The United States set a record for sales of military equipment and hardware to foreign countries last year, especially among European partners and allies, according to a top U.S. Defense Department official.
“We’ve had a huge increase in demand from our European allies and partners over the last few years since the … invasion by the Russians in Ukraine,” said James Hursch, the director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, during the 2024 Sea-Air-Space maritime exposition outside of Washington.
European nations — including Sweden, Poland and the Netherlands, have become “huge customers” for U.S. military hardware, he said.
In fiscal year 2023, the U.S. did more than $80 billion in business through the foreign military sales system, including grant assistance. “That is a record,” Hursch said.
In both fiscal 2022 and fiscal 2023, Hursch said a substantial portion of sales came from NATO allies, including $20 billion in fiscal 2022 and $24 billion in fiscal 2023.
“This is a huge increase,” he said. “That’s representative of the increased investment that our allies in Europe are making every day, which is a story that may not be as widely reported as it needs to be.”
Poland has been particularly involved in increasing its defense though foreign military purchases. Foreign military sales to Poland in fiscal 2023 included AH-64E Apache helicopters; High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS; the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System, and M1A1 Abrams Main Battle tanks.
“We’ve recently undertaken some new cooperation with Poland in the joint co-production of some defense systems,” Hursch said.
“One of the principal lessons we have learned in the Ukraine crisis and looking at ourselves as we’ve gone through this is … the health of our defense industrial base,” he said. “I think we’ve discovered … domestically, we need to pay more attention to that”.
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