Scope — This assessment examines Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Iraq, with Türkiye used as the strongest regional control case, in order to determine whether possession of advanced U.S.-origin weapon systems confers sovereign control over their sustained combat employment or whether American authority over munitions, sustainment, software, technical data, mission data, contractors and export permissions preserves a consequential layer of strategic leverage, with the assessment extending through a five-year horizon to 2031.

Executive Summary / BLUF

The strongest defensible judgment is that legal ownership of an advanced U.S.-origin weapon does not necessarily confer complete operational sovereignty over the military capability represented by that weapon, because the Foreign Military Sales architecture explicitly incorporates sustainment, ammunition, software, technical assistance, training and follow-on support into the capability package rather than treating the delivered platform as an autonomous end product; the Defense Security Cooperation Agency describes this structure as the “Total Package Approach.” [Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 4 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — current 2026 edition]

The public record does not establish the existence of a universal American remote command capable of instantaneously disabling exported fighters, missiles or air-defence systems, and the analytically stronger proposition is therefore not a clandestine electronic “kill switch,” but a distributed architecture of permissions and dependencies whose effect can emerge through ammunition supply, spare parts, contractor support, classified software, technical documentation, mission-data programming, export approvals and modernization decisions.

Saudi Arabia provides unusually strong contemporary evidence because, on 3 February 2026, the United States approved a possible $3.0 billion F-15 sustainment package containing no new fighter fleet, while specifically listing spare and repair parts, classified and unclassified software, technical documentation, training and U.S. government and contractor engineering, technical and logistics support; three days earlier, a separate possible $9.0 billion transaction covered 730 PAC-3 MSE interceptors together with classified software support, spares, logistics and integration services. [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – F-15 Sustainment — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — Feb 2026] [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – PATRIOT Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement Missiles — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — Jan 2026]

Kuwait demonstrates the same mechanism in air and missile defence because a $800 million possible Patriot sustainment and follow-on technical-support package notified in January 2026 covered spare and repair parts, surveillance firing, stockpile reliability, missile-support-centre functions, operator and maintenance support, technical documentation, training and U.S. government and contractor assistance, illustrating that possession of deployed launchers and interceptors remains analytically distinct from sovereign possession of the complete readiness system that sustains them. [Kuwait – PATRIOT Program Sustainment and Follow-On Technical Support — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — Jan 2026]

The dependency is not confined to foreign partners, because the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported in June 2026 that even the United States’ own F-35 enterprise remained exposed to shortages, contractor dependence, industry-capacity constraints and technical-data limitations, while mission-capable rates across the U.S. fleet declined from 67 percent in FY2021 to 44 percent in FY2025 and full-mission-capable rates declined from 38 percent to 25 percent, demonstrating that modern combat power resides in the sustainment ecosystem as much as in nominal aircraft ownership. [F-35 Sustainment: Actions Needed to Ensure Updated Strategy Improves Persistent Readiness Challenges — U.S. Government Accountability Office — Jun 2026]

The strongest policy implication is therefore that U.S. leverage is real but neither absolute nor instantaneous: Washington possesses legally and institutionally embedded mechanisms capable of constraining replenishment, modernization, authorized use, technical assistance and parts availability, but the magnitude of resulting operational degradation depends on stockpiles, indigenous maintenance depth, alternative suppliers, technical-data access, wartime consumption, local industrial capability and the duration of any interruption.

Yanbu Under Threat: Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Exposure

Ownership Without Sovereignty: The Hidden Architecture Behind America’s Arab Arsenals

Arab governments have spent tens of billions of dollars acquiring some of the most sophisticated American military systems in service, yet the decisive constraint is increasingly visible outside the platform itself: the United States retains influence over ammunition, software, mission data, spare parts, specialised maintenance, technical documentation and future upgrades. Saudi Arabia’s 3 February 2026 request for a $3.0 billion F-15 sustainment package, followed days earlier by a possible $9.0 billion purchase of 730 PAC-3 MSE interceptors, illustrates the contradiction with unusual clarity. Riyadh owns the aircraft and commands the crews, but sustaining the capability still requires American-controlled inputs. The strategic issue is therefore not whether Washington possesses a secret electronic switch, for which the public dossier provides no evidence, but whether legal ownership can amount to operational sovereignty when combat endurance remains embedded in a supplier-managed system.

The weapon is only the most visible part of the purchase

The U.S. Foreign Military Sales system is explicit about what an advanced weapon actually consists of. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency’s Total Package Approach incorporates training, technical assistance, software, ammunition, follow-on support and intelligence mission data alongside the principal platform, which means that an F-15, Patriot battery or comparable system is institutionally treated as the centre of a continuing support architecture rather than as an autonomous object transferred once and thereafter detached from its supplier.

The economic consequence is visible in Saudi Arabia’s 3 February 2026 F-15 sustainment case, whose estimated $3.0 billion value purchases no new fighter fleet but includes spare and repair parts, classified and unclassified software, technical documentation, training and U.S. government and contractor engineering and logistics support. The transaction is strategically more revealing than another aircraft order because it assigns a multi-billion-dollar value to preserving combat capability already nominally purchased, demonstrating that the cost of military power continues long after the acquisition price disappears from the procurement headline.

Kuwait illustrates the same mechanism through missile defence. On 14 January 2026, Washington approved a possible $800 million Patriot sustainment and follow-on technical-support package covering spare and repair parts, stockpile-reliability work, missile-support functions, operator and maintenance assistance, testing, documentation and U.S. government and contractor support. Kuwait can own the battery while still depending on external services to determine how reliably that battery remains available under sustained operational pressure.

Ammunition converts political dependence into a question of time

The distinction becomes sharper when platforms are separated from the weapons they expend, because a fighter can remain mechanically serviceable while losing operational relevance as compatible ammunition stocks decline. Saudi Arabia’s 30 January 2026 proposed purchase of 730 PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptors for an estimated $9.0 billion included not only the missiles but launcher-conversion kits, spare parts, logistics equipment, field-surveillance support, classified software, testing, training and contractor assistance, showing that even replenishment itself arrives as an integrated support package.

This turns supplier leverage into a question of endurance rather than instantaneous control. The dossier contains no verified figure for Saudi, Emirati, Qatari or Kuwaiti wartime missile inventories, and therefore no defensible calculation of how many weeks of intensive combat those forces could sustain after U.S. replenishment stopped. What is established is the mechanism: a state can continue fighting with stocks already delivered, but prolonged operations progressively increase the importance of the foreign authority that controls replacement munitions, components and related technical support.

That distinction also explains why domestic ammunition production matters more strategically than localisation statistics alone. In February 2025, the UAE’s EDGE announced an AED 4.36 billion contract under which LAHAB DEFENCE SYSTEMS would manufacture and supply MK 81, MK 82, MK 83 and MK 84 aerial munitions to the UAE Ministry of Defence. Those weapons do not eliminate dependence on imported air-to-air missiles, precision-guidance systems or missile-defence interceptors, but they remove one category of wartime replenishment from external political control.

Washington has already used the administrative switch

Saudi Arabia demonstrates that American leverage need not remain theoretical. In February 2021, the Biden administration ended U.S. support for offensive operations in Yemen, including relevant arms sales, while preserving support for Saudi territorial defence; the State Department subsequently confirmed that two munitions sales had been suspended and that intelligence-sharing arrangements were also adjusted. Saudi ownership of its aircraft did not change, but Washington altered which missions it would continue to enable.

The same mechanism worked in reverse on 12 August 2024, when the State Department confirmed that the suspension affecting certain classes of offensive weapons had been lifted. Nothing had to be electronically reactivated inside a Saudi fighter because the relevant switch was political and administrative: Washington narrowed eligibility for particular military inputs in 2021 and restored it in 2024, while the underlying aircraft remained physically in Saudi possession throughout.

This is more consequential than the mythology of a universal remote “kill switch” because the demonstrated mechanism is legally and bureaucratically routine. The DSCA’s current Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 6, provides procedures for suspension and cancellation of security cooperation, including the possibility that deliveries of defence articles be stopped, while the Arms Export Control Act and end-use monitoring architecture continue to impose conditions after transfer. The supplier does not need tactical command of the aircraft when it controls part of the pipeline that keeps the aircraft relevant.

Türkiye shows what happens when access itself becomes leverage

Türkiye provides the clearest regional case because Washington exercised leverage before operational sovereignty over the F-35 could ever emerge. In June and July 2019, after Ankara proceeded with acquisition of Russia’s S-400 air-defence system, the Pentagon began removing Türkiye from the F-35 programme, ending pilot-training pathways, halting programme participation and transferring Turkish industrial workshare to alternative suppliers.

The scale made the episode strategically significant. Türkiye had been expected to acquire 100 F-35 aircraft, while Pentagon officials said Turkish industry produced approximately 900 to 1,000 F-35 parts. Washington therefore did not merely cancel a future delivery; it severed a relationship involving aircraft procurement, training, multinational programme governance and industrial participation, demonstrating that supplier power can operate across an entire military-industrial ecosystem.

