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Ali Al-Saadi / AFP - Getty Images
A pilot climbs into a U.S. F-16 jet fighter at the al-Asad Air Base in Baghdad, on November 1, 2011.
What started more than eight years ago as a hotly debated attack on Saddam Hussein’s regime is ending as a strategic and business relationship. Even though American troops are leaving Iraq in three weeks, the Iraqi government looks likely to be a good customer for American-made military hardware for years to come, joining other oil-rich governments such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in keeping U.S. manufacturing lines humming.
“The Iraqis are going to have a lot of money and invariably in this somewhat dicey neighborhood, having a lot of money means buying a lot of military equipment. So they are going to be a significant market,” said Gordon Adams, an expert on military budgets who is a professor of international relations at American University.
“The recent decision by the Iraqis to purchase U.S. F-16s, part of a $7.5 billion foreign military sales program, demonstrates Iraq's commitment to build up its external defense capabilities and maintain a lasting military-to-military training relationship with the United States,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month during a hearing on the future of Iraq.
The Baghdad government has agreed to buy 18 F-16 fighters, made by Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth, Texas.
The sale, worth about $3 billion to the company, illustrates the long time horizon that weapons manufacturing has: the production line for the F-16 started operating in 1976 and with the Iraqi contract and other work will be extended into 2015.
Although first developed for the U.S. Air Force, the F-16 has been sold to and is now flown by air forces in foreign counties from Taiwan to Denmark.
“We're continuing production with the F-16, of course, and that continues to outstrip many people's expectations for more than 30 years in production,” said Lockheed Martin executive Ralph Heath, in a recent conference call for investment analysts. “The end is almost in sight but not quite … .”
“The F-16 program was a program that was developed with the international market in mind from the get-go,” said Adams. “There’s no question from the company’s point of view the international sales of the F-16 and its sister and more expensive F-15 aircraft have always been important. The classic way for them to extend the production line is to get foreign customers and they get a lot of support from the government for trying to seek out those foreign customers.”
The Pentagon announced last week that foreign military sales overseen by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency totaled nearly $35 billion in fiscal year 2011, which ended on Sept 30. The top three customers: Afghanistan, Taiwan and India.
“There is no question that foreign sales are important to the production run” of a plane such as the F-16, Adams said. “The Air Force likes the company to do foreign sales for a couple of reasons: over time it can reduce the cost to the Air Force of buying an airplane.” The other reason the Air Force likes such sales is that it allows for interoperability with foreign militaries during joint exercises and allows the Pentagon “to keep an eye on what other people are doing with equipment…. It allows the U.S. to know what the capabilities of another country are.”
Iraq needs not just fighter aircraft, but an array of other military hardware. “The Iraqi military inventory is pretty thin; most of it we beat the crap out of during the invasion and subsequent hostilities,” Adams said. “Most of the Iraqi inventory is basically gone and they are going to have to re-stock from start to finish. Most of their former Soviet inventory is either gone or wasted, so they are going to have to buy. Being as we were the occupying power and the training power, it is at one level quite logical that we would be maneuvering to sell them our equipment.”
Despite the Dec. 31 exit of American combat troops, the United States will continue to operate ten Office of Security Cooperation base camps in Iraq to deliver military hardware and oversee the foreign military sales program.
“So F-16s get delivered, there's a team there to help new equipment training and helping Iraq understand how to use them to establish air sovereignty, “ Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Armed Services Committee. “Or there's 140 M-1 tanks right now generally located at a tank gunnery range in Besmaya east of Baghdad and the team supporting that training stays on Besmaya.”
Iraq will also need military trainers which U.S. firms such as DynCorp provide to foreign governments. The required training of the Iraqis “does not require U.S. troops. There are numerous firms that will be happy to respond to any requests for proposal from the Iraqi government for properly skilled trainers. The market will respond quickly to Iraqi petro dollars,” said Douglas Ollivant, a former National Security Council official in charge of Iraq policy in both the Bush and Obama administrations.
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Hey Donald T., isn't this a much better idea than just "taking" their money?
How do they intend to pay when their money is worthless????
18 Gen 2-3 jets are hardly a threat to us..big woop
They still have lots of oil !!!!!
bob
It seems to me that Donald Trump and many T-party conservatives have the notion that we can simply force other countries to pay us "reparations" for whatever perceived good that we may have done for them by invading their country.
Our weapons are the envy of the world, what better way to recoup some of our losses than by creating a client-state. It brings into existance long term jobs here in the U.S. and an almost insatiable need for parts, logistics, and expertise.
Of course there are side effects and unintended consequenses, but this will have to do until we can start selling them airliners or other peaceful big ticket items.
Barack Obama has become one of the best salesmen America has ever seen.
Big mistake! Our technology will end up being turned against us!!!
Kevin in Texas, that's why we sell 'em F-16's and not F22's.
Silver Flyer, I have a feeling these are part of GWB's doing, which is why the jobs are going to Texas, instead of to Boeing in California or Boeing in Washington State. Bush put a serious lock on ALL Iraq contracts.
