Vice Adm. Joseph Rixey: US Govt to Record $40B in FY 2016 Foreign Military Sales Deals

U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Joseph Rixey, director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, has said the U.S. government is set to clear foreign military sales deals worth approximately $40 billion in fiscal year 2016, Reuters reported Wednesday.

Andrea Shalal writes Rixey’s forecast represents a decline from FY 2015’s $46.6 billion in FMS approvals.

He said at the Farnborough International Airshow that there is a strong demand for U.S. weapons and helicopters worldwide and that he does not see any potential impact of U.K.’s decision to exit the European Union on future arms sales with the U.S.

Rixey has unveiled 40 programs that seek to facilitate the process for FMS transactions and address delays in the approval of foreign countries’ military procurement requests, Shalal reports.

“Anything that is in foreign policy review is actually part of the deliberate conversation,” Rixey told Reuters.

“When we get stalled there, the system is not broken, but actually acting as intended.”

Joe Gould and Aaron Mehta also report for Defense News that some diplomats at the State Department believe the Senate Armed Services Committee’s proposed 2017 National Defense Authorization Act would allow the Defense Department to take over the State Department’s role in foreign military assistance programs.

“The Senate NDAA is designed to make DoD’s current role in security cooperation more efficient, more effective and more responsive to emerging national-security requirements,” Dustin Walker, a spokesman for SASC, told Defense News.

“The NDAA would require more integration of DoD and State security cooperation efforts, not less,” he added, according to the report.