Representatives of the Army Security Assistance Enterprise and Jordanian Armed Forces stand together for a group photo during a Program Management Review in Huntsville, Ala. The review focused on Jordan's HIMARS foreign military sales cases and afforded in-depth, line by line review in order to ensure the most efficient and effective route to meet the country's needs.

U.S. Army Security Assistance Command country program managers recently hosted representatives from Jordan and Kuwait during their respective HIMARS and PATRIOT Program Management Reviews in Huntsville, Alabama.

These PMRs are regularly occurring meetings between Army Security Assistance Enterprise stakeholders and partner nations to take an in-depth look at relevant foreign military sales cases.

“We hold PMRs with the FMS purchaser to reconcile letters of request and acceptance, improve cycle times and delivery schedules, discuss equipment-related activity, (financing and requirements),” said Manuel Rodriguez, Kuwait CPM.

To best tackle the FMS process and any issues that arise—from required infrastructure to sustainment to more technical inquiries—representatives from entities such as the Army’s Communications-Electronics Command, Corps of Engineers, Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command and relevant Program Executive Offices are brought to the table.

Also in attendance are defense contractors key to informing both partner nations and the ASAE on updated requirements vital to operations and sustainment.

Cecil Jefferson, USASAC’s Jordan CPM, said the face-to-face opportunity afforded through PMRs does more than just allow everyone to look at cases and solve problems. He said it enables people who generally only communicate through video teleconference or email halfway around the world from each other to foster better relationships and combat misinterpretation and miscommunication.

The challenges Jefferson and Rodriguez’s respective meetings tackled were similar—procurement, obsolescence, and delivery timelines.

“At times there may be challenges as far as how best to acquire certain sustainment aspects within the case,” said Jefferson. “We may have several different options and ideas that they can consider and decide which best fits them based on their need and when they need it. That drives a lot of the decision-making and our recommendations during these events.”

By addressing these challenges, both sides come away with important action items to advance existing cases and even new letters of request as needed.

At the end of the day, Jefferson said the biggest takeaway from these tabletop interactions is understanding and meeting the strategic needs of not only the partner nation, but also the United States.