Bush still owns Iraq, and he loves it!
Isn't this why we went there in the first place?
Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 911.
It was about Haliburton, Oil and the MIC.
This is the ugly part of America.
Killing machines; money well spent.
man -- Being that we destroyed ALL their weapons, they'll probably be needing a few for self defense. After all, Iraq does border Iran.
Refresher:
Iran and Iraq were hostile towards each other many years ago; not so much right now.
Iraq's defense was severely weakened by Desert Storm; little self defense left for itself in 2003.
Since the 2003 Iraq invasion agencies state Iran's nuclear weaponization efforts appears to have ceased.
The November 8th IAEA report contains NO new information and is widely recognized by those involved in monitoring Iran as a political document and referred to it as "unimpressive"; nothing but a futile attempt to get China and Russia to follow along with sanctions.
All in all you and me paid for unnecessarily flattening Iraq; Lockheed Martin lobbies $millions$ per year in DC so we can pay $billions$ for more nonsense and then Iraq pays them $3 billion in dollars our government probably gave them. Petrodollars? I'm sure the savings trickles down haha.
Wow totally saw this coming at the beginning of 2003... The war wasn't about oil. But creating demand for military hardware.
Yeah no kidding..... Well this will just give us a reason to attack them again in a few years....they will have weapons we don't think they should have......Hmmm Iran come to anyones mind????
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0giXvhEWMo&feature=share
When will the American People stand up to end these bloody profit wars ???
TO: Killerdrgn who wrote:
That war wasn't about anything else except the OIL. If it wasn't for the fact that Iraq had oil, we would have never gone in there, and would have never gave a crap about what goes on there.
@American girl - Sorry, but the US hasn't actually benefited much at all from Iraqi Oil. The majority of it goes to China and Russia. Our (The US) largest oil trading partner is still Canada, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia.
The US has imported 12 Million barrels out of 336 Million total from Iraq in September 2011. They're just a drop in the bucket.
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm
Total weapons sales are already at $35 billion for this year. The major profit center for the US isn't selling oil to US consumers, but arms sales to foreign countries.
So when can we expect these weapons to be used on us and you know they will. Obviously didn't learn anything from "Charlie's War".
Not saying it's going to happen again but every time they put some political appointee in charge of the CIA it seems that our foreign policy is based on who wants to buy weapons off of us,and usually with a spectacular backfire somewhere down the road. Perhaps our President shouldn't allow the CIA to pick who our friends are or aren't,their track record isn't too good.
18 generation 3 jets are hardly a threat to us and better we supply the demand than china
brian,
Here is what the article said,
The Baghdad government has agreed to buy 18 F-16 fighters, made by Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth, Texas.
Not 3, now after they finally learn how to fly them, there may be only 3 left, L.O.L.
China will help create petrochecmical industries, mining and solar energy. They will train their engineers and be friends with people. We will supply planes, corrupt thei rpoliticians.
China wins people we will corruption.
Great deal
Mike. He said 18 3rd generation jets (1970's) as compared to our fifth generation fighter craft (2000's). He was pointing out that it doesn't matter that we are selling 18 old model jets to Iraq because it would not pose a threat to our security position.
I disagree somewhat considering that we still use the 16's and an F-22 isn't used offensively.
The sixth generation begins with the X-47C FYI.
Shouldn't we be selling peace instead of war. All we are good at any more is killing people.
We will probably $.10 on the dollar for the purchase.
if they have so much money why aren't they footing the bill for our military protection? What a sorry bunch of "representatives" we have in D.C.
Beth,
The sad part is. Who are they representing except them selves. We need to clean house from the top to the bottom, no one left in office that is currenly there.
This is what our money is going towards....Scares the hell out of me...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSHMpmVEbDw
I agree we need to clean house....fast!
@Beth, Our military protection is just product demo's for arms sales, and military consultation fees...
It's all a sales pitch to show foreign governments "See how efficiently we can kill people with our toys, you can be just like us with 4 easy payments of $39.99 Billion!" Call right now and we'll throw in this Jet sham-wow for free!
this will be a win win for creating jobs in japan and china.
We are the worlds biggest arms dealer explains why we are hated so much sad realy
Is there sales tax on these arms sales? Is the profit from these sales being taxed at the rate of the corporate tax bracket? It should be! If not then we are just giving money and business to these weapons manufacturers at the cost of thousands of human lives. I suspect this somehow counts as foreign profits and no US tax is being collected or there is some subsidy or exemption for these sales.
this is an example of what this war has always been about. making big bucks for the super rich
Just think it cost the taxpayers only a trillion dollars, 4500 dead Americans, and 30 or 40 thousand injured Americans to secure a 3 billion dollar contract for Lockheed Martin. What a deal !
Here goes our country. Why should we arm a country that has no threat? Why they need more than Iran?
If we are honest and want peace there, we should stop selling weapons there and ask everyone else to stop selling. We sell to Iraq and then Israeli wants more to defend against Iraq because Iraq may side with Iran in a war. So bull@!$%# goes on.
