By Bradley Bowman, JNS
It takes far too long for allies and partners confronting aggression to acquire the weapons they need, leaving them vulnerable or encouraging them to look elsewhere for self-defense.
The Trump administration formally notified Congress last week that it plans to sell Israel more than $8 billion in weapons, advancing sales that the Biden administration slow-rolled for months. The administration’s decision to use lawful means in this instance to bypass one member of Congress’s efforts to block the sales demonstrates the White House’s more assertive approach to security cooperation, as well as its support for the Jewish state, and the realization that a strong and well-armed Israel advances America’s interests. This laudable step by the Trump administration demonstrates an eagerness to restore regular order in Congress when it comes to security assistance and may signal a political willingness to undertake a much broader and desperately needed effort to reform the process by which the United States delivers weapons and munitions to allies and partners.
The State Department formally notified Congress on Feb. 7 of four different arms sales cases to Israel consisting of three foreign military sales (FMS) and one direct commercial sale (DCS). FMS is a mechanism in which a foreign government places an order but the Defense Department contracts with industry on behalf of the foreign government to procure the system or service. In the DCS mechanism, U.S. defense companies sell directly to foreign buyers. The export licenses, however, are approved by the U.S. government and submitted to Congress if they are above a designated dollar threshold.
One FMS for Israel announced last week consists of $6.75 billion in air-launched munitions, including 2,166 GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bombs and 2,800 MK 82 500-pound bomb bodies, as well as thousands of Joint Direct Attack Munition Guidance Kits and associated fuzes for a variety of munitions, including large 2,000-pound bombs and BLU-109 bombs designed to penetrate bunkers. A second FMS, worth $660 million, includes 3,000 AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, which are launched by Israeli AH-64 attack helicopters. A third FMS, worth $312.5 million, is for 10,000 155mm artillery shells.
This sale was not widely reported because it was a modification or addition to an existing contract and therefore did not require a second public press release. The package of notifications also includes a $688 million DCS for 15,500 JDAMs and 615 SDBs. In January, the Trump administration released a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs that the Biden administration decided to stop in May over concerns related to Israeli operations in southern Gaza.
These munitions will help Israel deter and defeat future aggression by replenishing stockpiles depleted in combat with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon after the terrorist groups started attacking Israel again in October 2023. The Small Diameter Bombs and BLU-109 bunker penetration bombs, as well as the guidance kits that convert unguided bombs into precise munitions, are especially useful for striking high-value targets while mitigating civilian casualties in urban operating environments. Even as Israel seeks to buy as many munitions as possible from the United States, it is simultaneously seeking to create additional domestic production capacity for the weapons that a future U.S. administration might refuse to provide Israel—namely, air-launched munitions.
Once the State Department adjudicates and approves a requested arms sale to a foreign government above a certain dollar threshold, the department submits an informal notification to the Senate and House Foreign Relations Committee. This process, known as a “tiered review,” permits the leaders of these two committees and their staffs to raise concerns, ask questions and potentially impose a “hold” on the proposed arms sale.
If one of the four leaders of these two committees places a hold on a proposed sale, the State Department usually does not proceed with the formal notification to Congress necessary to advance the sale. This practice is intended to facilitate a constructive consultative process between the executive and legislative branches but in practice permits a single member of Congress to prevent the provision of American weapons to an ally or partner before the U.S.-government-approved sale has even been submitted formally to the legislative branch for consideration.
This practice, while longstanding and usually respected by administrations controlled by both parties, is not required by law as noted by the Congressional Research Service and the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General. Accordingly, the administration can lawfully decide to move ahead with formal notification to Congress even if a “hold” is in place, and that is what the Trump administration did last Friday.
In this case, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, opposed the weapons sales to Israel and used a “hold” to try to stop them, consistent with his previous actions. The DCS case had been in informal, or tiered, review since October, according to one source, and the three FMS cases had been under review for more than 20 days. These delays were exacerbated by the fact that the Biden administration had slow-rolled many Israeli requests for months.
The Republican chairs of the two committees supported the sales, and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) lifted her hold. Trump’s State Department answered questions from Meeks and offered briefings, but he kept his hold in place. Only then, after a significant amount of time, the Trump administration decided to proceed with formal congressional notification.
Meeks responded by issuing a press release on Feb. 7 that accused the Trump administration of making a “decision to bypass Congress and immediately proceed with billions of dollars in arms sales to Israel.” That is not accurate. In fact, the Trump administration submitted the sales to Congress for review under the Arms Export Control Act and is now waiting the required time period before proceeding with the sales, consistent with the law.
If he chooses to do so, Meeks can file a joint resolution of disapproval in an effort to stop the sales. But if the past is prologue, such an effort will fail to muster even a simple majority in either chamber, much less the super-majority in both the House and Senate necessary to overturn a presidential veto. Perhaps that’s because Americans understand the horror of what happened in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, support Israel’s right to exist and want the world’s only majority Jewish state to have the means to defend itself against enemies that hate the United States as much as they do Israel.
To be sure, the tiered review process offers a valuable mechanism for key congressional leaders and staff to conduct oversight, ask questions, raise concerns and shape outcomes. That process should be retained and respected, but no administration should allow one or two members of Congress to abuse non-statutory tools indefinitely to unilaterally cancel a government-approved arms sale to our closest beleaguered democratic allies even before other members of Congress and their staffs have had a chance to review the facts.
It is widely understood that the American foreign military sales process is broken. It takes far too long for valuable allies and partners confronting current or potential aggression to acquire from the United States the weapons they need, leaving them vulnerable or encouraging them to look elsewhere for self-defense. One of the causes for many of those delays is a congressional-tiered review process that is too often abused. It is time for reform, and the Trump administration has now taken a vital first step to begin to fix a broken process.
