ...
to foreign governments. The purchaser does not deal directly with the
defense contractor
The arms industry, also known as the arms trade, is a global industry which manufactures and sells weapons and military technology. It consists of a commercial industry involved in the research and development, engineering, production, and ...
; instead, the
Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) serves as an intermediary, usually handling procurement, logistics, and delivery, often providing product support, training, and infrastructure construction (such as hangars, runways, utilities, etc.).
FMS is carried out with countries that are authorized to participate and is subject to approval based on the mechanism to procure services, a deposit in a U.S. trust fund or appropriate credit, and approval to fund services. On any given day, DSCA is managing “14,000 open foreign military sales cases with 185 countries,” the DSCA director Lieutenant General Charles Hooper explained at the Brookings Institution in June 2019.
Some
U.S. Air Force (USAF) FMS programs are assigned two-word
code names beginning with the word PEACE, indicating oversight by USAF headquarters. The second word in these codenames is often chosen to reflect some facet of the customer. Codenames appear in all capital letters.
In fiscal 2020, U.S. military-industry sold $50.8 billion via FMS and $124.3 billion via direct commercial sales
DCS.
The
Defense Security Cooperation Agency emphasizes that FMS is "a fundamental tool of U.S. foreign policy."
See also
*
Foreign Military Sales Act of 1968
*
Foreign Military Sales Act of 1971
*
List of F-16 FMS programs
*
United States Foreign Military Financing
References
Department of Defense Financial Management Regulation (DoDFMR) 7000.14-R, Volume 15
External links
AFSAC - The Air Force Security Assistance Center
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Military industry