State Department clears a $24.3 billion F-35A sale of 48 jets to Saudi Arabia

The US State Department on 17-18 September approved a possible foreign military sale to Saudi Arabia of 48 F-35A Lightning II fighters and 49 Pratt & Whitney F135-PW-100 engines, at an estimated $24.3 billion. The notification to Congress, transmittal 26-69 from the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, starts a 30-day review in which lawmakers can try to stop the deal.

The package includes 48 installed engines and one spare, plus cryptographic gear, electronic-warfare support, training devices, spare parts and contractor logistics. The prime contractors would be Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Fort Worth and Pratt & Whitney Military Engines in East Hartford. The department said Saudi Arabia “will have no difficulty absorbing this equipment” and that the sale “will not alter the military balance in the region.”

Why the sale is contested

Israel is still the only F-35 operator in the Middle East. A Saudi fleet would be the first fifth-generation Western stealth fighter in a Gulf air force. The United Arab Emirates pursued a similar deal and ran into the same objections: the kingdom’s growing technology and investment ties with China, including Huawei equipment, and the risk that sensors, mission data and maintenance practices leak.

President Trump had said a year ago that Riyadh would be allowed to buy the jet. Thursday’s notice is the bureaucratic step that turns a speech into a file on Capitol Hill. Delivery would still be years away even if Congress stays quiet. Production slots, training pipelines and the need to build secure facilities on Saudi bases all sit behind the headline number.

The department’s own language tries to close two arguments at once. It calls Saudi Arabia a major non-NATO ally whose security serves US interests in the Gulf. It also says the sale will improve interoperability with US, regional and NATO forces and will strengthen Saudi homeland defence against “current and future threats.” Those threats, in the present war, include Iranian missiles and drones and the Houthi campaign that has again reached Saudi cities.

What Congress can still do

Most Foreign Military Sales notices pass without a vote. This one has a constituency that wants a vote. Members who focus on Israel’s qualitative military edge will ask whether 48 stealth jets, even years from now, change the air picture over the Gulf. Members who focus on China will ask what safeguards exist if Saudi networks already run Chinese hardware. Members who focus on the 2018 killing of Jamal Khashoggi have used earlier arms packages as leverage and can do so again.

None of those questions is answered by the $24.3 billion figure. The figure is a ceiling that includes training and support. The jets themselves are the conventional-takeoff F-35A, not the short-takeoff F-35B or the carrier F-35C. That choice matches how Saudi air bases are built. It also matches how the US Air Force flies the aircraft that would have to share data with them.

If the notice survives the 30-day window, the next documents will be letters of offer and acceptance, facility plans and a classified discussion of how mission data files are handled. Until then the story is simpler. Washington has put Saudi Arabia on the F-35 list. Israel is no longer the only name on that list in the region. Congress has a month to decide whether that sentence stands.