State clears a $24.3 billion F-35 package for Saudi Arabia

The State Department told Congress on 17 September that it has approved a possible Foreign Military Sale to Saudi Arabia of 48 F-35A Lightning II fighters and 49 Pratt and Whitney F135 engines, at an estimated cost of $24.3 billion. The notice is transmittal 26-69 from the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. It is not a signed contract. It opens a 30-day window in which lawmakers can try to stop the deal before formal talks start.

Riyadh asked for the conventional takeoff and landing variant, not the short-takeoff Marine version or the carrier jet. Forty-eight engines would sit in the airframes. One extra engine is a spare. The rest of the package is the kit that makes a fifth-generation fighter usable: AN/PYQ-10 simple key loaders, KIV-78 cryptographic appliques, secure communications and precision navigation devices, electronic warfare database support, cartridge and propellant actuated devices, training aids, spare parts, and years of repair and return work. Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Fort Worth, Texas, and Pratt and Whitney Military Engines in East Hartford, Connecticut, are named as the principal contractors.

The department used the standard formula for a major non-NATO ally. It said the sale would improve Saudi homeland defence, raise interoperability with US, regional and NATO forces, and add air-to-air and air-to-ground capacity. It also said the kingdom can absorb the aircraft and that the sale will not alter the military balance in the region. Those last two sentences sit next to a fact the same notice does not address. Israel is the only Middle Eastern operator of the F-35 today. Washington has long treated that monopoly as part of Israel's qualitative military edge, the statutory test that Arab buyers should not receive more capable US weapons than Israel.

President Donald Trump said in November 2025 that the United States would sell 48 F-35s to Saudi Arabia. The kingdom had asked him for the jets earlier that year. The UAE had also sought the aircraft and did not get this far. If Congress lets the notice stand, Saudi Arabia would join a group of about 20 operators of the only Western fifth-generation fighter still in production. Delivery dates are not in the notice. Production could run at Fort Worth, at the final assembly line in Cameri, Italy, or at both.

The timing is not abstract. On 16 September the Houthis said they had shot down a Royal Saudi Air Force F-15SA over Marib with a locally made surface-to-air missile. BBC Verify matched landscape features in the group's wreckage video to hills west of the city. Jane's identified the tail as an F-15SA by the apertures for BAE Systems' Digital Electronic Warfare System at the base of the fin. The fate of the two-person crew was not known. Riyadh had not confirmed the loss when the F-35 notice went out. An F-15 is a large, radar-visible aircraft. An F-35A is built to present a much smaller radar return. That difference is one reason Saudi planners have wanted the jet for years, as they look at Iran and at air defences in Yemen.

Congress has blocked or reshaped Saudi arms packages before, usually after civilian deaths in Yemen or after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. This package is larger and more politically charged than those earlier fights because of the stealth technology and because of the QME test. Representative Gregory Meeks has already said he will not sign off on a separate $2.8 billion bomb sale to Israel that the White House teed up this week. The F-35 file will draw a different coalition: members who want to protect Israel's edge, members who object to arming Riyadh during the Yemen fighting, and members who treat the sale as an industrial order for Texas and Connecticut.

A congressional notification does not put jets on a ramp. After the review period, the two governments still have to negotiate price, configuration, training pipeline, and any limits Washington places on software, weapons, or data sharing. Those limits are how the United States has historically tried to keep a buyer inside the QME frame while still selling the airframe. The notice is silent on that point. It only says no additional US personnel would have to be sent to Saudi Arabia to support the sale.

Saudi Arabia is already the largest customer for US arms. Two squadrons of F-35As would sit on top of a fleet of F-15C/D, F-15S and F-15SA aircraft and Eurofighter Typhoons. The practical question for the next 30 days is whether Congress treats the notice as a routine FMS paper or as a change in who is allowed to fly the most closely held US fighter in the Gulf.