Boeing [BA] on Nov. 10 received an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a ceiling of $9.8 billion for F-15 support for the Saudi Arabian Air Force.
The amount of the first order on contract is $1.2 billion.
The contract “provides for modernization and sustainment of the F-15 Saudi fleet to include such efforts as hardware, software, and interface design, development, integration, test, subsystem and structural component production and installation of future modifications and enhancements to the F-15 Saudi weapon system as well as product support,” DoD said.
The award came the same day as the State Department approved several Foreign Military Sales (FMS) to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) totaling $23 billion in F-35s, MQ-9B unmanned aircraft, and various munitions after a peace agreement was signed between Israel and the UAE in September.
The Trump administration informally notified Congress of the proposed sale of 50 F-35s by October, but earlier this month Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.,) chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced a bill to restrict sales of sophisticated arms technologies in the Middle East beyond Israel (
Defense Daily, Nov. 3).
The sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE are a reprise of earlier sales to those countries by the Trump administration and come as officials warn of the Iran threat to peace in the region and as President Trump continues a likely fruitless battle to convince federal courts that a significant number of votes in the 2020 election were fraudulent.