Monday, December 20, 2010

Saudi Air Force Training Base to be Sited in Idaho

On Oct. 20, Stratfor reported that the U.S. Goverment was making a $60 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia,

The U.S. government formally notified Congress on Oct. 20 of a $60 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia. The package, which includes both combat aircraft and military helicopters, is considerable and will provide the Saudis with even more of some of the most modern fighter jets in the entire region. Militarily, however, Riyadh’s challenge is not a matter of hardware: Saudi Arabia already fields a broad spectrum of some of the highest-end and most modern military equipment in the region. Instead, its challenge is fielding that hardware. With deliveries years away, the new deal will do little to balance the resurgent Iranian regime in the near-term, and prolongs Saudi Arabia’s heavy dependence on U.S. defense support.

The new package, which will reinforce the quality and quantity of Saudi military hardware over the course of the next two decades, will include:

* 84 new-build and more modern variants of the F-15S combat fighter aircraft.
* The upgrade of 70 existing Saudi F-15S to this new standard.
* 70 AH-64 Apache attack helicopters.
* 72 UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopters.
* 36 AH-6i light attack-reconnaissance helicopters.
* 12 light training helicopters.
* Associated armaments, including air-to-air and air-to-ground ordnance (including 1,000 “bunker-busterâ€