Where Does Israel Buy Its Weapons From?

The Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage exchange agreement was extended on Tuesday, calling into question whether the $14.3 billion in US aid requested by President Joe Biden will even be relevant by the time it passes through Congress. What share of its arms does Israel get from its top ally? Who else chips in? We’ve sorted through the data.

Sputnik has already explored the capabilities of Israel’s military-industrial complex in detail, pointing to the nation’s status as a major regional powerhouse when it comes to the development and production of advanced armaments, rivaled only by Iran.

The Israeli defense sector produces a broad array of armaments, from small arms and radio equipment, drones and remote-control weapons platforms, to main battle tanks, air and missile defense systems and even nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. Israel is also a major arms exporter – selling over $12.5 billion in weapons to nearly a dozen foreign buyers last year, with top clients including India, Azerbaijan, the Philippines and the United States.

But unlike established defense giants such as Russia and the US, Israel is not capable of developing and producing all of its military’s weaponry independently. For this reason, Tel Aviv has come to rely on its highly symbiotic (and some might say opportunistic) relationship with Washington when it comes to arms imports, with American defense contractors getting guaranteed contracts, Israel enjoying billions in what are effectively free weapons, and ordinary American taxpayers left holding the bill.

“Mr. President, for the people of Israel, there’s only one thing better than having a true friend like you standing with Israel, and that is having you standing in Israel,” an emotional Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Joe Biden during his trip to Israel in mid-October.

A year earlier, during a visit to the US by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Biden repeated his favorite Israel-related line, that “if there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one.” The second part of the quote, which Biden has been selectively using since at least the mid-1980s going back to his days as a senator, is “...to make sure our interests were preserved”.

Who's Arming Israel?

Given this close relationship, it should come as no surprise the United States accounts for the vast majority of Israeli arms imports - a whopping 92% from 2017 to 2021. According to figures compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Germany accounted for 6.9% of Israeli arms purchases over the same period, with Italy third with 1.0%. In other words, according to SIPRI's calculations, between 2017 and 2021, just three countries accounted for 99.9% of the Middle Eastern nation’s arms imports.

Portion of chart showing Israeli arms imports by country, 2017-2021.

© Photo : Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Across a longer timeframe, from 2011 to 2020, SIPRI determined the US accounted for 70.2% of Israeli imports of major conventional weapons, with Germany, Italy and Canada rounding out the top four with about 23.9%, 5.9% and 0.05%, respectively.

Smaller contracts, consisting of spare parts, small arms and light weapons systems, have also traditionally been dominated by US suppliers, which penned some $8.7 billion in arms agreements with Israel from 2015 to 2019, according to research by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT). Over the same period, Germany, the UK, and Italy issued licenses for arms sales to Tel Aviv worth $944 million, $474.5 million and $374.5 million, respectively.

Israeli imports of spare parts for military equipment, small arms and light weapons, and other equipment.

© Photo : Campaign Against Arms Trade chart

What Kind of Bang Does Israel Get for Its Buck?

More than any other field, Israel depends on US weaponry to assure the capabilities of the Israeli Air Force (IAF), including the service's new F-35I Adir fleet (Tel Aviv ultimately expects to get 75 of the fifth-generation jets).

Israel has been reliant on the US for the IAF's needs for over 50 years, buying and modifying hundreds of Boeing F-15 Eagles and F-15E Strike Eagles, and General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcons over the years. US aircraft dominate Israel’s fleet of utility, electronic intelligence, transport and aerial refueling planes, and its chopper inventories, including the Bell AH-1 Cobra, the Boeing AH-64 Apache, and Sikorsky CH-53 and S-70 lineup of combat and transport helicopters.

Northrup Grumman subsidiary Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, generously built Israel’s fleet of Sa’ar 5-class navy corvettes. And Israel’s Rafael Defense System got help from Raytheon to build its Iron Dome anti-rocket and drone system.

Less costly and flashy but no less significant weapons made in the USA and delivered to Israel include an array of submachine guns, assault and sniper rifles, M60 general-purpose and Browning M2 heavy machine guns, M72 LAW 66-mm shoulder-launched rocket systems, M203, Mk 19 and Mk 47 grenade launchers, and TOW anti-tank missiles.

On the vehicles front, the US has sold M113 APCs, Humvees, M35 and HEMTT trucks, and Caterpillar bulldozers, excavators and wheeled loaders, which Israel has armored up and sent to level buildings suspected of being used by Palestinian militants or members of their families.

Additional equipment includes the M88 recovery vehicles, customized M109 155-mm self-propelled howitzers, modified M270 multiple launch rocket systems (which Israel has altered to be compatible with Israeli-made rockets), and MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile systems.

The list of weaponry sold to Israel by other countries besides the US is far more modest, and includes arms such as the German-made Heckler & Koch P11 underwater pistols used by Israeli special forces, Italian-made Beretta M1951 pistols, Belgian FN MAG machine guns, German Mauser 86SR sniper rifles, customized British-Israeli MDT David utility vehicles, and German Unimog 437 heavy trucks.

In the air, Israel relies on German-made G-120 and Italian Aermacchi M-346 Master trainer jets, and a handful of French-made Eurocopter Panther maritime patrol helicopters.

At sea, along with its US-built Sa’ar 5-class corvettes, Israel has taken delivery of four German-made missile launching corvettes known as the Sa’ar 6, plus Germany’s Dolphin 1 and Dolphin 2 diesel-electric submarines, which in addition to torpedoes are also capable of launching nuclear-armed cruise missiles (formally, Israel neither confirms nor denies possessing such weapons).

The German-made INS Rahav, the fifth Israeli Navy submarine, arrives at the military port of Haifa, file photo.

© AFP 2023 / JACK GUEZ

American Taxpayers' Generosity

The best thing about Israel’s weapons contracts with the United States is that the majority are effectively given to the Middle Eastern nation free of charge. Between 1948 and 2023, the United States provided Israel with over $260 billion in military and economic assistance, plus at least $10 billion more for the joint development of weapons like the Iron Dome.

The US has devoted over $3 billion in aid to Israel like clockwork since 2004, including some $3.2 billion in 2022. Amid the Gaza crisis, Biden more recently asked Congress for a whopping $14.3 billion in additional assistance, which if passed would be the largest funding package to Israel since at least 1979.

foreignassistance.gov map and chart showing extent of US aid to Israel over the years.

© Photo : Screenshot / foreignassistance.gov

Over 99% of the US assistance to Israel is of a military nature, with spending effectively a win-win proposition for the Israeli government, which needs to spend less of its own money on arms purchased abroad and can subsequently redirect cash to other priorities, like health care, and for American defense contractors, who are assured steady, guaranteed, subsidized orders courtesy of Uncle Sam.

In fact, the only party that loses from the arrangement is the ordinary US taxpayer, which is left picking up the tab for Israel’s defense, and facing the ever-growing danger of the US defaulting and obliterating the economy as America's national debt inches toward $34 trillion.