The Turkish case also establishes the limits of the “remote disablement” argument. No Turkish operational F-35 had to be grounded from Washington because Türkiye never received the sovereign capability in the first place. The stronger instrument was control over admission to the programme, technology release, training and industrial integration, which achieved the strategic result without requiring any hidden software command.

Industrial localisation changes the balance, but not at the same speed everywhere

Saudi Arabia is attempting to reduce this exposure systematically. The General Authority for Military Industries reported that localisation of military spending reached 24.89 percent by the end of 2024, while the national target remains more than 50 percent by 2030; the Vision 2030 2025 annual report recorded 311 establishments associated with the sector and 572 military licences and permits by the end of 2024. These figures demonstrate industrial expansion, but they also show that most military expenditure remained outside the measured localisation base.

The UAE has moved further in selected domains. EDGE reported in April 2026 that more than 80 percent of its systems were manufactured in the UAE, that 68 advanced-manufacturing transformation projects across 28 production facilities had doubled production capacity across 13 entities, and that the group generated AED 596 million, approximately $162.4 million, in in-country value during 2025. These are company-reported figures rather than a measure of national self-sufficiency, but they indicate a substantially deeper domestic industrial base than simple final assembly.

Qatar is pursuing a partnership-driven model. In January 2026, Türkiye’s MKE and Barzan Holdings agreed to establish a joint venture intended to create explosives-production capability in Qatar, while a separate Boeing–Barzan Letter of Intent covered manpower, maintenance, sustainment, training and logistics for Qatar’s C-17, AH-64 Apache and F-15QA fleets. These agreements do not yet prove autonomous capacity, but they identify precisely which functions Doha considers necessary to internalise if sovereign ownership is to become operational resilience.

Türkiye is further along because substitution, not spending, is the real test

Türkiye’s defence-industrial position differs in degree because its policy has moved beyond localisation of procurement toward substitution of complete capability families. The Presidency of Defence Industries’ 2024–2028 Strategic Plan prioritises national technologies, domestic suppliers and lifecycle support, while Türkiye reported $7.154 billion in defence and aerospace exports in 2024, a figure that indicates an industry capable not merely of meeting some national requirements but of sustaining external customers.

The KAAN national fighter programme is the most visible consequence of the F-35 rupture because it aims to provide the Turkish Air Force with a domestically developed combat-air capability incorporating national mission and sensor systems. KAAN does not yet demonstrate independence across every critical subsystem, and a development programme cannot be equated with a mature operational fleet, but it alters Ankara’s bargaining position because the relevant measure of sovereignty is not the percentage of domestic spending but the ability to replace a foreign capability when access is denied.

The same standard exposes the weakness of aggregate localisation metrics elsewhere. Manufacturing a bomb body domestically has different strategic value from controlling a missile seeker, fighter engine, encrypted communications architecture or electronic-warfare library, while a country can report rising local content and remain dependent on a small number of imported components whose absence immobilises the system. Operational sovereignty is therefore created by eliminating critical external bottlenecks, not by maximising a headline percentage.

The next 12–24 months will expose which localisation programmes are real

Between September 2026 and September 2028, the decisive test will be whether Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar convert localisation policy into measurable control over ammunition, depot-level maintenance, software, mission data and source-controlled components, because these are the areas in which external suppliers retain disproportionate leverage. Saudi Arabia’s path toward the 2030 target of more than 50 percent localisation, Qatar’s newly announced sustainment and explosives ventures, and the UAE’s expanding domestic munitions production will matter only if they reduce future dependence on U.S. replenishment and technical intervention rather than simply moving assembly activity onshore.

Washington will also face a cost if it treats supplier leverage as unlimited. The 2019 Turkish F-35 exclusion accelerated Ankara’s search for indigenous substitution, while the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are already building parallel relationships with non-U.S. defence industries; excessive conditionality can therefore protect sensitive American technology in the short term while encouraging customers to invest in alternative industrial ecosystems that diminish U.S. influence over a longer horizon.

The immediate cost of inaction, however, falls primarily on the regional buyers themselves. Saudi Arabia still requires multi-billion-dollar F-15 and Patriot support packages in 2026, Kuwait still depends on an $800 million Patriot sustainment architecture, and Iraq’s F-16 experience has already shown how heavily an operational fleet can depend on external contractor and logistical support. Governments that continue measuring sovereignty by the number of aircraft, batteries or missiles legally owned will discover during the next serious supply disruption that the decisive balance sheet sits elsewhere: in inventories, repair capacity, software authority, technical data and the industrial ability to replace what combat consumes.

Saudi Arabia’s War Pivot: Deterrence or Entrapment?

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Navigational Index

The capability is larger than the platform

The first pillar examines how the Foreign Military Sales system, sustainment contracts, technical-data regimes, ammunition replenishment, software and mission-support infrastructure transform a nominally sovereign asset into one element of a continuing supplier-dependent system.

Political leverage operates through administrative and logistical mechanisms

The second pillar examines Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies, Iraq and Türkiye in order to distinguish demonstrated mechanisms of leverage from speculative claims about remote disablement.

Sovereignty is a spectrum rather than a binary condition

The third pillar assesses where American leverage is strongest, where national stockpiles and industrial capacity can reduce it, and which observable developments would indicate a genuine transition toward greater regional operational autonomy.

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Master Abstract

The decisive distinction is between possession and sustained combat power

Modern high-end weapon systems cannot be analysed adequately by asking who owns the aircraft, launcher or radar, because the decisive military unit is increasingly the weapon-system ecosystem, encompassing the platform itself, certified ammunition, replacement components, specialized test equipment, cryptographic and communications material, technical publications, software configuration, threat data, training, engineering support and the industrial capacity required to replace losses during intensive operations; the United States’ own Foreign Military Sales doctrine codifies this understanding through its Total Package Approach, under which the complete sustainability package is to accompany major transfers so that the purchaser can introduce, operate and sustain the equipment consistently with U.S. approval of the transfer. [Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 4 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — current 2026 edition]

This distinction materially strengthens the underlying proposition supplied for analysis, although it also requires narrowing its most dramatic formulation, because the public official record supports the existence of extensive American leverage over the enabling system surrounding many exported weapons but does not establish a universal remote mechanism through which Washington can electronically immobilize an allied arsenal at will; the operationally credible model is instead layered attrition of capability, in which restrictions on munitions, replacement components, software support, engineering assistance, contractor activity or technical data progressively reduce readiness, mission availability, upgradeability or sortie generation without requiring any hidden command to be transmitted to the weapon itself.

The legal structure reinforces this relationship because Section 3 of the Arms Export Control Act requires recipient governments to observe limitations concerning transfer, use and security of U.S.-furnished defence articles and services, while the statute provides for termination of sales or deliveries under specified circumstances involving substantial violations of governing agreements; separately, DSCA’s current End Use Monitoring rules describe monitoring as a mandatory component of U.S. security-cooperation policy and require transferred defence articles and services to remain within the agreed terms and conditions of the transfer. [22 U.S.C. §2753 — Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives — law current Jul 2026] [Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 8 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — current 2026 edition]

The result is not American command over every tactical decision by a recipient military, because national armed forces retain their chains of command, possess ammunition already delivered, conduct indigenous maintenance to varying degrees and can sometimes substitute components, suppliers or doctrine, but the evidence indicates that high-end capability autonomy diminishes where continued effectiveness depends on resources whose export, technical definition, repair or replenishment remains externally controlled.

Saudi Arabia demonstrates the economics of continuing dependence

Saudi Arabia provides the strongest current Arab case because its Royal Saudi Air Force can possess and operate sophisticated F-15 variants while simultaneously requiring extraordinarily valuable follow-on purchases merely to preserve the effectiveness of the existing fleet; the State Department determination notified through DSCA on 3 February 2026 estimated $3.0 billion for F-15 sustainment incorporating spare and repair parts, repair-and-return support, ground and personnel equipment, classified and unclassified software and software support, technical publications, training and U.S. government and contractor engineering, technical and logistics services. [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – F-15 Sustainment — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — Feb 2026]

The analytical significance of that transaction lies precisely in what Saudi Arabia was not purchasing, because no new combat-aircraft fleet was required for a multi-billion-dollar transaction to be strategically consequential; the expenditure instead sustains the readiness infrastructure that converts already-owned aircraft into repeatable combat capability, thereby demonstrating that a state’s sunk investment in airframes does not terminate the supplier relationship and can in fact increase exposure to the supplier because changing platforms after decades of investment imposes training, infrastructure, weapons-integration, logistics and doctrine costs.

