Ellen Lord, defense undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, said: "We have a whole variety of specific programs where we are focused on applying these authorities: Patriot Missiles for Romania; Global Hawk for Japan, THAAD [high-altitude air defense missiles] for Saudi Arabia, and TOW [vehicle-launched missiles] for multiple foreign military sales partners."
These new authorities will allow the Pentagon to shave “years” off the time it takes to deliver weapons to friendly militaries, Lord said.
“The idea here is that we often have the same system that is being sold to multiple countries, or perhaps a small variant,” she said. “If we have just gone through certified cost in pricing and gone through all the [Defense Contracting Management Agency] and [Defense Cooperation in Armaments] work, and we have current information, we can take that and leverage that to quickly go and sell to another country. That’s the basic idea. Then we’ll always follow up and verify, and so forth.”
