Secretary of State Marco Rubio approved emergency foreign military sales worth
$25.8 billion to Bahrain, Israel, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, covering Patriot
PAC-3 MSE and GEM-T interceptors. The emergency designation bypasses
congressional review periods, and the higher total reflects adjustments to
earlier approvals initially disclosed as $8.6 billion. Proposed quantities
include up to 600 interceptors for the UAE, 500 for Kuwait, 300 for Qatar and 50
for Bahrain, amid already strained US inventories and production limits of
roughly 650 PAC-3 MSEs annually at Lockheed Martin and 300 GEM-Ts at RTX. Elaine
McCusker, former Pentagon official now at the American Enterprise Institute,
said, “The only way that you really get any delivery timelines that are faster
than two or three years — and that’s optimistic — is if we have it in stock,”
adding, “You’re definitely not going to get something for the current conflict.”
Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program at the Center for a New
American Security, said priority requests “are going to displace or delay
delivery to someone else.”
