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On July 29,members of the U.S. Senate voted 45 to 40 to block new sales of laser-guided bombs and aircraft maintenance services to Saudi Arabia—falling short of the two-thirds majority necessary to override a veto by the Trump administration blocking the ban from taking effect.
Despite deteriorating public support for Riyadh due to its implication in anexceptional number of civilian deaths in Yemen and the murder of one of its own citizens in the Turkish embassy, the flow of U.S. arms is set to continue.
Earlier in May, the Trump administration argued the new sales could be authorized on an emergency basis, bypassing congressional review, due to escalating tensions with Iran in the Persian Gulf.
However, one of the arms sales most pertinent to Saudi Arabia’s ability to police the increasingly tense waterways is already well underway, having been years in the making.
Since 2008, the Royal Saudi Arabian Navy has planned to invest $20 billion in its SNEP II naval expansion project. It currently operates seven frigates, four thousand-ton Badr-class corvettes and nine 500-ton patrol boats. All but three of its frigates date back to the 1980s.
The sale of four modified Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs), a corvette-type vessel, was initially proposed under the Obama administration in 2015 and authorized under Trump as part of a larger $110 billion package in May 2017.
The U.S. government awarded the contract to Lockheed Martin in 2018, and vessels are currently under construction in Marinette Marine shipyard in Wisconsin and set for delivery between 2019–2021.
The kingdom’s enthusiasm for the Littoral Combat Ship may seem curious given that the U.S. Navy has infamously struggled with the vessels’ reliability,cost overruns,lack of firepower,& inability to conveniently slot in different “mission modules” as had originally been advertised
These flaws led the Navy to cut its order for LCS down from fifty-five to thirty-two vessels, though Congress insisted the Navy buy three additional ships.
Saudi Navy is primarily dedicated to operations in littoral waters of the Persian Gulf,where shipping of ultra-valuable oil tankers faces harassment from Iran’s naval forces,& the Gulfs of Oman and Aden,where it ships seeks to interdict arms & agents smuggled by Iran into Yemen.
Littoral combat ships,were built for speed, maneuverability and stealth in coastal waters:they are agile and have shallow drafts ideal for “knife-fighting” small ships close to shore. Even their light armamenti s optimized for sparring with smaller fast boats within visual range.
Saudi LCSs will also serve as a useful platform to deploy some of the ten advanced MH-60R Seahawk helicopters purchased by Riyadh in a $1.9 billion deal, the first of which was delivered in September 2018.
The multi-mission choppers can help locate ships using their infrared sensors and multi-mode radars,perform search-and-rescue duties,detect submarines with their ALFS dipping sonar and attack them with Mark 54 torpedoes, and even blast surface targets with Hellfire missiles.
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