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US Sells 24 Apache Helicopters To Iraq
And just like that, slowly but surely, the entire US foreign strategy vis-a-vis Iraq and its weapons of mass diversion destruction, is becoming all too clear.
From the US Defense Department
WASHINGTON, Jan 27, 2014-The Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress today of a possible Foreign Military Sale to Iraq for AH-64E APACHE LONGBOW Attack Helicopters and associated equipment, parts, training and logistical support for an estimated cost of $4.8 billion.
The Government of Iraq has requested a possible sale of 24 AH-64E APACHE LONGBOW Attack Helicopters, 56 T700-GE-701D Engines, 27 AN/ASQ-170 Modernized Target Acquisition and Designation Sight, 27 AN/AAR-11 Modernized Pilot Night Vision Sensors, 12 AN/APG-78 Fire Control Radars with Radar Electronics Unit (LONGBOW component), 28 AN/AAR-57(V)7 Common Missile Warning Systems, 28 AN/AVR-2B Laser Detecting Sets, 28 AN/APR-39A(V)4 or APR-39C(V)2 Radar Signal Detecting Sets, 28 AN/ALQ-136A(V)5 Radar Jammers, 52 AN/AVS-6, 90 Apache Aviator Integrated Helmets, 60 HELLFIRE Missile Launchers, and 480 AGM-114R HELLFIRE Missiles. Also included are AN/APR-48 Modernized Radar Frequency Interferometers, AN/APX-117 Identification Friend-or-Foe Transponders, Embedded Global Positioning Systems with Inertial Navigation with Multi Mode Receiver, MXF-4027 UHF/VHF Radios, 30mm Automatic Chain Guns, Aircraft Ground Power Units, 2.75 in Hydra Rockets, 30mm rounds, M211 and M212 Advanced Infrared Countermeasure Munitions flares, spare and repair parts, support equipment, publications and technical data, personnel training and training equipment, site surveys, U.S. government and contractor engineering, technical, and logistics support services, design and construction, and other related elements of logistics support. The estimated cost is $4.8 billion.
This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a strategic partner. This proposed sale directly supports the Iraq government and serves the interests of the Iraqi people and the United States.
This proposed sale supports the strategic interests of the United States by providing Iraq with a critical capability to protect itself from terrorist and conventional threats, to enhance the protection of key oil infrastructure and platforms, and to reinforce Iraqi sovereignty. This proposed sale of AH-64E APACHE helicopters will support Iraq’s efforts to establish a fleet of multi-mission attack helicopters capable of meeting its requirements for close air support, armed reconnaissance and anti-tank warfare missions.
The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region.
The prime contractors will be The Boeing Company in Mesa, Arizona; Lockheed Martin Corporation in Orlando, Florida; General Electric Company in Cincinnati, Ohio; Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Sensors in Owego, New York; Longbow Limited Liability Corporation in Orlando, Florida; and Raytheon Corporation in Tucson, Arizona. There are no known offset agreements proposed in connection with this potential sale.
Implementation of this proposed sale will require the assignment of three U.S. Government and two hundred contractor representatives to Iraq to support delivery of the Apache helicopters and provide support and equipment familiarization. In addition, Iraq has expressed an interest in a Technical Assistance Fielding Team for in-country pilot and maintenance training. To support the requirement a team of 12 personnel (one military team leader and 11 contractors) would be deployed to Iraq for approximately three years. Also, this program will require multiple trips involving U.S. Government and contractor personnel to participate in program and technical reviews, training and installation.
There will be no adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness as a result of this proposed sale.
This notice of a potential sale is required by law and does not mean the sale has been concluded.
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Once Iran over runs Iraq, they'll really have fun with those Apaches.
Thez dun' fly like ones on my Playstation, eh, Abdul?
Apache, jump on it, jump on it...
I assume any profits will be directly deposited into my account, right?
Wasn't there a Beetle Bailey cartoon about flying helecopters upside down ... ?
Regards,
Cooter
Doesn't matter, the Apache is being phased out by the new AirWolf helicoper that can hit mach and fly upside-down.
UNFORTUNATELY.... there's only one guy who can control it in flight and he lives alone in the desert and plays the cello. So... it might be kind of a long replacement cycle.
I think they should change the name from Apache to Native American. It seems kind of racist to refer to a killing machine as an indian tribe.
