Washington Unveils NATO Weapon-Sharing Plan: The US State Department and the Pentagon's office for selling military equipment to foreign allies announced on Wednesday that they are embarking on a program that will for the first time allow NATO members to acquire and share American military hardware among members of the alliance.
At a time when defense budgets among most NATO nations are expected to be flat at best for the foreseeable future, NATO has been experimenting with pooling and co-development arrangements through its Smart Defense program as a way to share costs and risks in developing and fielding new weapons systems.
As this Smart Defense initiative has gained traction, the US government has looked for ways to become involved, in part to assure the interoperability of alliance assets, and in part to make sure that the US defense industry remains a major player in the European defense market.
A Jan. 30 memo signed by US Navy Vice Adm. J.W. Rixey, head of the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), said that while there has been "no past practice to accommodate" transactions that would allow pooling or use by more than one NATO partner of US