We are the biggest danger to peace in the wordl and we should fight our Governement from miliratisizng ths world
What we just read is what they all interested in $$$
I do not know if any of you read the article yesterday about what they did with the remains of 274 American soldiers. This shows me they do not care about anyone but themselves. Please open and read the below link from M.S.N yesterday, it will make your blood boil.
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/08/9290603-report-air-force-dumped-remains-of-274-troops-in-landfill
Mike:
Are they actign like us? We do not care for people either.Our Jiohad worked.
Why not hand them directly to the Taliban and cut out the middleman or better known as terrorist
Didn't the U.S. arm Bin Laden way-back-when? And didn't Israel sell arms to the Shah of Iran at one point? And didn't the U.S. arm Iraq during the Iran-Iraq wars? Given that none of these scenarios turned out very well, it might be that one could learn from history that the enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend...and that maybe it isn't a good idea to arm tenuous governments of unfriendly countries in unstable regions of the world where U.S. intervention is not much appreciated.
Ok, so.......durring the Regan administration we had something called the Iran Contra affair. Durring this time we were allies with Saddam but we really did not like Iraq. They were like one of those friends that you have that you really don't care for but you just smile and nod; rub shoulders at the party as if everything is cool and you really like them but in secret you cannot stand them. Sound familiar? Prety much the same way that the U.S. treats all of its allies in secret anyway. So to continue this tale we did not like Iraq's neighbor Iran either but between the two we hated Iran more. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." See where this is going. Iran and Iraq hated each other too so to kill two birds with one stone we sold weapons to Iraq so that Iraq could defeat Iran, but we also sold the same weapons to Iran in the hopes that they both would just kill each other off and we would not have to worry about either one. All the while we continued to buy(Steal) their oil and sell it very cheap while they were busy trying to off each other. Somewhere along the lines these guys figured out what we were doing and they both became our enemies. I don't really blame Saddam for hateing the U.S. as much as he did considering the way we treated him. This is not to say that I condone the way he treated his own people or his actions as a dictator but at one time (This is the part people forget) The U.S. actually supported his actions and gave him the weapons that he had. Years later (Flash forward to the first gulf war) we defeated him and we could have ousted him from power then and there. Instead, we put him in a play pen and said, don't fly here, don't fly there and we won't bother you. (By the way, P.S. Send more cheap oil; we like that stuff.) This is kind of reminicint of the mistake made in England with the signing of Magna Carta; you know that document that was the first of its kind that actually gave individual people rights as human beings and a basic Due-Process which our own Bill of Rights is modeled after. The mistake that England made was that they forced King John to sign the thing when his armies were defeated and through shear blindness they actually believed he would follow it. It was like, "Ok he signed it and now we have rights. The King cannot just make stuff up and be the judge jury and executioner like he has been. He now has to give us rights to due process and all that." Ha Ha. John. after being put back onto the throne simply spit on the document and waged an all out war against all who signed it. He lost and later died of Disentary but the point is. learn from history. In the case of Iraq, we learned nothing. We said, here is your throne back you can rule but just don't fly here or there and everything is cool. Forward another few years to the second war in Iraq or as I like to call, 'The terrorism fear mongering escapade" where we still have no proof that Iraq was in any way involved in Sept. 11. What this ammounts too is, Bush was looking like a total incompetant fool because Afganistan was going no-where fast, so he looked around the globe and though, "Who can I defeat that is a dead ringer so the American people will call me a hero and I won'd look like an incompentant stooge?" "Oh, Iraq!!! I kind of forgot about you over there." So, we went to Iraq and over time people kind of forgot about Bin-laden and all the sudden it was all about Saddam and his supposid ties and supposid weapons of mass distruction. I must also add again that if and I mean "IF" he had weapons he shouldn't have had, "WE GAVE THEM TO HIM!!!" We gave him the technologies that he has way back when we were allies with him, before he got mad at us for our deception in the Regan years. We are responsible for every ounce of Technology that Iraq has for the most part when it comes to millitary. Now, We are back to being allies and now we are going to do what? Sell weapons to them. Again. LOL. (Sighhhhhhhhhh............)
Will we actually get paid for these aircraft, or will we giving them never to be repaid funds to buy them?
Hence, the preparations begin for a proxy war against iran, brilliant brilliant.
But, when it comes the time to engage with iran, will the iraqis agree (obey) or will they change their loyalties?
Ho ho ho!!
Well there was a group that clamored no war for oil - is there a similar group for no war for weapons sales?
After RQ170 issue nobody will buy our weapons easily!
Criminal USA.. Death and destruction, pays !
Every American whose whole life does not depend on that sticky goo called OIL, raise their hand! Oh that's right, none of you can hope to say that. We need to be in the middle east and this helps keep us there. Kindly shut up and drive. Realpolitik: what they do at the gr'umps' table.
The Amish.
But, I have seen cheaters, one guy had rubber wheels on his horse pulled cart. :-)
Well i can live without middle eastern oil we got plenty here so thats a load of crap!