Trump’s State Department Approves Stealth Fighter Sale Saudi Arabia Waited Decades For
Joe Biden killed a twenty three billion dollar fighter jet deal with the United Arab Emirates over fears about growing ties to China.
Now Donald Trump's State Department just cleared Saudi Arabia to buy the same stealth fighters.
Saudi Arabia is about to become the first Arab nation ever to fly them.
Saudi Arabia Becomes the First Arab Nation to Fly America's Stealth Fighter
The State Department approved the sale on September 17, 2026.
The package includes 48 F-35 Lightning II jets and 49 Pratt & Whitney engines.
The total price tag comes to roughly $24.3 billion.
No Arab country has ever been allowed to buy this jet before.
The State Department said the sale would "improve the security of a major non-NATO ally" and strengthen Saudi Arabia's "capability to deter current and future threats by strengthening its homeland defense."
Trump told reporters back in November he intended to approve this deal, and he followed through.
Congress now has thirty days to object before the sale moves forward.
Nobody on Capitol Hill is expected to stand in the way.
The Defense Security Cooperation Agency handles notifications like this one, and Congress gets the full thirty day window to raise objections before a single jet gets built.
That's the same process every major foreign fighter sale goes through, and this one is sailing through it.
Riyadh Was Buying Missiles From Beijing While Washington Kept Saying No
For years, Washington's answer to every Arab nation asking for the F-35 was no.
The excuse was always the same – protecting Israel's qualitative military edge.
That policy had a cost nobody in Washington wanted to admit.
While the Pentagon stalled, China moved in.
Saudi Arabia turned to Beijing for missiles and drones, and has built its own ballistic missile program with Chinese help over the last decade.
The United Arab Emirates got the same treatment from Biden – a $23 billion deal for F-35s and drones, proposed at the end of Trump's first term, frozen the moment Biden took office over UAE ties to China.
That deal never recovered.
Trump made sure Saudi Arabia didn't repeat that mistake.
By selling Riyadh the world's most advanced fighter jet, the administration locks Saudi Arabia into American maintenance contracts, American training pipelines, and American strategic orbit for the next generation.
Lockheed Martin's production lines in Fort Worth just got a lot busier, and American workers are the ones building the jets.
Every engine, every sensor pod, and every spare part on this contract gets built or serviced by an American company for decades to come.
That's the part the foreign policy establishment never wants to talk about.
They'll lecture you about "regional stability" while ignoring that a $24.3 billion contract means American paychecks in Texas, Connecticut, and a dozen other states.
Biden's Gulf policy handed that money and that leverage to nobody, and Beijing was happy to fill the gap.
Trump just took it back.
Israel Wants ‘Compensation’
Israeli defense officials have grumbled that putting fifth generation jets in an Arab air force chips away at the edge we give them.
The State Department says flatly the sale "will not alter the military balance in the region," and Israel isn't exactly flying yesterday's equipment either.
Sources:
- Staff, "F-35 Sale To Saudi Arabia Approved By State Department," The War Zone, September 17, 2026.
- Staff, "U.S. Approves F-35 Foreign Military Sale to Saudi Arabia," The Aviationist, September 17, 2026.
- Staff, "US clears $24B F-35 sale for Saudi Arabia," Breaking Defense, September 2026.
- Can Kasapoglu, "The Saudi F-35 Gambit: A High-End Arms Sale Meets Middle Eastern Geopolitics," Hudson Institute, 2026.
- Staff, "US clears Saudi F-35 deal that could end Israel's regional air edge," Israel Hayom, September 18, 2026.
- Staff, "UAE receives first French Rafale fighter jets as F-35 deal remains in limbo," Al-Monitor, January 2025.
