OPINION — While President Trump’s claimed $110 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia remains “fake,” and shouldn’t be even considered “news,” there are deliveries of past sales in the pipeline to the Saudis that should be held up in response to the murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi.
Start with halting delivery of additional F-15SA Strike Eagle fighter-bombers to the Royal Saudi Air Force, purchased under a $29 billion-dollar-sale concluded in December 2010, during the Obama administration. The Saudis bought 84 of what was, at the time, the most advanced F-15 built, with deliveries beginning in December 2016.
The Saudis have been using earlier versions of the American-built F-15s in their bombing attacks in Yemen that have killed so many civilians.
Five of the Saudi-bound F15SAs were reported to have passed through Lakenheath Royal Air Force Base in England last July 23, according to Air Force Monthly, which said 34 of the new fighters had already followed the same route. That would mean there are another 45 aircraft yet to be delivered.
Other Defense Department contracts that could be halted or delayed include a series relating to the training of Saudi pilots and mechanics on the new F-15SAs.
Lockheed Martin won a $253 million contract in 2013 to deliver virtual training systems to the Saudis by 2020, that would enable them to learn flight controls and maintenance without the actual aircraft. A Lockheed executive described the contract as providing “The complement of F-15SA training systems…with desktop trainers and progressively increases in capability to full mission weapons systems trainers,” according to Defense World.
Boeing has a multi-year, $305 million contract to provide training to the Royal Saudi Air Force to support the F-15SA aircraft at King Khalid Air Base at Khamis, Saudi Arabia, where the formal training unit for the new fighter is located. The aircraft will become part of the 55th Squadron of the Royal Saudi Air Force, which currently flies F-15S aircraft.
In 2017, an initial plan to train Saudi pilots and technicians was abandoned, and instead, Boeing-employed American instructors were hired to work at the air base in Saudi Arabia, according to a story in Arabian Aerospace online news service.
The Air Force, Air Education and Training Command also has just released a market research proposal seeking contractors who could “update existing F-15SA courseware and/or develop, produce, and deliver new F-15SA aircrew courseware and aircrew materials,” to facilitate Royal Saudi Air Force training on the F-15SA.
Another thing that could be stopped is a $60 million contract to upgrade 70 older F-15S fighter-bombers to F-15SA configuration that was awarded last July to Alsalam Aerospace Industries of Saudi Arabia. That work was not supposed to be completed before August 2020.
Delaying all these contracts would send a strong, immediate message to the Saudi government that their actions that led to Khashoggi’s death, will not be tolerated.
Such a move by the U.S. would reflect an approach that former Secretary of State James Baker III cited in The New York Times, as being comparable to then President George H.W. Bush’s reaction to the 1989 Chinese actions that caused the deaths of protestors in Tiananmen Square.
President Bush, within days, suspended military arms sales to the Beijing regime, and halted all visits between American and Chinese military leaders. Congress added sanctions.
“But even as Mr. Bush punished China, he strove to keep diplomatic relations between the two countries alive,” Baker wrote. He later sent a high-level government official to explain that “while he would not accept what they had done, he wanted to preserve the relationship,” according Baker.
One hopes those around President Trump can arrange for a comparable U.S. response to what the Saudis have done to an American-based, Saudi journalist who was trying to make things better in his own country.