Saudi air and missile defence reveals the second dependency channel, because the 30 January 2026 possible sale of 730 PAC-3 MSE missiles for an estimated $9.0 billion also incorporated launcher-conversion kits, logistics systems, telemetry equipment, field surveillance, integration and test support, spare parts, classified software delivery and support, technical publications, contractor logistics and government support, which means that the sovereign capability is more accurately represented as an interceptor stockpile embedded inside a continuing transnational support architecture rather than as a launcher permanently detached from the producing state after delivery. [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – PATRIOT Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement Missiles — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — Jan 2026]

The older State Department security-cooperation record confirms the breadth of that installed U.S. ecosystem by listing Saudi procurements that include F-15SA aircraft, Patriot PAC-3, THAAD, attack and transport helicopters, AWACS modernization, surface combatants and precision weapons, while recording more than $27 billion in implemented FMS cases stemming from the 2017 modernization initiative as of the document’s publication period; those figures should not be conflated with current delivered value, but they establish the breadth of the American-origin architecture into which contemporary sustainment transactions fit. [U.S. Security Cooperation With Saudi Arabia — U.S. Department of State — archived institutional record]

The Dual-Frontier Strategy: Assessing the Geopolitical and Technological Calculus of Saudi Arabia’s Investment in European Defense Capabilities – The Leonardo case

Kuwait reveals the same mechanism in missile defence

Kuwait’s January 2026 Patriot notification provides a particularly useful control case because $800 million was associated with sustainment and follow-on technical support rather than acquisition of a completely new air-defence architecture, and the official description enumerated spare and repair parts, storage and ageing activities, surveillance firing, stockpile-reliability programmes, shared and country-specific PAC-3 missile-support-centre functions, operator and maintenance support, test-program development, publications, technical documentation, personnel training and U.S. assistance. [Kuwait – PATRIOT Program Sustainment and Follow-On Technical Support — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — Jan 2026]

This evidence matters because sophisticated air and missile defence requires far more than a launcher, interceptor and radar visible on an order-of-battle chart, since the credibility of the capability depends upon missile condition, radar availability, component reliability, trained crews, tested configurations, communications, software baselines and replenishment capacity; consequently, nominal inventory can remain unchanged while usable defensive capacity deteriorates if key support functions are interrupted for a sufficiently long period.

Qatar possesses advanced capability but remains inside the American support system

Qatar’s U.S.-supplied force structure similarly combines advanced platforms with extensive support commitments, because the Department of State’s institutional security-cooperation record reported more than $26 billion in active government-to-government FMS cases at the time of publication and identified the F-15QA, Patriot, NASAMS, AN/FPS-132 early-warning radar and AH-64E Apache among major programmes, explicitly noting that the principal programmes included facility construction and extended munitions, logistics and training support. [U.S. Security Cooperation With Qatar — U.S. Department of State — archived institutional record]

The original Patriot notification further illustrates the scale of the package model because Qatar’s request incorporated 11 Patriot Configuration-3 fire units, associated radar and engagement-control systems, launchers, missiles, equipment, training and logistical support rather than presenting the interceptors as independently self-sustaining assets, which is consistent with the larger DSCA Total Package Approach rather than evidence of a Qatar-specific restriction. [Qatar – PATRIOT Missile System and Related Support and Equipment — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — Nov 2012]

The UAE case demonstrates that leverage begins before delivery

The United Arab Emirates illustrates an earlier point in the dependency chain because U.S. influence can operate through conditions governing technological access before a weapon enters national inventory, while the archived State Department record documented $29.3 billion in active FMS cases at the time of publication and identified proposed or implementing programmes that included the F-35, MQ-9B, THAAD, Patriot, Apache helicopters, JDAM-related munitions, AMRAAM, JSOW, Sidewinder, AARGM, Javelin and Hellfire. [U.S. Security Cooperation With the United Arab Emirates — U.S. Department of State — Jun 2021]

The official record therefore supports the narrower institutional proposition that U.S. control over the release of sensitive technology determines which configurations and capabilities can enter a foreign inventory and under what transfer conditions, although the stronger assertion that every reported Emirati negotiating concern or suspension decision constituted proof of a deliberate American “kill switch” would exceed the Tier A and Tier B evidence used in this assessment.

Iraq provides an operational test of contractor dependence

Iraq offers evidence closer to actual fleet operations because the United States sold 36 F-16s and associated weapons, while U.S. Department of Defense contracting records subsequently show substantial Foreign Military Sales contracts devoted specifically to keeping the Iraqi F-16 enterprise functioning, including a $315.6 million Lockheed Martin contractor-logistics-support contract that established a training detachment at Balad Air Base and supported Iraqi F-16 operations through the end of 2022. [U.S. Department of Defense Contracts — Department of Defense — Aug 2019] [U.S. Security Cooperation With Iraq — U.S. Department of State — archived institutional record]

The Department of Defense Lead Inspector General subsequently reported that Lockheed Martin contractors departed Balad during the second quarter of 2021 because of deteriorating security conditions, while approximately 25 remained in Erbil and remote U.S.-based support continued; importantly, the official report stated that this departure had no immediate effect on operational sorties during that quarter, which corrects the stronger proposition that withdrawal itself immediately grounded the fleet while still demonstrating that contractor presence formed a substantive component of the Iraqi sustainment architecture. [Operation Inherent Resolve, Lead Inspector General Report to Congress, April 1–June 30 2021 — U.S. Department of Defense Office of Inspector General — 2021]

The subsequent contracting trail strengthens the structural conclusion because the Pentagon awarded further FMS-funded support connected with the Iraqi F-16 programme, including a $240 million 2021 contract for base operations, life support and security supporting the programme and a $127 million 2022 action performing similar functions, showing that sovereign ownership of the aircraft existed alongside continuing reliance on an externally contracted operating environment. [U.S. Department of Defense Contracts — Department of Defense — Apr 2021] [U.S. Department of Defense Contracts — Department of Defense — Jul 2022]

Saudi Arabia’s Nuclear Hedging in a Post-2025 Middle East Conflict Environment: Deterrence Lessons, Safeguards Evolution and Implications for Regional Non-Proliferation

Türkiye demonstrates the outer boundary of supplier power

Türkiye supplies the clearest regional example of Washington exercising control without any requirement for a remote technical disablement mechanism because, following Ankara’s acquisition of the Russian S-400 system, the Department of Defense announced in July 2019 that the United States was “unwinding” Türkiye from the F-35 programme, terminating the pathway by which a NATO ally, manufacturing participant and intended operator would obtain the aircraft. [U.S. Begins Process of ‘Unwinding’ Turkey From F-35 Program, DOD Officials Say — U.S. Department of Defense — Jul 2019]

The Pentagon’s contemporaneous briefing stated explicitly that Türkiye would not receive the F-35 if it accepted the S-400 and described the reassignment of Turkish personnel, departure of Turkish trainees and alteration of programme-management participation, while the later briefing described adjustments to the international supply base necessary to replace Turkish industrial work share; this episode therefore establishes a supplier’s ability to deny technological access and restructure an allied industrial role through programme governance, although it does not establish that a delivered aircraft could have been remotely immobilized by Washington in flight. [Department of Defense Off-Camera Press Briefing on Turkey’s Participation in the F-35 Program — U.S. Department of Defense — Jun 2019] [Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Press Briefing — U.S. Department of Defense — Jul 2019]

F-35 evidence reveals what advanced-system dependence actually means

The F-35 is analytically useful even though the Arab states examined here do not currently constitute an operational Arab F-35 fleet, because the programme exposes with unusual documentary clarity the relationship between aircraft availability, contractor dependence, software, technical data and mission-data programming; in September 2023, GAO reported that the Department of Defense itself relied heavily on contractors to manage F-35 sustainment while lacking all technical data needed to expand organic maintenance, and as of March 2026 several recommendations concerning transfer of sustainment responsibilities, intellectual property and technical data remained only partially addressed. [F-35 Aircraft: DOD and the Military Services Need to Reassess the Future Sustainment Strategy — U.S. Government Accountability Office — Sep 2023, status updated Mar 2026]

GAO’s June 2026 review went further by reporting that technical-data deficiencies had prevented planned maintenance initiatives from proceeding and that certain corrosion repairs remained dependent on contractor assistance because maintainers lacked the necessary data, while the programme’s updated sustainment strategy required an estimated additional $13.7 billion through FY2031 and remained dependent on more than $7 billion in additional privately supplied parts and materiel. [F-35 Sustainment: Actions Needed to Ensure Updated Strategy Improves Persistent Readiness Challenges — U.S. Government Accountability Office — Jun 2026]

Mission data create a distinct dependence from ordinary maintenance because the U.S. Air Force describes F-35 mission data as electronic-environment information allowing aircraft and crews to sense, identify, locate and counter threats, while the Partner Support Complex was established because international partners initially lacked indigenous capability to create those mission-data files; in 2024, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center confirmed that dedicated multinational reprogramming arrangements continued to generate mission-data files for Australian, Canadian and United Kingdom aircraft. [Eglin Activates F-35 Partner Support Complex — U.S. Air Force — May 2016] [RAF, RAAF Reactivate Squadron for F-35 Reprogramming Mission — Air Force Life Cycle Management Center — Apr 2024]

This should not be misrepresented as evidence that every exported American combat aircraft requires Washington’s authorization before each sortie, because the official sources establish dependence in reprogramming, sustainment and technical-data domains rather than continuous remote tactical permission; nevertheless, they demonstrate why advanced weapons should be evaluated as managed technical systems whose operational effectiveness can depend on information that is neither physically stored in the airframe at purchase nor permanently under the purchaser’s exclusive sovereign control.

