DOD wants to cut red tape on foreign arms deals, Hegseth says

The Defense Department wants to reform how it sells weapons to foreign countries, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday.

The U.S. foreign military sales, or FMS, process involves years of back-and-forth between the U.S. and countries interested in buying American-made weapons before anything ends up on foreign soil. The process, which has been criticized for its slow pace, has been the focus of reform efforts prompted by the war in Ukraine.

In 2023, the Pentagon, State Department and Congress launched an effort to reform the FMS process, establishing a Tiger Team focused on pressure points and barriers to advancing desired sales.

“We need to reform that process so it’s quicker, so a request today isn’t delivered seven years from now but three years from now with less red tape and with the most efficient and effective technology possible,” Hegseth said in a press briefing directly following a NATO Defense Ministerial meeting in Brussels.

In 2024, a year after the Tiger Team worked to reform the FMS process, the Pentagon was still trying to implement many of its recommendations.

However, one challenge persists: No matter how quickly the U.S. government moves to make the reforms to speed up the approval of a sale, industry still has to build the weapons on order.

Defense firms have begun expanding manufacturing and have worked to ramp up production on munitions and other high-demand weapons, but building more production capacity also takes time and money.

Demand for American weapons systems has also spiked since the start of the war in Ukraine. Total U.S. FMS were well above $80 billion in fiscal 2024 by the end of the third quarter — higher than the total in FY23 and more than $30 billion over sales in FY22.

Hegseth’s comments to reform FMS were paired with his repeated emphasis that European countries must invest more toward the deterrence of Russian aggression and the overall security in Europe.

“One of the self-evident conclusions of the war in Ukraine was the underinvestment that both the European continent and America has had, unfortunately, in the defense industrial base,” Hegseth said. “The ability to produce munitions, emerging technologies rapidly and field them was a blind spot exposed through the aggression against Ukraine. … Europe is responding to that and so is America.”

Hegseth repeated the Trump administration’s conviction that NATO allies should invest more in defense and spend 5% of their gross domestic product as a continued commitment to the alliance.

“Leaders of our European allies should take primary responsibility for defense of the continent,” Hegseth said. “That begins with increasing the defense spending; 2% is a start, as President Trump has said, but it’s not enough.”

When asked if the U.S. would also meet a 5% spending goal, Hegseth pointed to the U.S. defense budget, which stands at $850 million, representing 3.4% of America’s GDP.

“I think nobody can or should contest the extent of America’s willingness to invest in national security. … 3.4% is a very robust investment, larger than most of our allies within NATO.”

Hegseth also stressed European countries should increase their share of support to Ukraine.

“The American Defense Department fully supports the efforts of the Trump administration, and we look to allies to support this important work with leading on Ukraine security assistance now through increased contributions and greater ownership of future security assistance to Ukraine.”