Breaking Defense:
PENTAGON: The United States signed off on arms exports worth $192.3 billion over the past year, a full 13 percent increase from the previous year — even as the Trump administration keeps pushing hard to sell more weapons, more quickly, to more allies overseas.
The massive increase was announced by the State Department on Thursday afternoon as a way to promote the release of more detail about its Conventional Arms Transfer policy, which has loosened restrictions on selling everything from guns to drones, while pushing US diplomats and officials to make selling more arms a larger part of their mission.
New details include the emphasis on the global competition for arms as more countries develop increasingly modern defense production capabilities and seek to sell them outside their borders, especially to rising economies in Asia — especially India — and to Middle Eastern governments with deep pockets and big appetites for military equipment.
