WASHINGTON: The State Department announced on Friday that it was planning to send Israel more than $6.5 billion of weapons aid that included Apache attack helicopters and combat land vehicles, bypassing a congressional review process, TIME reported.
The packages of four weapons systems had been under review for months by the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The State Department is supposed to wait for approval from the top two members on each of those committees before announcing the aid. But in this case, the department under Secretary of State Marco Rubio circumvented that norm. It was the third time that the Trump administration has bypassed this part of the congressional process, called informal review, to send weapons to Israel.
Each of the four items is called a case. The largest of the cases is Apache attack helicopters, valued at $3.8 billion. A case of Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, or JLTV, a newer version of Humvees, is valued at $1.98 billion. The other cases are AW119 Koala light helicopters and power packs for armored personnel carriers.
