US President Donald Trump has signed a raft of defence deals, during his recent tour of the Middle East. This includes what Trump touted as the largest defence sales agreement in history, allegedly worth about $142 billion dollars. That deal was signed with Saudi Arabia on May 13.
The US government didn’t give details about this supposed historic deal, but said that Saudi Arabia will be provided with “state-of-the-art warfighting equipment and services from over a dozen U.S. defense firms.”
After Saudi Arabia, Trump flew to Qatar, where he signed another set of defence deals. These agreements were reportedly worth $42 billion. Some specifics of the deals with Qatar were made public.
MQ-9Bs are drones. FS-LIDS are counter-drone systems. Qatar has signed a deal to buy $2 & $1 billion worth of them respectively. Trump also listed some of the other military equipment Doha has allegedly agreed to buy.
It will take time for the full value of the deals to get realised, as defence agreements usually cover a long period of time. But despite that caveat, Trump is happy to tout the deals as a major win for the US military-industrial complex.
