Contract is worth nearly $8.6bn and was announced during Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to the US

The US Department of War on Monday revealed that Boeing had been awarded a nearly $8.6bn contract to make F-15 fighter jets for Israel.

The deal was announced shortly after US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concluded a joint press conference in Palm Beach, Florida.

The contract involves the “design, integration, instrumentation, test, production and delivery of 25 new F-15IA aircraft for the Israeli Air Force, with an option for an additional 25 F-15IA aircraft,” according to a routine statement that lists the Pentagon’s new contracts.

Since 7 October 2023, Israel has used US aircraft and weapons to kill more than 71,000 people in Gaza. Trump, however, said he was not worried about what decisions Israel may take.

“I’m not concerned about anything that Israel is doing. I’m concerned about what other people are doing, or maybe aren’t doing,” he said in response to a question about whether Israel was moving fast enough to implement his so-called “peace plan”.

  • geneva_convenience@lemmy.mlOP
    3·
    15 hours ago

    Not at all actually. Israel is the only military aid recipient who receives its money as a lump sum over which they even get interest, and is not required to spend it all on US military purchases. Israel spends a large sum of American money on their own domestic manufacturers.

    Also Israel gets its money as a “loan” which then gets forgiven so it doesn’t have to abide by many US laws controlling how

    You’d think that spending all their money on American weapons would be a bare minimum. The Zionist lobby is very much behind this.

    https://internationalpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Israels-Exceptional-Security-Partnership-with-Washington.pdf

    Israel is one of the only recipients of U.S. military aid where the U.S. does not maintain a tracking mechanism to determine which weapon systems are going to which military units, making it impossible to implement Foreign Assistance Act vetting and oversight requirements, including Leahy law vetting

    Unlike other countries that receive their FMF in installments, Congress has mandated that Israel receive its FMF in a lump sum within 30 days of appropriation. The aid is then transferred into an interest-bearing account, which Israel has used to pay down debt owed to U.S. government agencies.4

    Israel has been allowed to use a percentage of its FMF package on its domestic arms industry

    If you want to see what actual MIC work looks like, look at the loans Ukraine takes out.