GPS does not provide the alleged country-selective master switch

The GPS dimension requires particularly strict correction because the United States terminated Selective Availability in May 2000, the degradation occurred across the constellation rather than as a narrowly targeted geographic exclusion mechanism, and the U.S. government announced in 2007 that GPS III satellites would be procured without the Selective Availability feature, making revival of the historical mechanism an inadequate explanation for contemporary American leverage over a particular partner’s weapons. [Selective Availability — GPS.gov — current institutional record] [GPS Modernization — GPS.gov — current institutional record]

The official GPS record does, however, state that U.S. military policy shifted toward regional denial capabilities in lieu of global degradation, meaning that the absence of Selective Availability should not be confused with a general proposition that satellite navigation can never be contested or denied in a theatre; what cannot be established from the verified record used here is the broader claim that Washington maintains an export-specific software command capable of instructing all U.S.-origin GPS-guided weapons owned by a partner state to reject employment on demand. [Frequently Asked Questions About Selective Availability — GPS.gov — official archive]

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Key Evidence Table

Indicator	Value/status	Reference date	Definition/scope	Issuer	Exact source
FMS sustainment doctrine	Total Package Approach required	Current 2026	Complete sustainability package accompanying FMS equipment, including support articles and services	DSCA	[Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 4]
Saudi F-15 sustainment	$3.0bn possible FMS	3 Feb 2026	Spares, repairs, classified/unclassified software, documentation, training, government and contractor support	DSCA / State Department	[Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – F-15 Sustainment]
Saudi PAC-3 MSE	730 missiles; $9.0bn possible FMS	30 Jan 2026	Missiles plus software, test, integration, logistics, spares and contractor support	DSCA / State Department	[Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – PATRIOT Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement Missiles]
Kuwait Patriot sustainment	$800m possible FMS	14 Jan 2026	Sustainment, stockpile reliability, spares, technical support, training	DSCA / State Department	[Kuwait – PATRIOT Program Sustainment and Follow-On Technical Support]
Qatar U.S. FMS relationship	>$26bn active FMS cases at publication date	State fact-sheet vintage	F-15QA, Patriot, NASAMS, radar, Apache; programmes include logistics, munitions and training	U.S. Department of State	[U.S. Security Cooperation With Qatar]
UAE U.S. FMS relationship	$29.3bn active FMS cases at publication date	Jun 2021	Included proposed/implementing F-35, MQ-9B, Patriot, THAAD and multiple munitions	U.S. Department of State	[U.S. Security Cooperation With the United Arab Emirates]
Iraq F-16 acquisition	36 F-16 aircraft	Historical programme	Aircraft plus weapons and contractor-logistics-support architecture	U.S. Department of State	[U.S. Security Cooperation With Iraq]
Iraq F-16 contractor support	$315.6m contract	Aug 2019	Contractor logistics support and Balad training detachment	U.S. Department of Defense	[Department of Defense Contracts]
Iraqi contractor departure	No immediate sortie effect reported during quarter	Apr–Jun 2021	Lockheed personnel left Balad because of security threats while Erbil and remote support continued	Lead Inspector General	[Operation Inherent Resolve Quarterly Report]
F-35 mission-capable rate	67% → 44%	FY2021–FY2025	U.S. fleet, ability to perform at least one tasked mission	U.S. GAO	[GAO-26-108113]
F-35 full-mission-capable rate	38% → 25%	FY2021–FY2025	U.S. fleet, ability to perform all tasked missions	U.S. GAO	[GAO-26-108113]
F-35 sustainment reset	+$13.7bn through FY2031	2026 estimate	Additional planned expenditure under Global Support Solution Reset	U.S. GAO	[GAO-26-108113]
FMS end-use constraint	Mandatory monitoring	Current 2026	Verification that articles and services conform to agreed use, storage and transfer terms	DSCA	[Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 8]
Statutory transfer/use conditions	U.S. consent and suspension provisions apply	Law current Jul 2026	Arms Export Control Act §3	U.S. House Office of Law Revision Counsel	[22 U.S.C. §2753]
Selective Availability	Ended May 2000; GPS III built without SA	2000/2007 decisions	Former global civilian GPS degradation mechanism	U.S. Government GPS programme	[Selective Availability]

Quantitative note — The SIPRI 2021–25 import shares included in the supplied proposition have deliberately not been used as certified final-authority statistics in this first delivery because the protocol supplied by the user classifies non-governmental research institutes as Tier C discovery sources rather than final evidentiary authority, whereas the table above is restricted to Tier A and Tier B institutional records.

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Visualisation

The verified record supports a dependency-chain visualisation because the relationship is categorical and sequential rather than dependent upon subjective scoring, with each layer below corresponding to support functions explicitly identified in DSCA, Department of Defense or GAO records.

Principal Gaps and Watch Indicators

The first unresolved question concerns stockpile endurance rather than nominal inventory, because publicly accessible U.S. notifications establish authorised quantities for selected transactions but do not provide a complete, current and independently auditable inventory of operational Saudi, Emirati, Qatari, Kuwaiti or Iraqi precision munitions, missile reloads, airframe spares or wartime consumption assumptions; the degree to which Washington could translate a future suspension into immediate military effect therefore depends heavily upon nationally held reserves that are not fully visible in the open official record.

The second gap concerns indigenous maintenance depth, because the public record demonstrates extensive contractor and technical-support relationships but does not provide a common, current and comparable measure of which depot-level tasks each Arab operator can conduct without U.S. contractors, proprietary tooling, export-controlled components or vendor technical data, making maintenance sovereignty an essential collection requirement rather than something that can be inferred merely from years of platform operation.

The third gap concerns software and mission-data autonomy across non-F-35 fleets, because the F-35 programme publishes unusually revealing documentation about mission-data programming and technical-data dependencies, whereas equivalent information for F-15, F-16, Patriot, THAAD and other systems is less comprehensive in the public record, so conclusions established for one programme should not be automatically projected onto every American weapon.

The fourth gap concerns substitution speed, because a Gulf state can diversify toward European, Turkish, South Korean, Chinese or indigenous systems while remaining strategically dependent upon the installed U.S. ecosystem for years, and the indicator that would materially weaken the present assessment would therefore be not a memorandum announcing diversification but demonstrable local production of critical munitions, sovereign depot-level maintenance, nationally controlled mission-data and software support, interoperable non-U.S. replacements and sufficient inventories to sustain high-intensity operations during a prolonged supplier interruption.

The fifth watch indicator is U.S. legal and policy practice, because any future suspension, narrowing or restoration of munitions, technical services, export licences or contractor support involving a major regional operator would provide empirical evidence about how rapidly administrative control translates into measurable readiness effects, while the Arms Export Control Act and the current DSCA monitoring architecture establish that the legal mechanism for conditioning transfer and use is neither hypothetical nor dependent upon a clandestine technical device. [22 U.S.C. §2753 — Office of the Law Revision Counsel — Jul 2026] [Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 8 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — current 2026 edition]

The current assessment would be materially weakened if the Arab operators examined here demonstrated sovereign manufacture and replenishment of their decisive precision munitions, independent access to all technical and mission data required for depot-level maintenance and reprogramming, national replacement of foreign contractors across critical maintenance functions, and alternative component supply chains capable of sustaining intensive combat operations for prolonged periods without U.S. approval or industrial participation; conversely, repeated multi-billion-dollar sustainment transactions, continuing dependence on classified software and contractor logistics, or operational disruption following interruptions to those services would strengthen the judgment that ownership and operational sovereignty remain materially different categories.

Net assessment — The proposition that Washington secretly possesses a universal electronic switch able to extinguish allied military power is not established by the public official record, whereas the proposition that the United States retains substantial strategic leverage through the architecture surrounding advanced exported weapons is strongly supported by U.S. law, DSCA transfer doctrine, current Gulf sustainment notifications, contractor-support records and GAO’s unusually detailed evidence from the F-35 enterprise; the more accurate formulation is therefore that Arab governments can possess sovereign title to highly advanced American hardware while remaining variably dependent on U.S.-controlled inputs for the duration, intensity and modernization of the combat capability that the hardware is intended to produce.

The Capability Is Larger Than the Platform

Principal judgment

The central finding is that the decisive object in a modern arms relationship is not the aircraft, launcher, radar or missile battery considered in isolation, but the entire technical, logistical, software, ammunition, mission-data and support architecture that converts nominal ownership into sustained combat capability, and the United States has codified that reality directly into its Foreign Military Sales system through what the Defense Security Cooperation Agency calls the Total Package Approach, under which a purchaser is offered not merely a weapon but the support articles and services necessary to introduce, operate and sustain it, including training, technical assistance, initial support, software, ammunition, follow-on support and intelligence mission data. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 4 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

That distinction materially changes how military sovereignty should be measured, because a state may hold undisputed legal title to a combat aircraft, possess sovereign authority to order that aircraft into combat and nevertheless lack sovereign control over every enabling input required to generate sorties at scale, replace expended weapons, repair complex failures, integrate new threats, modify software baselines or preserve capability over a prolonged conflict, while the documentary record shows that several of those enabling functions remain embedded in continuing U.S. government, contractor and export-control relationships rather than being exhausted at the moment when the platform crosses the recipient's border.

