“A new‘ condition of sale ’opens the doors to more nations that want to approach the United States in relation to military sales abroad, and that makes the country more competitive in seeking partnerships.” This is stated in a statement by the US Department of Defense from the director of the Defense and Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), Heidi Grant. The DSCA last year created what was called a ‘Risk-Assessed Payment Schedule’, or RAPS, for its acronym in English. It is a new condition of sale that offers more nations better opportunities to acquire US military equipment through the foreign military sales formula, according to the considerations that Grant shared this week during a telematics conference.
The countries with options to be part of these operations are those that “are on the cusp of what people know as a reliable project”, in Grant’s words. The Department of Defense explains in its statement that some nations interested in what are known as foreign military sales (FMS, for the acronym in English of this formula of export of US defense material) can be classified as “reliable projects”, which means that they are countries “that have been evaluated as those most likely to meet the financial obligations assumed as part of their FMS application.”
In the last fiscal year, DSCA oversaw 14,700 FMS operations, executed $ 55.4 billion in arms sales (almost € 47.3 billion at current rates), and worked with more than 160 countries.