Every so often an email pops in my inbox from a relatively little-known Pentagon department called the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. The organization’s self-stated mission is to “advance U.S. national security and foreign policy interests by building the capacity of foreign security forces to respond to shared challenges.”

What that means in reality, is that the DSCA is a sort of international arms dealer and billion-dollar middle-man. When a foreign government wants to buy, say, a missile system from a major U.S. defense contractor like Raytheon, they call the DSCA to arrange the purchase. After getting the proper inter-governmental sign-offs, the Pentagon actually purchases the equipment on the foreign government’s behalf and then delivers it to the foreign country.

Business is big. Annually the U.S. sells some $55 billion in “defense articles and services” around the world, according to a recent brief by the Congressional Research Service, most of coming in the form of Foreign Military Sales through the DSCA. For comparison, the entire Pentagon budget for 2020 is over $700 billion.

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Most of these sales, though they can top $1 billion each, fly relatively under the radar. That’s why you may not have heard that this year alone the U.S. approved a nearly $2 billion deal for India to buy an air defense system, a $325 million deal for Tunisia to buy light attack aircraft, or an $85 million deal for the Dutch to buy torpedo conversion kits. One deal that did get some attention was the approval for the city-state of Singapore to buy 12 next-generation F-35 fighter jets, one of the most expensive weapons systems in history, for a cool $2.75 billion.

Just today the DSCA announced the U.S. approved the sale of 180 Javelin missiles to Poland, along with related launch and control systems for $100 million.

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So far this year the U.S. has approved 10 major arms sales, according to a glance at DSCA archives. In 2019 66 total planned deals were disclosed. (Last May was a banner month for arms sales, with 16 deals, several of them approved the same day for sales to Middle Eastern allies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.)

Whatever else the U.S. military is, DSCA Director Army Lt. Gen. Charles Hooper said it’s a damn good salesman.

“Allies and partners buy from the United States because we sell the world’s most advanced defense systems,” Hooper said in October. “Through the uniquely American approach to security cooperation, we also ensure our allies and partners have all the necessary training, education, and institutional capacity to effectively employ and sustain the equipment we provide.”

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