The Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) on Tuesday announced a new bipartisan task force that will make recommendations to speed foreign military sales (FMS) processes.
The FMS Technical, Industrial, and Governmental Engagement for Readiness (TIGER) Task Force will be led by Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) and co-chaired by Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), and will also include Reps. French Hill (R-Ark.), Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) and Jason Crow (D-Colo.). The FMS TIGER Task Force was stood up by HFAC Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas).
The task force plans to reach out to experts in the Defense and State Departments, industry, and HFAC regional subcommittee leaders for their input and to help with recommendations.
“Members on the task force will begin meeting when the House returns in July and are currently reaching out to relevant government agencies, industry, and critical partners to schedule consultations and draft legislative solutions,” a spokesperson for Waltz told Defense Daily.
Areas of focus for FMS modernization include speed, human capital and personnel assignments, prioritization, approval processes, and notification procedures, the spokesperson said.
“For years U.S. foreign military sales have been plagued with delays that have put many of our allies and partners across the globe at risk,” Waltz said in a statement. “I’m proud to lead this bipartisan TIGER Task Force to examine why many of these shipments have been delayed or have seen increased costs, putting the security of some of our most critical allies at risk, and implement legislative solutions to streamline these sales.”
Establishment of the FMS task force follows closely on the heels of the DoD release this month of an internal tiger team effort to look at accelerating and speeding the department’s role in FMS. The team made recommendations in six categories including better understanding allied and partner needs, speeding the process for determining whether sensitive technology can be sold, providing relevant capabilities to allies even if the products may not be programs of record, better tracking internal processing of FMS awards to ensure schedules are met, and having continuous process improvement throughout DoD for handling FMS cases (Defense Daily, June 13).
A concern of lawmakers of late has been delays in billions of dollars in arms sales to Taiwan, including dozens of F-16 fighters.