8 octobre 2020 | International, Aérospatial
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Qatar has submitted a formal request to the United States to buy stealthy F-35 fighter jets, three people familiar with the deal said, in a deal that if pursued could strain U.S. ties with Saudi Arabia and Israel.
The request for the Lockheed Martin Co jets was submitted by the Persian Gulf state in recent weeks, the people said.
A U.S. State Department spokesman said, “As a matter of policy, the United States does not confirm or comment on proposed defense sales or transfers until they are formally notified to Congress.”
The Qatari embassy in Washington, D.C. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Keen to counter Iran in the region, the U.S. helps to arm allies including Qatar, host to the largest U.S. military facility in the Middle East, and home to 8,000 U.S. service members and Department of Defense civilian employees.
The request follows an August deal between the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates in which Washington agreed to consider giving the Gulf state approval to buy F-35s in a side deal to a U.S.-brokered agreement called the Abraham Accord to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel.
Israel has signaled stiff opposition to a UAE sale and would likely be just as resistant to one with Qatar, fearing it could undercut its military advantage in the Middle East.
In Washington, a fourth person familiar with the matter said concern about Qatar's links to Hamas have frequently surfaced over arms sales to the Gulf state. But in the case of an advanced warplane like the F-35, it could be a deal breaker.
One of the people said Qatar's letter of request for the jets, the first formal step in the legal process of foreign military sale, was not directly linked to its adoption of the Abraham Accord. Nor has Qatar shown any sign it will normalize ties with Israel.
U.S. and Qatar have close ties. In September Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Qatar Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani met in Washington as the U.S. hopes to move forward with naming Qatar as a major non-NATO ally.
Despite being U.S. allies, both the potential Qatari and UAE F-35 deals must satisfy a decades-old agreement with Israel that states any U.S. weapons sold to the region must not impair Israel's “qualitative military edge,” guaranteeing U.S. weapons furnished to Israel are “superior in capability” to those sold to its neighbors.
Saudi Arabia, Washington's most powerful and closest partner among the Gulf Arab states, is also likely to oppose the United States supplying F-35s to Qatar. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt remain locked in a three-year standoff with Qatar that the Trump administration has tried to end, so far without success.
A formal letter of request typically contains specifications that would be used to furnish pricing data to a customer, but currently the F-35A, a fifth generation stealthy fighter jet, costs around $80 million.
Any F-35 sale could take years to negotiate and deliver, giving a new U.S. presidential administration ample time to halt the deals. Any sale would also need congressional approval.
Poland, the most recent F-35 customer, purchased 32 of the jets, but will not receive its first delivery until 2024.
Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington D.C., additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Chris Sanders and Edward Tobin
8 avril 2024 | International, Terrestre
Unveiled on Monday, the long-awaited defence policy update projects Canada’s military spending to increase to 1.76 per cent of the national GDP by the end of the decade.
9 décembre 2019 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR
By: Valerie Insinna ORLANDO, Fla. — The U.S. Air Force wants to tap into the augmented and virtual reality technologies that are proliferating in the commercial market, but the service has run into a problem: Many have parts from China, limiting their ability to be used by the U.S. military in operational environments. “Can we not have an AR [augmented reality] solution that's made in China? I don't think that's good for us,” Col. Gerard Ryan, chief of the Air Force's operational training infrastructure division, said during a panel discussion Tuesday at the Interservice/Industry, Training, Simulation and Education Conference. “I don't think the security policy is going to pass. And I say that sarcastically, but it's true. If we're going to use a gaming engine, let's make sure it's not made by a foreign country that we don't like,” he added. The Air Force is dipping its toes into using virtual reality through its Pilot Training Next program, which seeks to get airmen through basic pilot training more quickly and cheaply. While the PTN program is currently considered an experiment, with only a handful of airmen participating at any given time, the Air Force has already shown it may be able to shave months off the existing training timeline by supplementing live flights spent in the T-6 trainer with virtual ones using Vive virtual reality headsets and flight simulation software. An unclassified environment like basic pilot training is a perfect place for the Air Force to use the augmented and virtual reality devices currently on the market. But for such products to ever see use by fighter and bomber pilots — or any operator that deals with secure information — the service must be sure that no part of the device is made by China, or any other foreign entity that could insert technology that allows for data collection. The Air Force has begun talking to companies about its concerns, Ryan said. The hope is those firms can examine their supply chains and shift away from buying Chinese components. “I've talked to some people in industry. A smaller company has said they've found a set of goggles that's American-made. I'm like: ‘Great, you're the first person to tell me that. The only one so far, too,' ” Ryan said. Another challenge is connecting commercial devices in a classified environment, where Bluetooth and Wi-Fi use may be restricted. “I've talked to one company that has figured [it] out. They have a system where it's a backpack laptop. So it's a direct connect to the goggles,” Ryan said. “Unfortunately it's more expensive, probably, to do that. It's probably more challenging to find the parts.” When augmented or virtual reality systems can be brought into classified environments, they may not be flexible enough for quick reconfiguration to complement different training scenarios, said Col. David Nyikos, Air Combat Command's deputy director of operations. “AR/VR is super cool,” he said during the panel. “But now you need it to evolve, you need it to reprogram to adapt to whatever mission rehearsal you're coming up with. Maybe tonight you're going to go out with guys from AFSOC [Air Force Special Operations Command] working with some Norwegian SOF [special operations forces], working with some Afghans. You've got to be able to train together to rehearse that. We don't have that right now.” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/itsec/2019/12/06/wanted-virtual-reality-headsets-that-arent-made-in-china
23 février 2023 | International, C4ISR
Itâs tricky to define the multibillion-dollar Pentagon initiative aimed at linking up the militaryâs many forces and data.