US to address Israel’s concerns in future US Foreign Military Financing (FMF) grants; Poland to limit its participation in overseas military missions and concentrate on modernizing its forces at home
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    • According to reports, Israel is seeking a surge in future US Foreign Military Financing (FMF) grants not only to support its growing security requirements, but to offset the impact of increasingly advanced US arms sales to other countries in the volatile region. In interviews in Washigton, US and Israeli officials said initial work toward a new 10-year military aid package, which would extend through 2027, is focusing on a full spectrum of Israeli concerns, including military modernization needs, new threats from regional instability and the erosion of Israel’s so-called qualitative military edge (QME) due to US arms sales in the Mideast. Under the existing US $30 billion aid agreement signed in 2007, negotiators from both sides did not specifically address or attempt to calculate Israel’s QME security concerns in annual FMF funding levels prescribed by the 10-year package. 1
    In another development, according to reports, Poland will limit its participation in overseas military missions and concentrate on modernizing its forces at home, President Bronislaw Komorowski announced on August 15. “We are abandoning without hesitation the missions policy, announced in 2007, which was too eager and ill-advised. The consistent policy of sending Polish soldiers to the other side of the world is over,” declared the president at a military parade during armed forces day in Warsaw. Komorowski, who is also the supreme chief of the armed forces under the constitution, said the death of 41 Polish soldiers during NATO’s ISAF mission in Afghanistan was a main contributor for the policy change. Poland maintains 1,600 soldiers in Afghanistan. Like other countries participating in the conflict, it intends to pull out its troops in 2014. 2

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