Foreign Military Sales does not treat the weapon as a stand-alone object

The architecture of the U.S. Foreign Military Sales system itself provides the strongest starting point because DSCA states that the Total Package Approach ensures that FMS purchasers can obtain the support articles and services required to introduce and sustain equipment and to operate it effectively in a manner consistent with U.S. intent in approving the transfer, while the complete sustainability package must be offered as part of the Letter of Offer and Acceptance and may include training, technical assistance, initial support, software, ammunition, follow-on support and intelligence mission data, meaning that U.S. policy formally recognises that the capability associated with the platform extends well beyond the physical asset purchased by the foreign government. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 4 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

The Letter of Offer and Acceptance is therefore more than an invoice for hardware, because DSCA's current Foreign Military Sales planning rules state that the LOA's Standard Terms and Conditions form an official part of each case and remain applicable throughout the life of that case, while implementation transforms the accepted LOA into a government-to-government agreement between the purchaser and the United States; the practical consequence is that procurement, support, training, documentation and associated services continue within an institutional framework whose obligations survive beyond initial delivery. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 5 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

The same institutional framework also distinguishes platform acquisition from case execution, because DSCA defines FMS case execution as a multi-year process encompassing logistics, acquisition, supply, transportation, maintenance, training, financial management, oversight, documentation, amendments and modifications, which means that the relevant military relationship remains active long after a weapon has entered national service and can involve repeated decisions affecting the depth, timing and quality of the support on which operational readiness depends. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 6 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

This is the first structural reason why the expression “the buyer owns the weapon” is analytically incomplete, because ownership describes the legal status of the transferred article while military utility is generated by a chain of inputs, permissions and support services that may continue to cross national borders for decades, and those two facts can coexist without contradiction.

Sustainment is not ancillary to combat power

The clearest contemporary evidence comes from Saudi Arabia, where the United States approved a possible $3.0 billion F-15 sustainment Foreign Military Sale on 3 February 2026 that did not create a new fighter fleet but instead covered spare and repair parts, consumables, accessories, repair-and-return support, ground and personnel equipment, classified and unclassified software, software support, classified and unclassified publications and technical documentation, personnel training, training equipment and U.S. government and contractor engineering, technical and logistics support services. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – F-15 Sustainment — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — 3 February 2026

The significance of that transaction lies precisely in the absence of new aircraft, because a $3 billion package devoted to maintaining and supporting an existing fleet demonstrates that the military value of the aircraft depends upon an additional economic and technical infrastructure whose cost can remain strategically substantial long after procurement, while the inclusion of classified software and technical documentation further demonstrates that important elements of the capability are informational rather than purely mechanical. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – F-15 Sustainment — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — 3 February 2026

The same pattern appears in Kuwait's Patriot architecture, where the State Department approved a possible $800 million sustainment and follow-on technical-support sale on 14 January 2026, with the package incorporating spare and repair parts, storage and ageing activities, surveillance firing, stockpile-reliability programmes, PAC-3 Missile Support Center services, operator and maintenance support, test-program development, publications, technical documentation, personnel training and U.S. government and contractor assistance. Kuwait – PATRIOT Program Sustainment and Follow-On Technical Support — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — 14 January 2026

That transaction illustrates why the launcher should not be treated as the sovereign capability in itself, because a missile-defence battery whose interceptors are ageing, whose test cycles cannot be completed, whose critical modules lack replacement parts or whose maintenance chain cannot restore failed components may remain visible in the national inventory while becoming progressively less useful militarily, so nominal order of battle and sustainable combat availability are separate analytical categories.

Ammunition determines how long sovereignty can be exercised

The dependence becomes even clearer when the analysis moves from platform readiness to ammunition endurance, because a fighter aircraft or missile-defence system can remain mechanically serviceable while losing much of its operational value when compatible precision munitions or interceptors become scarce, exhausted or unavailable for replenishment.

Saudi Arabia's 30 January 2026 Patriot case demonstrates this relationship at scale because the approved possible sale involved 730 PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptors for an estimated $9.0 billion, but the official package also included launcher-conversion kits, automated logistics-system kits, telemetry kits, missile and ground-support spares, consumables, field-surveillance support, integration and test equipment, munitions-support equipment, repair-and-return support, classified software, technical publications, personnel training and contractor logistics assistance. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – PATRIOT Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement Missiles — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — 30 January 2026

The strategic implication is that ownership of a Patriot battery does not independently determine the duration of defensive combat power, because that duration is partly a function of interceptor inventories, consumption rates, missile reliability, storage and ageing management, replenishment approval, delivery schedules, integration support and the ability to return damaged or failed components to service, while a prolonged high-intensity air and missile campaign can therefore expose a recipient state to supplier decisions even when the launchers themselves remain fully under national command.

The distinction between inventory and replenishment sovereignty is critical because a state can initially fight using ammunition already delivered and still face growing external dependence as its stocks decline, meaning that supplier leverage need not be instantaneous to become strategically decisive, while the speed of that leverage depends on the size of pre-war stocks, expenditure rates, indigenous production, alternative suppliers and the compatibility of substitute weapons with the existing platform.

Technical data define what the purchaser can repair independently

Technical-data control creates another layer of dependence that is less visible than ammunition but potentially more persistent, because possession of a complex weapon does not automatically imply possession of every engineering drawing, diagnostic procedure, source-controlled specification, interface definition, repair authority or intellectual-property right required to conduct unrestricted depot-level maintenance or modification.

DSCA's current policy explicitly treats Technical Data Packages as controlled deliverables whose approved purpose must be identified in the Foreign Military Sales case, while requests must specify whether the package is intended for operating and maintaining U.S.-origin equipment or for production, follow-on development or improvement, which confirms that the transfer of hardware and the transfer of detailed technical knowledge are legally and administratively separate decisions. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 3 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

The F-35 provides the strongest public illustration of what this distinction can mean in practice, because the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that the Department of Defense itself had not obtained all of the technical data required to support desired sustainment arrangements and recommended reassessing who should control the technical-data sustainment function, while as of March 2026 implementation teams were still identifying technical-data requirements, intellectual-property needs, costs and responsibilities in preparation for transferring sustainment functions from the Joint Program Office to the military services. F-35 Aircraft: DOD and the Military Services Need to Reassess the Future Sustainment Strategy — U.S. Government Accountability Office — September 2023, updated March 2026

The importance of that evidence is methodological rather than platform-specific, because if even the U.S. Department of Defense can encounter operational and organisational constraints arising from incomplete access to technical data within the F-35 enterprise, it would be analytically unsafe to assume that a foreign recipient automatically acquires complete sovereign knowledge merely because it owns the airframe, while each foreign programme must still be examined individually because the scope of transferred data varies by platform, configuration, security classification, contractual arrangement and disclosure decision.

Software has become part of the weapon's physical readiness

Software dependence is not equivalent to a remote kill switch, but it is equally incorrect to treat software as a peripheral feature of modern military hardware, because current U.S. Foreign Military Sales cases explicitly identify classified and unclassified software and software support as elements of sustainment, while DSCA includes software in the Total Package Approach alongside ammunition, technical assistance and intelligence mission data. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 4 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

Saudi Arabia's 2026 F-15 sustainment case is particularly important because classified and unclassified software and software support appear in a package whose entire purpose is to keep an already-owned fleet operational, demonstrating that software should be understood as a recurring readiness input rather than simply as intellectual property delivered once at acquisition. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – F-15 Sustainment — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — 3 February 2026

The Saudi Patriot case reaches the same conclusion from the missile-defence side because the official package explicitly includes classified software delivery and support together with spare parts, field surveillance, test support, documentation and training, showing that sophisticated air-defence capability depends upon a maintained configuration combining physical equipment and continuously supported digital elements. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – PATRIOT Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement Missiles — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — 30 January 2026

The defensible conclusion is therefore not that Washington can secretly transmit an arbitrary command disabling any exported platform, because the public official record does not establish that proposition, but rather that a purchaser can remain dependent upon a U.S.-controlled software-support environment for fault correction, configuration management, modernization, integration and other technically important functions, with the operational consequences of interruption depending on the particular system and the duration of support loss.

Mission data turn information into combat capability

The most consequential evolution in high-end weapons is that some of the information required to employ them effectively against changing threats is not simply stored permanently at acquisition but must be generated, updated, validated and distributed through specialised mission-data processes, and DSCA now identifies intelligence mission data explicitly among the items that may form part of the Foreign Military Sales Total Package Approach. DSCA Policy Memorandum 26-65 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

The importance of this category becomes visible in DSCA's current targeting policy, which states that certain munitions can require additional targeting hardware or software, mission-planning software or components, additional Intelligence Mission Data, and other infrastructure capabilities required for effective employment, thereby establishing in the official record that possession of the munition itself does not necessarily exhaust the technical prerequisites for using that munition to its intended performance level. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 4 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

This distinction is central to the question of operational sovereignty because a weapon may remain physically available while its performance against new emitters, changed threat libraries, unfamiliar electronic signatures or evolving operational environments depends upon data that must be generated and integrated through authorised processes, meaning that information supply can become as strategically important as spare-part supply in a modern combat system.

