Saudi Arabia has made “commitments” to “address some” of the issues that the United States has been concerned with regarding the targeting of civilians and non-military facilities by the Kingdom’s military coalition as part of a campaign to influence the outcome of an ongoing civil war in Yemen, a U.S. State Department official said on Thursday.
The Trump administration recently signed a deal with Saudi Arabia for $110 billion in arms deals with the Kingdom, although much of the weapons in question began the review process during the former Obama administration. The Obama administration halted plans to sell the Saudis precision guided munitions used by aircraft to hit ground targets due to indiscriminate attacks by the Saudi led forces against civilian targets in Yemen.
The Saudis have been fighting the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, who control the country’s capital and much of the rest of the country.
The Trump administration has reversed the previous administration’s position on the precision weapons.
The “Saudis themselves have recognized that some of the aspects of how they have pursued that campaign are problematic,” Ambassador Tina Kaidanow, acting assistant secretary for the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, told the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade. “I think over time their awareness has grown. I think their willingness and ability to address some of those issues has grown. We’ve seen that both in the commitments they’re willing to make to us, as well as their willingness to accept some of the assistance that we can provide in order to help them do the things that arguably would improve their performance.”
Some of that assistance comes in the form of a pending sale of a $750 million training program to Saudi Arabia that will go toward helping Saudi forces improve their targeting tactics in Yemen, the vetting of targets, and follow international norms of armed conflict, Kaidanow said. The sale to the Royal Saudi Air Force and other Saudi forces was approved by the State Department earlier this month.
“The training for the RSAF and other Saudi forces will include such subjects as civilian casualty avoidance, the law of armed conflict, human rights command and control, and targeting via MTTs and/or broader Programs of Instruction,” a Pentagon release said. MTTs stand for mobile training teams.
Kaidanow said the arms sales package with Saudi Arabia is to strengthen that country’s “capability to do the kinds of things that we have asked them to do,” noting that “the elements of that package are largely in maritime security, for example border security” to defend against threats to them. The package also includes the sale of a Lockheed Martin [LMT] Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, likely targeted at a potential Iranian nuclear missile threat, as well as tanks, helicopters, surface combatants, patrol boats, light close-air support and surveillance aircraft, command and control systems, and cyber security capabilities, among others.
Kaidanow said that the concerns about Saudi tactics in Yemen “are real,” but said the Saudi’s commitments to the U.S. are “serious and credible” in their efforts to lawfully prosecute the war and properly vet targets.
Kaidanow and Vice Adm. Joseph Rixey, director of the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency, both told the panel that globally, U.S. weapons remain the most sought after tools for war.
“American weapons systems remain the weapon systems of choice all over the world,” Kaidanow said in response to a question from Rep. William Keating (D-Mass.), ranking member on the panel. “We want to keep it that way. That’s why we’re trying to balance the technology security aspect of what we do as against the ability of our defense industry and companies to do their business overseas and be as effective as they can be in as wide array of countries.”
Rixey said that there were 1,700 new cases of arms sales implemented in FY ’16.
Rep. Paul Cook (R-Calif.) asked about the dependence on Russian arms of current NATO members that used to be part of the Soviet-led block and whether this diminishes their capabilities as allies of the Western alliance.
Rixey replied that he is “seeing a desire to move away from Russian equipment into NATO standard type equipment.”
In FY ’16, the U.S. exported more than $33 billion in weapons to foreign governments. Of this, more than $25 billion was funded by partner nations and about $8 billion was funded through either Defense or State Department appropriations, Rixey said.