America sold more than $33 billion worth of arms and equipment to foreign partners in fiscal 2016, the Pentagon announced on Tuesday, down by $14 billion from last year’s reported total.
The Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced that the U.S. sold a total of $33.6 billion worth of goods last fiscal year, including $2.9 billion paid for by either a U.S. grand or direct loan, $5 billion paid for by the U.S. as part of the Building Partner Capacity fund and $25.7 billion funded by foreign governments.
“Fiscal Year 2016 sales were strong and demonstrate that the FMS process is responsive,” said Vice Adm. Joseph Rixey, director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. “This year’s totals indicate that our partners continue to seek the quality products and services we offer.”
Last year’s sales total was $47 billion, but Rixey cautioned against comparing the years in search of trends.
“Whether a sale is ‘counted’ under one fiscal year or the next is dependent on when each case is implemented, so comparison of the year-to-year totals can be misleading,” he said. “Instead, when you examine the three-year moving sales averages, you can see the continuing, growing sales trend over the last decade.”
Air Force officials are reviewing their piece of the foreign military sales process to try to speed it up, saying that partner nations often turn to other countries to buy equipment because America’s process is too slow.
Foreign military sales in fiscal 2017 are off to a slow start, Roman Schweizer, an analyst for Cowen and Company, wrote this month. Congress was notified to four potential deals in October — the same number as in October last year — but the value this year is much lower: $415 million this year compared to more than $12 billion for last year.
“We do not see reason to worry yet about this year because November and December should be strong. We also expect the three big fighter deals in the pipeline (two for Boeing and one for Lockheed) are a good cushion to boost the total number but could mask weakness with smaller programs. For now, we consider October as a one-off,” Schweizer wrote.