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16 August 2024

The US tried to fix its foreign military sales system. Did it work?

Noah Robertson

Last summer when the Pentagon released its plan to fix its sprawling foreign military sales system, it also issued a warning.

Sasha Baker, then a top policy official and one of the co-chairs of the “tiger team” leading the effort, mentioned, pointedly, that they had tried this before. The U.S., she said, has tinkered with its foreign military system “roughly every 18 months for the last 20 years,” like a car in and out of the shop.

The goal this time, Baker said, was to make repairs that would last.

Little more than a year after their recommendations came out, though, it’s not clear whether the U.S. has succeeded.

All prompted by the war in Ukraine, the Pentagon, State Department and Congress launched their own efforts to reform their share of foreign military sales, or FMS. Having finished, they’re reporting different levels of progress.

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