The analytic boundary must nevertheless remain strict, because the existence of mission-data dependencies does not prove that every U.S.-origin fighter, missile or air-defence system requires direct American permission for every engagement, while the correct conclusion is narrower and stronger: some advanced weapons depend for optimal or even necessary functionality on external information products whose generation, disclosure or update can remain partially outside the purchaser's sovereign technical base.

Contractor support can substitute for missing sovereign capacity

Contractor dependence provides another mechanism through which a country can own a weapon while relying upon foreign personnel to keep the broader capability functioning, because Foreign Military Sales cases can include U.S. government and contractor engineering, technical, logistics and maintenance support as continuing services rather than one-time acquisition costs.

Saudi Arabia's February 2026 F-15 sustainment case includes U.S. government and contractor engineering, technical and logistics support, while the January 2026 Patriot case includes contractor logistics support and U.S. government assistance, confirming that contractor involvement remains institutionally embedded in both aviation and air-defence sustainment. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – F-15 Sustainment — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — 3 February 2026 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – PATRIOT Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement Missiles — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — 30 January 2026

The F-35 evidence again illustrates why contractor dependence can matter operationally, because GAO's June 2026 sustainment review identified persistent reliance on contractors and private-sector capacity as material readiness risks, while mission-capable rates across the U.S. fleet fell from 67 percent in fiscal year 2021 to 44 percent in fiscal year 2025, full-mission-capable rates fell from 38 percent to 25 percent, and the Joint Program Office's updated sustainment strategy required an estimated additional $13.7 billion through fiscal year 2031, including dependence on more than $7 billion in additional privately supplied parts and materiel. F-35 Sustainment: Actions Needed to Ensure Updated Strategy Improves Persistent Readiness Challenges — U.S. Government Accountability Office — 11 June 2026

Those figures concern the United States rather than an Arab operator and therefore cannot be transferred mechanically to Gulf readiness calculations, but they establish an important general proposition that even the original procuring state can experience substantial readiness degradation when spare-part availability, industrial capacity, technical data and contractor performance fail to meet operational demand, which reinforces the conclusion that the capability represented by a modern weapon is structurally larger than the platform itself.

Export approval controls what enters the ecosystem in the first place

Supplier leverage begins before sustainment because the United States also controls which systems, configurations, technologies, technical data and munitions are releasable in the first place, while DSCA policy requires U.S. officials to consider releasability, disclosure, sanctions and other approvals before representing that an article or service can be sold to a prospective purchaser. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 4 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

The implication is that foreign procurement does not necessarily begin from a catalogue containing every capability available to U.S. forces, because sensitive systems, software, technical data and configurations can be restricted, modified or transferred under specific conditions, while DSCA further states that the United States can require government-to-government channels for selected sensitive defence articles, services or technologies in order to protect sophisticated technology. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 4 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

This matters for sovereignty because the capability ceiling can be defined not only by what is withdrawn after purchase but by what was never released in the first place, while a purchaser can therefore possess a highly advanced system without possessing every element of the U.S. domestic configuration or every technical right necessary to alter it independently.

End-use control survives delivery

Physical delivery also does not terminate U.S. legal interest in transferred defence articles because DSCA's current End Use Monitoring framework defines monitoring as the process of verifying that U.S.-transferred defence articles and services are being used, stored and disposed of in accordance with the terms and conditions of the governing agreements, and the programme is described as a critical and mandatory component of U.S. security-cooperation policy. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 8 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

Routine End Use Monitoring applies broadly to government-to-government transfers, while DSCA requires Security Cooperation Organization personnel to observe and report potential misuse or unapproved transfer, and Enhanced End Use Monitoring can add physical-security assessments, serial-number inventories and specialised accountability requirements for particularly sensitive defence articles. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 8 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

The same chapter states that changes in end use require Department of State authorisation and that U.S. authorities retain mechanisms for investigating possible violations, while potential unauthorised transfers, reverse engineering of defence articles, services, technical data or training, and other departures from agreed terms must be reported through the U.S. security-cooperation chain. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 8 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

This framework does not mean that Washington exercises day-to-day tactical command over the recipient's forces, but it does establish that sovereign possession is legally conditioned rather than completely detached from the originating government's transfer regime, particularly where retransfers, changes of end use, sensitive technologies or controlled information are involved.

The United States possesses an explicit suspension mechanism

The clearest demonstration that supplier leverage does not require a secret technical mechanism appears in DSCA's current rules governing suspension of security cooperation, because Chapter 6 of the Security Assistance Management Manual states that when the Department of State determines that security cooperation with a country must be suspended, it issues guidance for execution and DSCA instructs implementing agencies accordingly. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 6 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

The same rule explicitly provides that State may direct that all deliveries of defence articles to the suspended country be stopped immediately, while the implementing agencies must subsequently identify major items and significant secondary items scheduled for release or remaining on order but unshipped, thereby creating a transparent administrative mechanism through which future parts, ammunition, equipment and other materiel can be interrupted without altering the recipient's legal ownership of equipment already delivered. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 6 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

DSCA further states that a suspension can be extended into cancellation under relevant provisions of the Arms Export Control Act, with subsequent case and contract actions including termination, which establishes that the U.S. government possesses formal institutional means to sever or constrain the ongoing support chain when political or legal conditions require it. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 6 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

The operational effect of such a decision would still vary enormously between countries and systems because a state holding deep ammunition stocks, local repair capacity, alternative supply lines and trained national personnel can absorb interruption longer than a state with shallow inventories and heavy contractor dependence, but the institutional capacity to interrupt future deliveries is explicit rather than speculative.

The dependency chain is cumulative

The most important analytical consequence is that these dependencies should not be assessed individually, because modern military readiness is produced by the interaction of several layers whose weaknesses can accumulate, while a fighter fleet suffering simultaneously from declining missile stocks, delayed spare parts, unavailable specialist repair, outdated mission data and deferred software support may experience a much greater reduction in usable combat power than any single disruption would imply.

Capability layer	What the recipient may possess	Continuing dependency documented in U.S. records	Strategic consequence
Platform	Aircraft, launcher, radar or vehicle	Sustainment, repair, engineering support	Hardware ownership does not guarantee availability
Munitions	Delivered missile or bomb stocks	Approval, replenishment, support equipment, surveillance and storage programmes	Combat endurance can decline before platform availability does
Components	National stocks of spares	Repair-and-return pipelines, source-controlled parts and industrial capacity	Readiness can fall progressively under prolonged interruption
Software	Installed operational software	Classified/unclassified software support and future updates	Configuration and modernization remain partly supplier-dependent
Technical data	Manuals and authorised documentation	Controlled Technical Data Packages and intellectual-property restrictions	Some repair or modification tasks may remain externally dependent
Mission data	Existing threat and targeting information	Intelligence mission-data creation and updating	Effectiveness can depend on continuing information support
Personnel	National crews and technicians	Contractor engineering, logistics and specialist maintenance	Indigenous capacity determines resilience to contractor withdrawal
Legal use	Sovereign national command	End-use conditions, monitoring and transfer restrictions	Possession remains subject to agreed U.S. transfer conditions
Future supply	Existing inventory	U.S. authority to suspend deliveries or cancel cases	Operational degradation can emerge without remote technical disablement

The table is derived from the current DSCA Total Package Approach, Technical Data Package rules, End Use Monitoring framework, FMS suspension procedures and the Saudi and Kuwaiti sustainment cases cited above. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 4 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 3 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 6 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 8 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

Operational sovereignty should therefore be measured as a spectrum

The evidence supports a model in which operational sovereignty is neither completely present nor completely absent, because a recipient state can exercise independent tactical command over an American-origin weapon while remaining dependent upon the United States for certain layers of long-term capability generation, and the correct question is therefore which functions the purchaser can perform independently, for how long, at what tempo and after what level of attrition.

A state possessing large wartime stocks, sovereign depot maintenance, nationally controlled diagnostic equipment, trained engineers, broad technical-data access, alternative sources of components and domestic ammunition production will possess substantially greater resilience than a purchaser dependent on contractor maintenance, imported missiles, U.S.-controlled repair chains and restricted technical information, even if the two states nominally own similar weapons.

The key distinction is consequently between command sovereignty, meaning the authority to order a weapon employed, and capability sovereignty, meaning the capacity to preserve, repair, arm, modify and regenerate that weapon's combat effect without external permission or material assistance, because the documentary evidence examined here demonstrates that the second category can remain incomplete even when the first is uncontested.

