Contracting by Competitive Negotiations in Support of FMS

Security Assistance is an important tool of U.S. national security and foreign policy. An element of security assistance, the foreign military sales FMS process, is used to transfer by sale, lease, loan, or grant a wide range of defense articles, and services to allied or friendly governments. For example, sales may include major weapon systems such as aircraft or tanks, and the necessary initial and follow-on logistics support and other types of military equipment and associated spares and repair parts, publications, training, and so on. Many of these products and services must be procured by the U.S. Government for sale to FMS nationscustomers. Contracting is a vital, on-going function of global as well as national importance. For example, there were 4,518,168 61.5 billion U.S. Government procurement actions during just the first half of FY 1993, of which 68,336 4.9 billion actions were in support of the FMS program and intragovernmental activities Similar data are not gathered on awards in support of the FMS program alone, except that 3.7 billion of the 4.9 billion was in the first half of FY93. Out of the 4.5 million procurement actions, 66 percent were spent on contracts supporting FMS alone, 8.2 percent were follow-on actions, and 25.8 percent were not2 Similar percent data are not collected on awards in support of FMS.3 However, since DoD acquisition for FMS is conducted consistent with DoD procurement regulations and procedures, it should be safe to conclude that most FMS-related procurements are competed.