Trump, Qatar sign agreements to go ahead with $2B MQ-9B, $1B counter-drone orders
Both deals had previously been approved, but the White House said today’s signings “mark President Trump’s intent to accelerate Qatar’s defense investment in the U.S.-Qatar security partnership — enhancing regional deterrence and benefitting the US industrial base.”
The General Atomics MQ-9B Reaper Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is staged at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Grounds, U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command, Yuma, Ariz., Nov. 7, 2019. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Colton Brownlee)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump inked an agreement with Qatar today to move forward with two major defense deals in which Doha will pay nearly $2 billion for MQ-9B unmanned aerial vehicles from General Atomics and $1 billion for counter-drone capabilities from Raytheon.
Both deals had previously been approved by the US State Department, but the White House said today’s signings “mark President Trump’s intent to accelerate Qatar’s defense investment in the U.S.-Qatar security partnership — enhancing regional deterrence and benefitting the US industrial base.”
Trump was shown on television inking the deals, along with a number of commercial agreements that the White House said were worth billions more.
The State Department approved of the potential sale of eight MQ-9B UAVs to Qatar in late March in a deal that would also include hundreds of bombs, scores of missiles, several radars, radios, satellite communication ground systems and related equipment, along with US technical support.
“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country that continues to be an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East,” the State Department said at the time.
The counter-drone deal dates back much further and was approved by the State Department in November 2022 [PDF]. Specifically, it calls for the purchase of Raytheon’s Fixed Site – Low, Slow, Small Unmanned Aerial System Integrated Defeat System (FS-LIDS). (The White House announcement did not include item numbers, but the 2022 State Department approval for a deal involving the same amount of money said 10 systems had been requested, along with 100 interceptors, electronic warfare kits and other related equipment.)
The Qatari deals come on the heels of what the White House described as a monster agreement with Saudi Arabia for nearly $142 billion in defense deals — though few details were provided on what that entailed and the language of the White House statement suggested they were still in the works. (During Trump’s first term, a massive defense deal with Saudi Arabia was also announced, but that included non-binding agreements and deals that had already been in progress.)