Key judgments

The U.S. Foreign Military Sales system itself establishes that advanced defence equipment is delivered and sustained through a broader package containing software, ammunition, technical assistance, follow-on support and intelligence mission data, which makes the supplier relationship structurally broader than ownership of the major end item alone. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 4 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

Current Saudi and Kuwaiti cases demonstrate that sustainment can require transactions measured in hundreds of millions or billions of dollars after the principal platforms are already in service, while those packages include precisely the software, spares, technical documentation, training, repair, contractor and munitions-support functions that determine whether nominal inventory can be converted into persistent combat availability. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – F-15 Sustainment — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — 3 February 2026 Kuwait – PATRIOT Program Sustainment and Follow-On Technical Support — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — 14 January 2026

The official record supports the existence of formal American levers over future delivery, end-use conditions, technical data and support, while it does not establish a universal electronic mechanism through which Washington can instantaneously disable every exported weapon, meaning that the strongest defensible model of supplier power is cumulative capability degradation through controlled support layers rather than a single clandestine technical switch. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 6 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 8 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

What would change the assessment

The principal judgment would weaken materially if Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and other major regional operators demonstrated independent production of decisive munitions at wartime scale, nationally controlled depot-level repair of U.S.-origin platforms, access to the technical data required to perform critical modifications without foreign contractors, sovereign mission-data generation and software-support capability, alternative suppliers capable of replacing source-controlled components, and sufficient inventories to maintain high operational tempo through a prolonged interruption of American deliveries.

The judgment would strengthen if future official records showed repeated dependence on emergency replenishment, expanding contractor-support packages, growing reliance on classified software or mission-data services, inability to conduct critical repairs without foreign technical assistance, or measurable reductions in readiness after export restrictions or delayed support deliveries.

Open official record

The public record does not provide comparable, current and auditable figures for national war-reserve stocks of PAC-3 MSE, AMRAAM, JDAM-family weapons and other decisive munitions across the Gulf states, while such figures are essential for estimating how quickly a supply interruption would translate into operational constraint.

The public record also does not provide a standardised country-by-country breakdown of which F-15, F-16, Patriot and THAAD maintenance tasks can be completed entirely by indigenous personnel without U.S. contractors, proprietary tooling, controlled technical data or manufacturer repair facilities, while that information would materially change the relative sovereignty assessment among regional operators.

Comparable official documentation concerning the scope of transferred source code, software-development authority, electronic-warfare reprogramming capability, cryptographic autonomy and mission-data sovereignty remains incomplete for several systems, and those areas should therefore remain explicitly unresolved rather than being inferred from the better documented F-35 programme.

Political Leverage Operates Through Administrative and Logistical Mechanisms

Principal judgment

The public record supports a precise conclusion that is stronger than the speculative language of a universal remote “kill switch”: Washington has repeatedly demonstrated that it can alter the practical military utility of U.S.-origin capabilities through export approvals, delivery suspensions, contractor access, sustainment decisions, programme participation, intelligence support and conditions attached to sensitive technology, while none of the official evidence reviewed establishes a general mechanism by which the United States can instantaneously and remotely disable an allied arsenal already in operational service. The institutional basis for that leverage is visible in the Foreign Military Sales system itself, because the Department of State describes FMS as a government-managed process in which sales are approved after U.S. review and, when applicable, congressional notification, while the resulting capability explicitly includes training, sustainment and contractor logistics support rather than hardware alone. U.S. Arms Sales and Defense Trade — U.S. Department of State

The distinction matters because political leverage does not require Washington to seize tactical command of a foreign weapon system; it is sufficient that the United States retains authority over a critical future input whose interruption raises the recipient's operational costs or gradually reduces readiness, while the Defense Security Cooperation Agency's current Foreign Military Sales rules explicitly contemplate suspension and cancellation of security cooperation, delays or cessation of deliveries, case modification, contractor and acquisition management, and years-long execution involving logistics, supply, transportation, maintenance and training. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 6 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

The strongest regional evidence therefore falls into four different categories: Saudi Arabia demonstrates mission-selective restriction of weapons and intelligence support; the United Arab Emirates demonstrates leverage through pre-delivery conditions attached to exceptionally sensitive capabilities; Iraq demonstrates operational dependence on contractor logistics and support infrastructure; and Türkiye demonstrates that Washington can deny access to an advanced weapon system, remove a partner from its industrial ecosystem and terminate training without ever needing to disable an aircraft remotely.

Saudi Arabia demonstrates mission-selective leverage rather than platform confiscation

Saudi Arabia offers the clearest Arab example of the United States using arms-transfer and support policy to distinguish between military missions rather than simply terminating the entire bilateral defence relationship, because in February 2021 the Biden administration announced that it was ending American support for offensive operations in Yemen, including relevant arms sales, while simultaneously maintaining its commitment to Saudi Arabia's territorial defence against external attack. The State Department explained on 5 February 2021 that the policy included materiel restrictions and changes to intelligence-sharing arrangements with Saudi Arabia and the Saudi-led coalition, while future arms transfers would return to regular legal and interagency review rather than continuing under an undifferentiated assumption of support. Department Press Briefing — 5 February 2021 — U.S. Department of State

The policy was not rhetorical, because the Department of State subsequently stated that the administration had suspended two munitions sales previously notified to Congress as part of the policy ending U.S. support for offensive operations by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, while explicitly preserving assistance intended to strengthen Saudi Arabia's capacity to defend its territory from attacks. U.S. Security Assistance in a Changing Middle East — U.S. Department of State

The importance of this episode is that Washington did not need to recover Saudi combat aircraft, cancel Saudi ownership of existing weapons or prove the existence of any remote disablement capability, because it exercised leverage by changing what categories of future military support it was prepared to supply and what types of operations it would continue to enable, while Saudi aircraft and defensive systems remained under Saudi command. The State Department made the distinction explicit again when Secretary Antony Blinken stated that the administration was reviewing arms sales to ensure that future support would contribute to the defence of the kingdom rather than its ability to prosecute offensive operations, demonstrating that U.S. policy was attempting to separate defensive from offensive military utility through supply and approval decisions rather than through control of Saudi tactical command. Secretary Antony J. Blinken at a Press Availability — U.S. Department of State

This is analytically more significant than an unverified “kill switch” narrative because it demonstrates a real and documented form of mission discrimination, under which the supplier can continue enabling some military functions while restricting others, thereby increasing the political cost of selected operations without dismantling the entire security partnership.

The Saudi case also shows that leverage can be reversed

The same Saudi episode demonstrates that supplier leverage is reversible and therefore political rather than purely technical, because on 12 August 2024 the State Department publicly confirmed that the United States had lifted the suspension on certain classes of offensive weapons imposed under the earlier Yemen policy, while describing the original decision as a presidential policy choice taken when the administration sought to end the war and confirming that defensive systems had continued to be supplied during the period of restriction. Department Press Briefing — 12 August 2024 — U.S. Department of State

This sequence establishes a particularly important institutional fact because the same government that had constrained a category of military support in 2021 could restore access in 2024 without any change in Saudi legal ownership of previously delivered platforms, meaning that the operational boundary was created by policy, licensing and supply decisions rather than a physical transformation of the weapons themselves.

The Saudi case therefore provides a concrete model of how leverage can function in practice: the recipient retains its aircraft, crews, bases and chain of command; Washington modifies the availability of selected munitions, intelligence cooperation or future deliveries; the military consequences accumulate according to stockpile depth and operational tempo; and the restriction can later be relaxed when U.S. policy changes.

The current Saudi relationship confirms that leverage and partnership coexist

It would nevertheless be inaccurate to interpret the Saudi evidence as proof that Washington possesses unrestricted coercive control over the kingdom's military, because the bilateral defence architecture has remained exceptionally deep, while the Department of State has described Saudi Arabia as possessing approximately $126.6 billion in active government-to-government Foreign Military Sales cases at the time of the cited institutional fact sheet and has reaffirmed continuing cooperation in air and missile defence, maritime security, counterterrorism and training. U.S. Security Cooperation With Saudi Arabia — U.S. Department of State

The result is therefore an asymmetric relationship rather than unilateral command, because Saudi Arabia possesses meaningful strategic agency through its financial resources, inventories, procurement diversification and political importance, while the United States retains leverage over selected categories of supply and technical support whose effects depend on the duration and breadth of any restriction.

The United Arab Emirates demonstrates leverage before delivery

The UAE provides the strongest Gulf example of how political leverage can operate before a weapon system enters national service, because in November 2020 the United States formally notified Congress of a proposed package worth $23.37 billion, consisting of up to 50 F-35A aircraft valued at $10.4 billion, up to 18 MQ-9B unmanned aircraft valued at $2.97 billion, and approximately $10 billion in air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions, while the Department of State presented the package as part of a wider strategic relationship following the Abraham Accords and explicitly linked the sale to protection of U.S. technology and the regional military balance. U.S. Approves Advanced Defense Capabilities for the United Arab Emirates — U.S. Department of State — 10 November 2020

The complementary DSCA notification for the munitions component was itself approximately $10 billion and included hundreds of AIM-120C-8 air-to-air missiles together with substantial quantities of bombs, guidance systems, sustainment and support equipment, demonstrating that the F-35 proposition was embedded inside a much larger weapons ecosystem rather than consisting solely of 50 airframes. United Arab Emirates – Munitions, Sustainment and Support — Defense Security Cooperation Agency — 10 November 2020

The Biden administration subsequently stated that it intended to continue moving forward with the proposed UAE sales but that implementation depended upon reaching “unmistakably clear, mutual understandings” regarding Emirati obligations and actions before, during and after delivery, while the State Department emphasised that the dialogue was intended both to strengthen UAE capability and interoperability and to protect sensitive U.S. technology. Telephonic Press Briefing with Mira K. Resnick — U.S. Department of State

The institutional meaning is clear even without relying on later journalistic descriptions of Emirati concerns about “sovereign operational restrictions,” because the official record itself establishes that access to the F-35 was conditional, technologically sensitive and subject to continuing U.S. requirements extending beyond the congressional notification itself; Washington therefore did not need an aircraft already based in Abu Dhabi to exercise leverage, because its principal leverage consisted of determining whether, when and under what conditions the UAE could enter the F-35 ecosystem at all.

