Moments before the inauguration in of U.S. President Joe Biden, the United Arab Emirates has reportedly signed an agreement with the United States for 50 F-35A jets and 18 MQ-9B Reaper drones, people with knowledge of the deal told Flight Global on Thursday.
Although the U.S. and UAE were working to finalize a deal before Biden was sworn into office on Wednesday, the new commander in chief has said he will re-evaluate the agreements.
The last-minute deal wrapped up months of negotiations between the Trump administration and Emirati officials. The agreement was bolstered by Abu Dhabi's normalization of relations with Israel in August as part of the Abraham Accords.
Citing unnamed sources, Reuters reported that Abu Dhabi signed off the Foreign Military Sales package deal in the final hours of the Trump presidency. The report added that deliveries of the Lockheed Martin-built fighter aircraft could start in 2027.
The UAE also inked a separate deal to procure up to 18 unmanned aerial vehicles, the second-biggest sale of American drones to a single country, according to sources.
The U.S. Department of State and the UAE Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The fifth-generation F-35s are a major element of a $23 billion sale of advanced military hardware from Lockheed, General Atomics, and Raytheon Technologies to the UAE that was made public this fall.
The F-35 entered formal development in 2001 when Lockheed was picked by the U.S. Department of Defense and North Atlantic Treaty Organization to lead their Joint Strike Fighter program.
Transfer of the state-of-the-art JSF program to an Arab Gulf nation raised some eyebrows in Israel until Defense Minister Benny Gantz signed off on the proposal after finalizing a defense contract with the Pentagon.
The sale of military jets forms the biggest chunk of U.S. weapons sales to Middle Eastern countries followed by missiles and munitions for the 2015-2020 periods, Defense World reported.
U.S. military plane sales amounted to more than $58 billion during the period while that of missiles and munitions amounted to $25 billion.
