US–Saudi Arabia AWACS Sale

[2] The United States Air Force began using the E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft in 1977 following ten years of prototype design, development, and testing.

The roof-mounted antenna is an AWACS plane’s dominant feature; it is a smooth black disk with a white stripe down the center, and it rotates constantly.

The proposal, part of the largest foreign arms sale ever,[7] was not received warmly on Capitol Hill where Congressional consent was required.

"[8] These Senators feared that the AWACS sale was not designed to promote stability, as would be claimed by the Administration, but to secure U.S. oil resources.

Packwood spelled out the danger he saw in arming Saudi Arabia: "They have displayed a hostility that must be interpreted as their deliberate intentions to promote continued instability in the Middle East."

In fact, a May 1981 poll showed that 52% of those surveyed opposed arms sales to any country, and only 19% wanted the U.S. to sell AWACS to Saudi Arabia.

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin expressed "profound regret and unreserved opposition" to the Saudi AWACS proposal.

"[11] While Israel's "unreserved opposition" was based on the real security threat it faced, its "profound regret" could have been rooted in perceived betrayal by the United States.

A Boston Globe editorial from May 4, 1981 recognized this contradiction as well as other threats posed by the AWACS sale, noting, "the intention to sell AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia constitutes not only a manifest contradiction of Reagan's campaign promise to enhance Israel's security, but also serves to further destabilize the Mideast, a region whose stability was supposed to be a strategic priority of the Reagan foreign policy."

Secretary of State Alexander Haig said the President must be "free of the restraints of overriding external vetoes," and went on to say that were the AWACS deal blocked by Israeli influence, there would be "serious implications on all American policies in the Middle East.

"[14] Congress approved the AWACS sale, and as part of the then-largest arms export ever, the planes were a symbolic commitment to the US/Saudi relationship.