500mio USD each? Inflation?
Those aren't weapons of mass destruction. Those are good Christian capitalist weapons which use use fragmentation and pyrohellfire missles to convert bad communists to good communists. All in the name of our god mammon, Goldman sachs and Dear Leader Obama.
"What difference does it make!"
- Billary Clinton 2016
i will never forget how surprised i was as a young man during the first gulf war, to find we were fighting against our own equipment, and to see the russian model iraqi tanks wired wih all our clearly marked commo equipment
i thought, how on earth could we possibly sell stuff we might have to run up against ata future date
sooo naive
Still a pretty sweet picture.
The aircraft itself costs about $50 - 60 million, depending on how you trick it out. The balance is for the service contract and spare parts. Yes, Iraq is paying 90% markup for the end to end extended warranty and Truecoat.
I assume we printed the money to pay for these, and then gave that money to the Iraqis so they could "buy" them from us.
Where is Jonathan Swift when you need him...
This is how the "war will pay for itself".
+1 if that's a Fargo reference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZejGJfodoQ
Does it include free oil changes like my toyota?
His name is Peter Stringfellow (Hawk) to us Brits...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1045000/images/_1048700_peter_stringfellow300.jpg
Why don't we split the 5 billion for every head of household
They got 3 trillion in cash 9 years ago.
Why why do we waste all this money on people that hate us....oh wait
Somebody get me Ernest Brognine!
You KNOW shit's getting serious when we mobilize Jan-Michael Vincent!
The ultimate vendor: supply the goods, AND the means to pay for them.
How the US sent $12bn in cash to Iraq. And watched it vanish (Guardian, 2007)
...Unless the Iraqis intend to pay using those truckloads of gold that got 'liberated' (where else could they be?):
Trucks in Iraq with thousands of gold bars stashed in them
Rather see them in Iraq than in the skys above America piloted by the DHS.
that's old school, dhs will have block 4 Comanches, and the uav fire scouts.
Uhh, the Comanche was cancelled more than a decade ago, before production started. DHS will just have to go with retired A-10's borrowed from the Air Force.
dhs will just lay down a fog of persistent nerve gas, 1 city at a time, using drones.
After the Ayatollahs took over, the Iranians were using Grumman F-14s with "black market" parts for over 15 years. They might still have them too.
The MIC needs to be fed. Besides, we have to have something to blow up in the next unauthorized conflict. It's a win-win!
Exactly! Fed first by taxpayer dollars to invade a country. Fed second to equip an army to secure, hold and rebuild that country, then when people get tired of dieing in a useless war, fed by funneling foreign aid to that country so they can buy weapons.
Tax dollars to the MIC in a never ending stream.
Too bad we were never warned about the possibility of this happening.
All woars are bankers' woars.
War...what i$ it good for?
Is anyone able to put a tachometer on Bill Hicks?
I'm pretty sure his coffin is spinning like an Iranian centrifuge.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqBOMBSDQsI&t=0h0m48s
It's for the children!
HAHAH
What kind of legacy would we leave the children if they didn't have more mass killing machinery!
Awesome beasts. But at 200 million each ?
Without public procurement peculiarities they would sell for
a still steep price of 10 million each, still 6 million above any recovering nations budget of benevolent foreign financiers largess.
Obama loans them US taxpayer dollars for the purchases.....it's all a nice, neat little package....
The only drawback is, if the Iraquis use the Fiat Paper Promises to, .... BUY HOTELS and OTHER ASSETS, overseas.
Now I would call that, MIS-ALLOCATION of of all intended purposes for the TPTB.
Deal with that one.
Jeez $200 million is a bargain. We should have tried to sell them blimps for $466 million each.
200 million is INSANE for a helicopter. I remember my dad (AH-1 gunship pilot back in the early 80's) bitching about how they cost 12 million dollars for one compared to a a couple of million for a Cobra. [He turned down their offer to fly them and retired]
FUCK THE WAR MACHINE!! Enough already.
Obama is the winner for the largest arms sale in history. Saudi arabia, a tyrannical regime, purchased 60 billion in killing machinery in 2011.
Mubarak got 2 billion a year while he tortured anyone who wrote a bad thing about his regime. After the overthrow the Chicago family behind General dynamics and Obama made sure the Abrahms tank sale went through.
Arms control... FUCK YOU, OBAMA.
