WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The Pentagon’s top weapons export official believes the US should do more to encourage allies\u00a0to buy American equipment as a group, under the aegis of a pilot program launched to help NATO quickly acquire weapons.
There have been two NATO programs under the aegis of lead nation procurement. The first was fairly small \u2014\u00a0coordination for a Baltic defense college with Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. While acknowledging that\u2019s not the\u00a0big-ticket dollar item most people keep eyes out for, Rixey said it was an important test case for how multiple nations could go in on procurement together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We\u2019re learning what are the mechanics besides just the bilateral signing of the case and the relationships associated with the countries they are working with,” Rixey said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second case was larger\u00a0\u2014\u00a0a clutch of precision-guided munitions for the NATO Support and Procurement\u00a0Agency, which the agency would then distribute to Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Spain. If completed, that sale could be worth $231 million, according to an August notification to Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
“I think we\u2019re really going to cut our teeth on that one and we\u2019re moving forward,” Rixey said of the weapons sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The question that Rixey and his counterparts at the US Department of State need to wrap their heads around is how big the program can go. A State Department official, speaking on background, told Defense News it was simply “too soon to tell” if the lead nation pilot program could work<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“At this point, what we\u2019d like to see is NATO countries submitting more proposals. We can\u2019t comment yet on how we might use lead procurement beyond NATO until we fully evaluate how the pilot program has performed,” the official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Rixey seems to have some ideas of what a future setup could look like. He held up an example of how a group of countries could buy into items for a major platform, such as the P-8 maritime surveillance aircraft, as a group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Imagine what you could do with lead nation procurement if you could get something like the P-8\u00a0\u2014\u00a0maybe not the\u00a0P-8 itself, but certainly all the support, the Sonobuoys, the spares, everything associated with it that you could buy\u00a0\u2014\u00a0in batch quantities and not have to worry about third party transfer restrictions,” Rixey offered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For now, the US State Department wants to see NATO do more with the program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":29054,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":19,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[46,11,19,48],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3378],"class_list":["post-15358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-global","category-pentagon","category-the-americas"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"P33LTTDN7BBILEBKGIANCOZZPM","arc_canonical_url":"\/pentagon\/2016\/09\/16\/us-weapons-export-official-wants-joint-procurement-beyond-nato\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n