WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Army Security Assistance Command hosted the first Grand Security Assistance Review ever conducted with the Royal Saudi Land Forces from Sept. 21st to the 26th in Washington, DC.
Combining three major program management reviews together with a larger country security assistance review allowed almost 200 representatives from the Department of Defense, the Army Security Assistance Enterprise, RSLF and U.S. defense industry partners to make significant progress on past, current and future Foreign Military Sales cases.
"Our mission for this week is to discuss ways we can enhance our military-to-military relationship, talk about requirements that will build partner capacity and interoperability, review our current and future joint training exercises and review your major FMS cases" said Maj. Gen. Mark McDonald, USASAC's commanding general.
As the average lifespan for foreign military sales cases typically span years, any number of issues can crop up requiring specifications to be changed, contracts to be rewritten and delivery changes to be made.
One of the benefits of bringing the ASAE, defense industry and RSLF partners together in one location for aviation, armor and ordnance program management reviews and then the larger overall security assistance review is the ability to quickly work through issues that always seem to arise in FMS cases.
In the ordnance corps program management review, long hours and lengthy discussions went on for three days before the final assessment and minutes were consolidated.
"At the end of the meeting we all shook hands and both sides agreed it was a very successful meeting" said Karen Hudson, the USASAC Central Command Branch Chief. "We worked through a lot of issues that have not been resolved for quite some time… we came up with some solutions and have a way forward."
With more than $17 billion in aviation, armor and ordinance sales cases alone, Saudi Arabia is one of the U.S. Army's largest FMS partners.
"The ultimate goal of this event is to strengthen the ties between our two countries and solidify the great relationship that already exists" said McDonald.
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