Nobel Piss Prize winner!
Fuck all the warmongering presidents, congressmen, military hawks, and their think tank cheerleaders and media supporters with an ICBM-sized war boner......
Bath House holds that title for gun sales in the US alone.
If the U.S. leaves enough WMD in Iraq, they will serve as a good excuse to invade again when it is more convenient.
Like raping yourself with your own dick....
Yes USSA wants to Spread Democracy . More Wars in the Name of Democracy.
WAR IS PEACE BITCHEZZ- AMERIKAN VALUES ROCKS
Awful expensive targets for the Global Hawk drones.
well... Sadam got his weapons from America... so why should the next one not get them from America right?
Agreed. Fair's fair.
Besides, if they don't buy them from us they'll just buy them from somebody else.
Can I..... have one of them? Just one. I just really, really want an Apache.
My old Bell helicoper is getting lost amongst the other more modern choppers commuting into Manhattan every morning where I 'work' with my billionaire buddies. I need something a little more "aggressive" looking to reassert my dominance over Carl Icahn and really shove his nose in it.
- Bill Ackman
How is this news?
Because it reinforces the article that claims US manufacturing is now working 42 hours.
semi sarc/
It's made in America....
They'd better have a spare parts deal...
With China (rimshot).
Seriously, this is the STUPIDEST thing yet. Might as well give 'em a B-52 with a few W88's. The Apache is nothing to give to a former-and-future-potential-enemy or ally. This is treason.
You're still thinking in terms of nation states. Those are dead. What's alive is the feudal elite, and their willingness to make money any way they can.
Yet another reason why 9/11 was hilarious...
A veritable ZOG knee slapper.
The Petro-Dollar is being replaced with the Military_Defense-Dollar. BRILLIANT
Sell the weapons and stage another war , this time with Maliki. Nice going , the plan , Invasion Iraq 2016 , coming soon for the next POTUS in office. Another 5 Trillion Bitchezz.
PNAC keeps rollin'along...
They are to pick up the flowers and candies.
Expensive pieces of equipment to be picking Flowers and Candies. CIA can do it half the cost shipping Poppies
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/24/theres-a-war-...
Do those come with in person training and maintenance? Looks like some contractor jobs just opened up....
Vultures are circling as we speak. Hang on
king julian
When you say it's for the kids you mean to explode them, right?
Thanks, Barack for continuing the Bush/Cheney agenda of war-profiteering (it's amazing you can wring some more crony-defense-firm profits from that war that you "opposed"). Your progressive media pals will praise you.....and John McCain will too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgAVpPNusTs
that's why they gave him the Nobel Peace prize apparently... all that peacemaking
and fucking Biden recommends the American people should only have shotguns.
Nothing better than selling to one's own puppet! And the only real wealth - the oil - has been monopolized by the same puppets while the masses pay for these toys with reduced standards of living...
The question is. How many of these Apaches will turn up in Iran? The answer is. All of them.
dontgoforit
That was one of the funniest things I've read in a long time, thanks!
Complete with remote US monitoring and control just in case you become our enemy again.
NSA on board.
All for the low, low, low price of ...
$200M a piece in qtys of 24.
Free minibar included with each sale.
lmao
Does that come with Hookah Bars and Belly Dancers? You know the NSA loves watching
America renounces at policing the world, as Prince its private oligarchy hit man, is sitting in Hong Kong.
So if you lack boots on ground ability you sell hardware to those who will one day use it against you and your CRONIES.
The wheel now spins...the MIC runs the WH like in the days of GWB, but its not boots on ground.
No, we think we control the world via technology of remote kind.
Two edged sword.
Oil for Apaches
Helicopters are sitting ducks in urban warfare where the terrorists concentrate. Half a dozen 50 cals and a flare pistol are all that are needed to take down the most advanced choppers. That was proven in the last invasion of Iraq.
Maybe His Highness can throw in one of those neat Ironman suits too.
Think MSNBC will pick this story up and blarp it out all over the Somnambulist Cortex in between panel discussions over the likelihood of a Beiber conviction?
No? Not so much?
Allow me to let everyone here in on a not so secret new reality of modern warfare... attack helicopters are dinosaurs of modern combat. Anyone that buys one is an idiot. They are slow, and fly low, which makes them vulnerable to a broad assortment of handheld weapons that have never been so available. If a kid with an $100 RPG can bag a $50 million aircraft, you've probably got a problem. It makes the Air Force's decision to retire the A-10 all the more stupid.
