US Secretary of State Marco Rubio approved $25.8 billion in defense arms sales to Israel, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, Bloomberg reported last week.
According to Bloomberg, the Trump administration has already approved $8.6 billion in expedited weapons sales, without mentioning Bahrain, and is treating the additional sales as changes to earlier approvals rather than new sales. The expanded total will be announced in the Congressional Record once Congress returns next week.
The total demonstrates the administration’s commitment to the allied countries affected by Iranian attacks during Operation Epic Fury.
Bloomberg raised questions about how long it will take these countries to receive the weapons, given the massive scale of the potential sales and the US military’s known slow pace of production.
“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,” Elaine McCusker, a former Pentagon official now at the American Enterprise Institute, told Bloomberg. “You’re definitely not going to get something for the current conflict.”
The Gulf countries aim to purchase two variants of the air defense interceptors – the Patriot Guidance Enhanced Missile-T and the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement, Bloomberg reports.
The announcement came during a ceasefire between the US, Israel, and Iran after a month-long war. The UAE alone said its air defense systems have engaged more than 2,200 Iranian drones since the war began, along with hundreds of ballistic missiles.
At most, the UAE would receive 600 PAC-3 MSE interceptors, Kuwait 500, Qatar 300, and Bahrain 50. By comparison, Lockheed Martin Corp. aims to produce 650 PAC-3 MSE interceptors in 2026 – and most of those are already spoken for.
Total sales of GEM-Ts could be 150 in Bahrain, 500 in Kuwait, 200 in Qatar, and 150 in the UAE. That’s more than three times RTX Corp.’s annual production target of 300 interceptors. All of the figures represent maximum potential contracts.
The State Department and the Pentagon didn’t respond to questions about delivery timelines, while Lockheed Martin and RTX declined to comment on production schedules.
