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Publish Date : 09-Feb-2015

The US State Department and the Pentagon's office for the sale of military equipment to foreign allies have announced the launch of a program to allow NATO members to buy and share U.S. military hardware among the alliance's members , for the first time. At a time when military budgets among most NATO country are expected to be flat at best for the predictable future, NATO has been done experiments with pooling and joint development arrangements through its Smart Defense program in order to share costs and risks in the development and fielding of new weapons systems.

With this Smart Defense program gaining traction, the US administration has sought ways to become involved, in part to assure the alliance assets' interoperability, and in part to ensure that the US defense sector continues to be leading player in the European defense market. US Navy Vice Adm. J.W. Rixey, head of the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), inked a memo on January 30 that said said that while there has been "no past practice to accommodate" deals that would enable pooling or use by more than 1 NATO partner of US assets, "NATO Allies are [now] seeking mutual cost sharing both within and outside NATO to maximize the purchasing power of their defense budgets."

Some of these programs "will involve joint procurement of defense articles and services through a lead country with the potential for flexible retransfers among members of the group,", as NATO allies continue to jointly develop and acquire weapons systems.

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