If Iraq wants to blow $5 billion on some helos for a bunch of American jobs, why not? Somewhere else, they could at least be used for "crowd" control, but not in Iraq, where every 14 year old has an RPG launcher.
If the Blackwater contract pilots want'm ,then they should have the very best.
STFU military pig.
yes but we're also selling Al Qaeda stinger missiles, you could call it genocide, but most just call it good economic policy
Hmmmmmmm.
Back in the day, Daddy Bush established a "no-fly zone" over Iraq. For a while Sen Bob Kerry (not to be confused with Swift Boat Kerry) was running for Prez. He claimed that we were spending $2 billion annually to enforce the no-fly zone.
One decade we don't want the Iraqi government to have airships there. The next we do.
Who did Saddam kill with his airships? Shia and Kurds. Who will the new Iraqi government kill with its airships? Sunnis and Kurds. Hey!!!! At this point in time, what difference does it make.
I am sure that GE, Northrup-Grumman, Halliburton get their bread buttered on both sides and across the vast span of time either way.
"Swift Boat Kohn"
Yea, but Saddam only flew Russian (and French) choppers. Maybe he'd still be around if he'd bought American.
All the warnings about Iraq have come true: it was the unprecedented attack on a sovereign country where America’s lives and treasure were thrown away, as well as the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, on deliberate false information to support the aims of the Zionists and lining the pockets of American industrialists.
And, still, the bloodbath continues.
The dire predictions remind us of Whig Prime Minister Lord Melbourne: “Nothing that the wise men have promised has happened. And everything the damn fools said would happen has come to pass.”
It is time for the “damn fools” in America, like courageous ordinary Mexicans, to take back their country.
“Down Mexico Way: A rebellion is brewing south of the border” by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar,com, Janaury 20, 2014 (an excerpt):
As the US continues and expands its worldwide "war on terror," extending its militarized tentacles into Africa as well as the Middle East, a festering threat looms closer to home: the ungluing of Mexico and its rapid descent into the status of a failed state. How Washington responds may determine not only the fate of our southern neighbor, but also our own.
Mexico is undergoing a crisis of authority – a direct challenge to its ability to maintain a monopoly on the use of force within its borders – and this is coming from two directions. The first challengers are the drug cartels: these go under a variety of names, from the "Knights Templar," known as "Templarios," to the Sinaloa gang, which got its start in Mexico’s Sinaloa province but soon spread across the country. While each gang has its unique regional allegiances and internal culture, all employ the same brutal practices: aside from the sale of illegal drugs, the cartels engage in massive extortion, collecting "taxes" from both wealthy businessmen and poor campesinos in the fields. Anyone who refuses to pay is ruthlessly – and often graphically – eliminated.
The municipal police are no help: indeed, they are a hindrance to those residents who wish to live in peace, unmolested by criminal gangs, for the simple reason that the police are the biggest criminal gang of all. Thoroughly infiltrated by the drug gangs, and very often on the cartels’ payroll, the armed might of the Mexican state is impotent before the often superior firepower of the cartels – who have reportedly been aided by none other the US government in their quest to acquire firearms.
Having surrendered de facto authority over large swathes of Mexico to the cartels and their allies, the central government in Mexico City has been remarkably indifferent to the fate of millions of Mexicans left to chafe under the heel of criminal gangs – until now.
What woke them up to the burgeoning crisis was the rise of the so-called vigilantes: groups of ordinary Mexicans, from wealthy ranchers to poor field hands, who have organized to take back their land – and their lives – from gangs of murderous thugs (whether they be the cartels’ hooligans, or those who commit the same crimes under color of State authority). I reported on this movement last year, when the citizens’ self-defense forces took over the town of Tierra Colorado, arrested the chief of "police," and set up roadblocks, clearing the town of the local cartel’s henchmen.
Now the "vigilantes" have upped the ante, moving in what appears to be a coordinated strike at the heart of the cartels’ power. The town of Nueva Italia is the latest battlefield, where the self-defense forces have taken over City Hall – under a rain of gunfire from the government-aligned Templarios – and surrounded the neighboring city of Apatzingan, widely known as the Templar’s chief headquarters.
