Foreign Military Sales


The U.S. Department of Defense's Foreign Military Sales program facilitates sales of U.S. arms, defense equipment, defense services, and military training to foreign governments. The purchaser does not deal directly with the defense contractor; instead, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency serves as an intermediary, usually handling procurement, logistics and delivery and often providing product support, training, and infrastructure construction.
FMS is based on countries being authorized to participate, cases as the mechanism to procure services, and a deposit in a US Trust Fund or appropriate credit and approval to fund services.
Some U.S. Air Force FMS programs are assigned two-word codenames beginning with the word PEACE, indicating oversight by USAF Headquarters. The second word in these codenames is often chosen to reflect some facet of the customer, such as MARBLE for Israel or ONYX for Turkey. Codenames appear in all capital letters.
No partner nation has yet succeeded in applying strict schedule clauses to a FMS program.