Posted on 09/14/2010 8:49:43 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
In Saudi arms deal, good news and bad for St. Louis
The Obama administration is expected to notify Congress this week or next that it has agreed to sell $60 billion worth of fighter jets and helicopters to Saudi Arabia. If Congress approves the deal, it will be a significant piece of good news for the St. Louis economy.
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the deal could include as many as 84 new F-15E "Strike Eagle" fighters, as well as upgrades to 70 more F-15s. Those airplanes are built at Boeing St. Louis.
The United States no longer is buying F-15s. All of the Air Force's fighter aircraft eggs are in one basket, that of the Lockheed-Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
The F-15 line here has been kept open by foreign sales to Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea and Singapore. Selling up to 84 more F-15s to the Saudis would mean the 1,000 workers on the F-15 line here would have work for most of the rest of this decade.
The $60 billion Saudi deal also includes other good news for Boeing: 70 Apache attack helicopters and 36 Little Bird observation helicopters, both manufactured in Boeing's Mesa, Ariz., facility.
All of that is the glass-half-full view of the Saudi deal. A pessimist - or perhaps a cold-eyed realist trying to figure out what the St. Louis economy will look like 10 years from now - is left somewhat less sanguine.
Ten years from now, all of Saudi Arabia's F-15s will have been built and delivered. By that time, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is supposed to be the workhorse of the nation's fighter fleet. Orders for the F/A-18 Super Hornet, the Navy's fighter/attack plane built at Boeing St. Louis, will have ceased. The Navy variant
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
The Saudi Bin laden deal may be good for some but it is evil for this nation and the world.
I just love the fact that we are selling our enemy the weapons that will kill us.
I don’t feel at all comfortable with this deal.
Just drive down and look at the closed Chrysler plant!!!!
I never did understand what that pothole of a country Egypt should be given 1000 of our M-1 tanks esp since we all know that they will be eventually used against our sole true ally in the middle-east Israel.
However with the level of leadership & incompetence that these muslim countries have among their military the standard of training and effectiveness can hardly be compared to the real army in the region.
All the weapons we sell to these countries should be inherently booby trapped so we can destroy them at will with a satellite signal.
You have the Peanut Farmer to blame for that. After Anwar Sadat and Manachem Begin signed the Camp David Peace Accords in 1978, making Egypt the first Muslem country to recognize Israel's right to exist, Jimmah opened up the arms floodgates.
The Egyptian people rewarded Sadat by assinating him. It's not the governments of Egypt or Saudi Arabia who are our enemies. It's a (rather large) portion of their citizens who are our enemies.
The freakin’ Saudis will have better and newer aircraft than we have.
What a COS.
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