The Trump administration has approved sales of thousands of air defense interceptor missiles and related services valued at $17 billion to Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, according to State Department and congressional officials.
The exports were approved despite alarm among some Pentagon officials over the dwindling U.S. stockpiles of such missiles, which have been expended in large numbers during the war against Iran.
The State Department gave formal notification of the sales to Congress last Friday. But it did not announce them in public statements, as it did with other arms sales to Israel and Gulf Arab nations that it authorized that day under an emergency provision.
The packages of sales announced in news releases on Friday were valued at more than $8.6 billion, and the State Department said it was bypassing congressional approval to expedite them because of an emergency in the Middle East.
In total, the State Department authorized about $25.7 billion in sales last Friday.
The $17.1 billion of interceptor missiles and related services being sold to Kuwait, Bahrain and the Emirates are expansions of three earlier sales approved by Congress — a package in 2019 in the case of Bahrain, and in 2024 for Kuwait and the Emirates. The State Department generally does not issue news releases about expansions of previous sales.
“These countries have deployed U.S. defense systems successfully to defend their territory and people, Americans overseas and U.S. bases,” the State Department said in a statement to The New York Times after it was asked about the sales. “This emergency action sends our partners a clear message we stand with them.”
The State Department did not provide a breakdown of how many interceptor missiles each country would receive. A congressional official said the dollar values were $9.3 billion from Kuwait, $6.25 billion from the Emirates and $1.625 billion from Bahrain.
The letter to Congress from the State Department lists two types of Patriot interceptor missiles in the orders from each country, according to a copy obtained by The Times.
The three orders amount to about 4,250 missiles, based on the fact that a single interceptor missile costs about $4 million. That is in addition to another large order: Last Friday, in one of its news releases on the $8.6 billion in new emergency sales, the State Department said Qatar was ordering $4 billion of interceptor missiles, which equates to about 1,000 units. It would take years to produce those amounts.
The Patriot air defense system is made by Raytheon, and that company and Lockheed Martin produce missiles for it.
Since President Trump and Israel started a new war against Iran on Feb. 28, the U.S. military has used more than 1,300 Patriot interceptor missiles, according to internal Defense Department estimates, putting a significant dent into global American stockpiles. The Times first reported last month on the extent to which the United States has used up critical munitions.
During the war, Gulf Arab countries have fired about 600 Patriot interceptor missiles to defend themselves against Iranian missiles and drones.
American companies produce more than 600 Patriot interceptor missiles per year. That means the United States and its Gulf Arab partners have burned through three years’ worth of such missiles in the war. Officials in the region have been pressing American counterparts to expedite shipments and to consider drawing from U.S. stockpiles to do so.
Patriot air defense launchers and interceptor missiles are among the most coveted weapons systems in the world. Ukraine, for instance, has asked the United States for the systems throughout its defensive war against Russia. The Trump administration has announced a plan for companies to increase total production of interceptor missiles to 2,000 units per year, but that change would take time.
The administration now has to make hard decisions on allocation of missiles. Some Pentagon officials are worried that the military’s readiness for conflicts has been compromised by the low U.S. supplies. It has had to divert munitions from U.S. commands in Asia and Europe to the Middle East, despite a widespread assessment in Washington that China — with the fastest-growing military in the world — poses the biggest security challenge to the United States.
When Raytheon and Lockheed Martin send interceptor missiles rolling off production lines to the dozen or so foreign customers that have signed contracts for them, that means fewer munitions for the United States.
Democratic and some Republican lawmakers have been pressing administration officials about the compromises to U.S. global military capabilities given the drain on resources by the Iran war.
The Trump administration has invoked an emergency authorization three times to bypass the standard congressional approval process to make arms sales to the Middle East. The $8.64 billion of arms exports announced last Friday was the latest instance. In January, it bypassed congressional approval to sell Apache attack helicopters, combat land vehicles and other arms to Israel, but did not invoke an emergency provision then.
“The repeated sidelining of Congress on arms sales has become a feature, not a bug, of this administration,” Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement to The Times this week.
“Again invoking emergency authorities, this time for over $25 billion in major weapons transfers, only highlights the administration’s failure to manage this war of choice,” he added. “It did not do the necessary homework before going to war, and now it is rushing to resupply Gulf partners while unnecessarily bypassing Congress, which stand as yet further examples of the administration’s own unpreparedness.”
In a statement released last Friday, Mr. Meeks mentioned the $25 billion sum, which his aides had learned earlier was the total amount of newly authorized arms sales to the Middle East by the State Department.
The gap between that and the $8.64 billion in sales that the State Department announced that day prompted The Times to ask the State Department about the difference. The department acknowledged the further sales of interceptor missiles in a statement this week.
Jonathan Swan, Eric Schmitt and John Ismay contributed reporting.
