Even as the Trump administration tries to finalize a deal to sell advanced F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, a Pentagon intelligence report has raised concerns that China could acquire the warplane’s technology if the sales go through.
The New York Times is reporting that Pentagon officials who have studied the proposed deal have expressed fears that F-35 technology could be compromised through Chinese espionage or China’s security partnership with Saudi Arabia. Those risks were contained in a broad report compiled by the Defense Intelligence Agency, a part of the War Department.
The Trump administration and Saudi Arabia have been trying to work out the final elements of an agreement in which U.S. weapons manufacturers would sell 48 F-35 jets to Saudi Arabia for billions of dollars.
However, in addition to concerns over China acquiring F-35 technology, the proposed sales also raise questions about whether the U.S. government would be compromising Israel’s regional military advantage. And therein lies the rub.
Since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, federal law has required that the United States must ensure that Israel is able to defeat “any credible conventional military threat” while sustaining “minimal damage and casualties.” And over time, this has been understood to mean ensuring that Israel maintains a “qualitative military edge” (QME) in the Middle East over any single potential attacker or combination of potential attackers.
Any proposed U.S. arms sale to a country in the Middle East other than Israel must be accompanied by a notification to Congress that includes a determination that the sale will not adversely affect Israel’s QME. Congress can then scrutinize, modify, or block proposed arms sales through various mechanisms, including passing resolutions of disapproval. Thus, typically, there has been a highly classified, monthslong interagency process to review whether a proposed weapons sale would be consistent with the QME requirement.
It is still not clear where exactly the Saudi deal fits in but it plainly needs some oversight. The F-35 is the most advanced stealth fighter in the world, and Israel is currently the only nation in the region to be operating it. Introducing this highly sophisticated aircraft into the Saudi arsenal would seem highly likely to erode Israel’s security advantage and it would seem that Congress has a vital role to play here, and it should. It seems clear that more than presidential decision-making is required here.
There is also another aspect to this issue that must be noted. According to many observers, the proposed F-35 sale is a key component of broader, comprehensive negotiations aimed at achieving a historic diplomatic breakthrough – the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
It is being argued that the prospect of acquiring America’s premier fighter jet and an American military umbrella of sorts provides significant leverage to induce Saudi Arabia to formalize peace with Israel. Yet the Saudis are reportedly leveraging normalization, heretofore successfully, to get Israel to accept a Palestinian state.
We would hope, though, that President Trump will come to read the room differently and leverage the F-35s and military umbrella.