Reuters: Trump administration moves forward with sale of drones to UAE

People familiar with the matter said the US State Department had provided Congress with an informal notification that it planned to sell 18 advanced armed MQ-9B drones to the United Arab Emirates in a deal valued at $ 2.9 billion.
The move comes on the heels of last week’s notification of a possible sale of F-35 fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates.
It would be the first drone export since the Trump administration reinterpreted a 34-country Cold War weapons deal to allow US defense companies to sell more drones to their allies.
Reuters reported that the United Arab Emirates has long shown an interest in purchasing drones from the United States and will be among the first customers after changing the United States’ export policy this summer. A $ 600 million deal to sell four unarmed MQ-9BC Guardian drones to Taiwan was the first to be formally notified to Congress on Tuesday.
This unofficial notification to drones is an introduction to the official and public notification of the State Department.
The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, whose members have criticized the UAE’s role in Yemen’s civil war, have the ability to review and prevent arms sales as part of an informal review process before the Department of State sends its formal notice to the legislature.
One person said the State Department could wait to formally notify Congress of the sale once staff and members are informed of the possible sale. The official notification gives Congress 30 days to object to any sale.
“As a general policy, the United States does not confirm or comment on proposed defense sales or transfers until it is formally notified to Congress,” a State Department spokesman told Reuters.
The MQ-9B will also be equipped with naval radar and can be delivered in 2024. One person said the package notified to Congress is 15 with the option to add three more drones.
The United Arab Emirates, one of Washington’s closest allies in the Middle East, has long expressed interest in acquiring the F-35 stealth jets and was promised the opportunity to purchase them in a side deal reached when it agreed to normalize the relations with Israel. The unofficial notification of the sale of 50 F-35s to the United Arab Emirates was submitted on October 29.
However, any agreement entered into by the United States to sell weapons in the region must serve decades of agreement with Israel whereby US-made weapons must not undermine Israel’s “qualitative military advantage”, thus ensuring that American weapons supplied to Israel are “superior in capacity” to those sold to its neighbors.