The epicenter of the vigilante movement is in the states of Guererro and Michoacan, in southwest Mexico, a region with a long history of resistance to the central government. In the 1920s, after the "revolutionary" government of President Plutarco Calles practically banned Catholicism, started murdering priests and nuns, and seized Church property, the "Cristero" rebellion took root in the largely agricultural southwestern provinces, where guerrilla bands battled government troops in defense of the faith. This is the poorest region of Mexico, where government "land reform" –In response to efforts to "modernize" farming along inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 – deprived peasants of Indian extraction of most of their land, turning the indigenous people into trespassers on their own historic holdings.
In response to efforts to "modernize" farming along collectivist lines, the small farmers rose up against the central government – and the same hostility to Mexican centralism permeates the current "vigilante" upsurge.
The central government has reacted the same way they have in the past: with relentless hostility and demands to disarm. After decades of indifference to what is happening in the southwest part of the country, the lords of Mexico City are sending thousands of federal troops into the region as a complement to their demands that the peoples’ militias disarm. As the Guardian reports, the locals treat this demand with the disdain it deserves:
"’Disarm?’ a middle-aged masked Nueva Italia vigilante commander said with obvious incredulity. ‘If we did that, the Caballeros would seek us out and kill us.’"
Well, yes – and that may very well be the idea, given the close links between the notoriously corrupt Mexican authorities and the drug cartels. This may account, in part, for the government’s de facto laissez-faire policy, as the Guardian report continues:… Read more:
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/01/19/down-mexico-way/
"The dire predictions remind us of Whig Prime Minister Lord Melbourne: “Nothing that the wise men have promised has happened. And everything the damn fools said would happen has come to pass.”
It is time for the “damn fools” in America, like courageous ordinary Mexicans, to take back their country."
"damn fools" = "conspiracy theorists".
Until the bloodletting begins here, the "wise man" on your block won't get it.
MOLON LABE.
"Hey, read this, Reggie! If I arm a few million of these guys and make them citizens, they will spread death and destruction throughout America!"
"Call your boy Eric. I am sure he can make it happen, sweetie. Pass me that joint."
Tyvm for this. Can't see how anyone can prevent this from playing out in cities across the US tbh.
Back in the day (1980?), super conservative William F. Buckley Jr. came out in favor of legalizing drugs. I was aghast. I thought htaat he had completely abandoned his principles. He argued that the war on drugs was lost and spending money on it was just pissing it down a rat hole.
Legalization would go a long way to ending the cartels.
I would take it one step further and have the government provide narcotics at low cost (you know...through ObamaCare - just like contraceptives). Except I would make their use illegal so that society could continue to show its contempt. You can possess and traffic in drugs, just don't let us find them in your bloodstream. You could make people work as ObamaCare facilitators as punishment....or better yet, take away their ObamaCare.
ask the kurds if there were any wmd libtards.. what do you think the hundreds of trucks that left iraq and went to syria were carrying, figs? sunni vs shite ... itt's a good thing.... keeps em busy.
And in related news Russia supplies 24 SA-18s to the rebel fighters in the Iraq.
I am sure the Iranians will enjoy these new choppers Backdoor Barry is giving them...quietly slipping them in thru Iraq.
We give them over a billion a year. We're buying them.
If you can't beat'em, arm'em.
I.e. If you can't piss away treasure killing them, piss treasure away arming them.
"Save a wall, use a guillotine."
Obunga Bunga be a Shia Shia
There were no WMDs. Virgin export market.
Nothing surprises me any more....
This is great of GDP
Shouldn't the headline be: US sells AH-64E Apache Longbow Attack Helicopters to Iran and China?
No, it should read, "America sells Iraq expensive American helicopters that will be paid for with American money."
The Iraqi air force is a joke. They're going to ruin those things in a year. The Iranians will never need to fight the Iraqis-their corrupt air force will gladly let them climb all over the choppers to their heart's content. The choppers will end up rotting at the end of the runway because Iraqis are retards at maintenance and would rather sell spare parts and fuel than actually use them to maintain their own stuff. I've seen their so-called air force. They spend a lot of time walking around hand-in-hand kissing each other and goofing off, they live like animals, are strangers to soap and hygiene, and are no better under us than they were under Saddam. You can bet these choppers were sold to enrich American contractors and were paid for with our own money.