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 s ...

; 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 The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signa ...

(USAF) FMS programs are assigned two-word

code names A code name, call sign or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in industrial ...

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."

References

Department of Defense Financial Management Regulation (DoDFMR) 7000.14-R, Volume 15

External links

AFSAC - The Air Force Security Assistance Center
{{US-mil-stub Military industry

See also

References

External links