USA-Israel: who gets what?
What does the United States give Israel?
The standard U.S. military aid package amounts to $3.8 billion per year: $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing, plus $500 million for joint missile-defense programs. Israel is required to spend most of these funds on American goods and services, and by 2028 nearly the entire amount must be spent exclusively inside the United States.
What does Israel give in return?
- Savings on F-35 development: $55 billion
Israel helped eliminate numerous technical problems during the early stages of the F-35 program, reducing U.S. research and development costs by approximately $55 billion and accelerating the aircraft’s deployment timeline. The total development cost of the F-35 program was $55 billion. Israel’s combat testing effectively spared the United States from having to identify and fix these problems at its own expense.
- Intelligence value: the equivalent of five CIAs — $75 billion per year
General George Keegan, former head of U.S. Air Force intelligence, stated that the value of Israeli intelligence was equivalent to the work of five CIAs, providing a 400 perc ent return on the $3.8 billion aid package. The budget of one CIA is approximately $15 billion. Five times that amount equals roughly $75 billion annually in intelligence value in exchange for $3.8 billion in aid.
- Strategic base value: $15–20 billion per year
As Admiral Elmo Zumwalt and General Alexander Haig noted, Israel is America’s largest aircraft carrier: it requires no American troops on board, cannot be sunk, and is deployed in a critically important region. This saves the United States from the need to build, deploy, and maintain actual aircraft carriers and land divisions, which would cost America $15–20 billion annually.
- Export multiplier for the F-35: $40 billion in sales and $173 billion in backlog orders
Israel’s proven combat effectiveness and the upgrades it has contributed to the F-35 help drive $40 billion in American exports and support a $173 billion backlog of orders for U.S. industry. In effect, Israel serves as the world’s most reliable advertisement for American weapons.
- Jobs and economic impact: 255,000 jobs and $72 billion annually
The F-35 program’s economic engine alone supports 290,000 American workers and generates $72 billion in annual economic impact. Israeli partners have contracts with more than 1,000 American companies in 48 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
Why do people lie about this?
Because they have dishonest motives.
There is no other reason to lie about things like this.
Vladimir Starok
