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On January 20th, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) reportedly approved a deal to purchase up to 50 F-35 joint strike fighter aircraft and 18 MQ-9 Reaper drones from the United States.
According to Reuters, the agreement was one of the final acts of the Trump administration, occurring just an hour before President Joe Biden was inaugurated.
The UAE, one of Washington’s closest Middle East allies, has long expressed interest in acquiring the stealthy F-35 jets made by Lockheed Martin and was promised a chance to buy them in a side deal when it agreed to normalize relations with Israel in August 2020.
The U.S. State Department and the UAE Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The agreement delineates the cost of the aircraft, technical specifications and the schedule for F-35 deliveries to the UAE, unnamed sources told Reuters.
Those sources could not confirm when the first F-35 is due to be delivered to Abu Dhabi, but stated that an initial proposal stipulated 2027 as one possible date.
The UAE deal was previously estimated at a $23.37 billion value, including 50 F-35A fighters worth $10.4 billion, 18 MQ-9B drones worth $2.97 billion, and $10 billion worth of air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions.
It’s unclear whether the incoming administration will seek to undo the deal.
Biden’s pick for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told reporters in late October that the sale is “something we would look at very, very carefully,” due to U.S. obligations to preserve Israel’s qualitative military edge.
The UAE has had the paperwork for more than a week, the people said.
The UAE and the United States had once hoped to have a deal in place in December, but the timing of jet deliveries, their cost, the technology packages and training associated with the deal extended negotiations, the people said.
If this report is true, this was the Trump administration’s final attempt to secure some advantage to its allies in their offensive against the Houthis in Yemen, and also guarantee some sales for the problematic F-35 fighter jet.
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Agreement schedule on steroids and Trump removes aluminium tariff on UAE in final minutes of his pathetic presidency..Gross.
Probably Israel knows there is a high chance some secrets to go from UAE to Iran. Big bad orange man hated this plane from his first day in office.
Russians stopped producing good weapons after 1990
Just wait the new unmanned carrier in 40 years, I hope you’re young enough.
Abay madar chod, 70% of Indian weapons are of Russian manufacture. Stupid ignorant fool.
Abe bhadwe shia main has raha hu tere chutye china pe lol.20 miners kal mar gaye china mein hahahahha.Iranian scienfist uaad hain na bhadwe?Aur soleimani ki to chatni ho gayi loool.Kya ukhad liyavtum shia bhadwo ne israel ka loool madarchot communist
Abay bhonsere kay gandu, learn something about India first before trying to make all Indians look like idiots. Yahudi teri ma ko chod rahain han?
Tere maa ka mutah maine kiya hai bhadwe hindu gaddar.Tera naam aslam rakh pehle mutah bastard
Tere muhammad ki gaand mein apna danda daal saale china ki najaiz paidaish bhadwe.2008 yaad hai na?85000 chinese mare the uss time looool.
Qualitative Edge
That is the reason we have not sent back home the European invaders of Arab land. The reason is because the US must make sure that any weapons sold to the Arabs are much inferior to those sold to the invaders. Imagine if the Arabs had the qualitative edge over the invaders, how many minutes before the invaders would be running way towards home.
The invaders met with US officials in charge of selling US weapons in 1978 and in 2006 and during both meetings, the invaders were telling the US govt that the Arabs must never acquire any weapons unless they are inferior to theirs.
1978 meeting
2006 meeting
Frankly, these Wahhabi pimps are being ripped off by the deadbeat Americans, the Emirati dumbass morons have three airbases occupied by their western and Zionist masters and they are all withing Iranian base bleed artillery range, let alone missiles and loitering munitions and these planes will be destroyed in the ground as the desert sands don’t even allow underground construction.
Iran’s accurate ballistic missiles are defining new ways that wars are fought
The vulnerability of giant, stationary air bases to precision missile strikes was demonstrated during the January 2020 Iranian missile strike on the US-operated Ein Assad air base in Iraq. Prior to the attack, the US teams at that base had launched a fleet of Predator UAVs for patrolling the base perimeter. One of the incoming Iranian missiles hit an underground communications conduit and cut the fiber optic lines between the UAV’s control vans and the system’s transceivers. This caused a loss of ground control over the entire UAV fleet. It took hours to reestablish communication via satellite and bring the UAVs back in.
Needless to say, US combat aircraft based in Iraq were powerless against this missile strike. Simply put, Iran gained air superiority over the air base by virtue of its precision missiles.
I have lived in the emirates and can safely tell that these corrupt puppets of US and Zionism can not operate a car safely and dire Pakistani drivers, let alone fly F-35. They are forced to buy these expensive junk western weapons and squander their now limited resources as we are heading towards a post fossil fuel economy. They should buy food for the people of Yemen and Palestine that they have killed and maimed instead.
If this report is true, this was the Trump administration’s final attempt to secure some advantage to its allies in their offensive against the Houthis in Yemen, and also guarantee some sales for the problematic F-35 fighter jet.
UTTER NONSENSE and BS
no matter what saudis or UAE have as fighter jets,bombers etc… will not make 1 % difference on the battle field…..and Biden will keep the deal 100% for the obivous reasons……MONEY …
the jet itself…..is totally worthless in battle against modern russian jets…..and worthless against ground targets if the attacked nation has modern ground to air defenses..ie.iran,russia,china….because all three can see the supposed invisilbe F-35 with their radars…..and once detected, it is a sitting duck for modern ground to air missiles.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/506b7e3651cd9592602f27854764a3d3ed33d91baeba841266f3ef57db9d1247.jpg
Iranian upgraded Harpy2 heads towards its target.
Houshits about to lose lol.Good job uae.
$3B for 18 drones is a ripp off. Could have brought Chinese, Russian or Turkish drones for far less than that.
Ironically, they might be useful for operations against Israel but nothing else. Yemen, stealth aint gonna make a difference.
Iran – They air defenses are an unknown but the F35 has to take off and land somewhere and the UAE is within spitting distance of Iran. Iran will destroy their airfields at the first sign of trouble.
Why would the Dönmeh House of Saud controlled UAE attack Frankist Israel(?) – they are all the same. There will never be an attack on Israel from that fake Arab side. And if then ‘the attack’ would be so designed and executed that it will fail and just lead to ‘Eretz Yisrael Hashlema’ (Greater Israel). The Arab side is completely undermined and under Zionist control…
Surprised Israel allowed this to happen. The US is really scraping the bottom of the barrel for money.
I don’t understand the headline of the article. When the UAE approves something that is not an act of the Trump administration.