The UAE case also demonstrates technological leverage without proving remote control

The distinction between technological conditionality and remote control is especially important because the United States' concern centred on safeguarding sensitive technology, interoperability and programme security rather than on publicly claiming an ability to control Emirati missions after delivery. The State Department's later description of the relationship continued to identify F-35, MQ-9B, THAAD, Patriot, Apache, AMRAAM, Sidewinder, Javelin, JDAM-family weapons and other systems among the UAE's major programmes, while explicitly stating that U.S. sales were intended to make the UAE more capable and interoperable with American forces. U.S. Security Cooperation With the United Arab Emirates — U.S. Department of State

The strongest defensible conclusion is therefore that the United States can condition access to exceptionally sensitive military technology on political, security and technical requirements, but the public official record reviewed here does not establish that an Emirati-owned U.S. fighter already in service would contain a general remote immobilisation function controlled from Washington.

Qatar and Kuwait illustrate latent leverage rather than demonstrated coercion

Qatar and Kuwait should be treated differently from Saudi Arabia because the verified official record does not provide an equivalent recent episode in which Washington deliberately restricted their U.S.-origin combat systems as a coercive response to a specific policy dispute, and analytical discipline therefore requires distinguishing structural leverage from demonstrated application of leverage.

The presence of structural leverage is nevertheless visible because Qatar and Kuwait remain major Foreign Military Sales participants whose high-end capabilities depend upon U.S.-origin aircraft, air-defence systems, munitions, software and continuing support, while DSCA's current FMS execution rules explicitly state that case execution can extend over several years and include acquisition, supply, transportation, maintenance, training and logistics, meaning that these states remain connected to an administrative pipeline even after systems enter service. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 6 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

Kuwait provides a particularly clear material example through the January 2026 Patriot sustainment and follow-on support package, under which the United States approved a possible $800 million transaction for spare parts, missile-support services, stockpile reliability, maintenance assistance, testing, training and government and contractor technical support, meaning that the U.S. role persists deep into the operational life of the system even though no coercive interruption has been publicly documented in the current evidence set. Kuwait – PATRIOT Program Sustainment and Follow-On Technical Support — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

Qatar's position is similar in structural terms because its principal U.S.-origin systems include the F-15QA, Patriot, NASAMS, early-warning radar and Apache, while the Department of State has described major programmes as incorporating extended munitions, logistics, construction and training support rather than simply the transfer of platforms. U.S. Security Cooperation With Qatar — U.S. Department of State

The correct judgment is consequently that Washington possesses latent administrative and logistical leverage over Qatar and Kuwait because of the architecture of their procurement relationships, but the reviewed Tier A and Tier B record does not justify claiming that this leverage has recently been exercised against them in the same politically explicit manner documented in the Saudi case.

Iraq demonstrates the military consequence of contractor dependence

Iraq provides a particularly important operational case because its F-16 programme shows that a nominally sovereign national fleet can rely on extensive external support infrastructure whose disruption becomes militarily relevant even when Washington has not imposed a political sanction.

The U.S. Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a $315.6 million Foreign Military Sales contract in August 2019 for F-16 Contractor Logistics Support Phase IV, including contractor logistics support and establishment of a training detachment at Balad Air Base, with work scheduled through December 2022, while the contract involved 100 percent Foreign Military Sales to Iraq. Department of Defense Contracts — 1 August 2019 — U.S. Department of Defense

The dependence extended beyond aircraft technicians because in April 2021 the Department of Defense awarded a separate not-to-exceed $240 million contract to provide base operations support, base life support and security services specifically in support of the Iraq F-16 programme at Balad Air Base, again financed through Foreign Military Sales and foreign military funds. Department of Defense Contracts — April 2021 — U.S. Department of Defense

The significance of contractor dependence became visible when security conditions deteriorated, because the Lead Inspector General for Operation Inherent Resolve reported that Lockheed Martin contractors again departed Balad during the second quarter of 2021 after security threats, while approximately 25 contractors remained in Erbil and additional support was supplied remotely from the United States. Lead Inspector General for Operation Inherent Resolve Quarterly Report, April–June 2021 — U.S. Department of Defense Office of Inspector General

The same official report states that the contractor departure had “no immediate effect” on operational sorties during that quarter, with Iraqi F-16s still conducting 13 operational missions, and that point is essential because it prevents the episode from being misrepresented as proof that contractor withdrawal instantly grounded the fleet. Lead Inspector General for Operation Inherent Resolve Quarterly Report, April–June 2021 — U.S. Department of Defense Office of Inspector General

The correct inference is narrower but still highly consequential: the Iraqi fleet possessed sufficient residual capability to continue operating during the immediate disruption, while its long-term sustainment architecture depended sufficiently on external contractors that their security, presence and mobility were subjects of operational reporting by the U.S. command structure.

Iraq shows why a logistical interruption can matter without being political coercion

The Iraqi episode is especially useful because it separates mechanism from intent, since the contractors withdrew because of attacks and deteriorating security rather than because Washington was attempting to coerce Baghdad, yet the same mechanism reveals what could occur if contractor access were constrained for political, legal or contractual reasons.

This distinction is analytically important because a dependency does not need to have been weaponised previously in order to constitute potential leverage, while the amount of leverage depends upon how rapidly the recipient can replace the missing function with indigenous personnel, alternative contractors or national maintenance infrastructure.

The correct counterfactual is therefore not that Washington could “push a button” and ground every Iraqi F-16, but that a prolonged interruption of contractor logistics, repair support, technical assistance, spare parts and base support would progressively impose readiness costs on a fleet whose support architecture has demonstrably required substantial U.S.-managed contracts.

Türkiye provides the strongest demonstrated case of programme exclusion

Türkiye provides the most decisive regional evidence because Washington exercised leverage against a NATO ally that was not merely a prospective customer but an F-35 programme partner and industrial participant, while the intervention occurred through administrative, technological and supply-chain controls rather than through remote action against aircraft already operating in Turkish service.

The Pentagon stated in June 2019 that Türkiye would not receive the F-35 if it took delivery of the Russian S-400, while announcing an orderly process under which Turkish personnel associated with the programme would leave the United States, no new Turkish training would begin, F-35 material deliveries and activities would remain suspended, Türkiye would receive no new industrial workshare, and existing Turkish production responsibilities would progressively move to alternative sources. Department of Defense Off-Camera Press Briefing on Turkey's Participation in the F-35 Program — U.S. Department of Defense — June 2019

After Türkiye accepted the S-400, the Department of Defense formally announced on 17 July 2019 that the United States and other programme partners were suspending Türkiye from the F-35 programme and initiating its removal, while Pentagon officials stated that Türkiye had been expected to purchase 100 F-35 aircraft and had played an important role in production. U.S. Begins Process of ‘Unwinding’ Turkey From F-35 Program — U.S. Department of Defense — 17 July 2019

The Pentagon simultaneously explained the security rationale, arguing that the Russian S-400 could not be operated in proximity to the F-35 because of the risk that the system could collect information affecting the aircraft's stealth characteristics, while reiterating that Türkiye could possess the S-400 or participate in the F-35 programme but not both. Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Press Briefing — U.S. Department of Defense — 17 July 2019

The action went beyond withholding aircraft because the Pentagon also had to restructure the production network, with officials stating that Turkish industry produced approximately 900 to 1,000 F-35 parts and that these responsibilities would be transferred to other suppliers, meaning that the United States exercised leverage simultaneously over delivery, pilot training, programme governance, industrial participation and future sustainment relationships. Department of Defense Press Briefing on the F-35 Program — U.S. Department of Defense

Türkiye is more probative than claims about a hypothetical remote lock

The Turkish episode is strategically more important than speculation about whether a delivered F-35 might contain a hidden remote disablement mechanism because it demonstrates that supplier control can achieve a comparable strategic result earlier and more visibly, by preventing the purchaser from entering or remaining inside the ecosystem necessary to obtain the weapon.

No remote code was required because Washington controlled aircraft delivery, programme access, training, industrial workshare, support infrastructure and the international partnership through which the aircraft would have been sustained, while those instruments were sufficient to ensure that Türkiye never developed the sovereign F-35 combat capability that had originally been planned.

The Turkish case therefore establishes one of the strongest propositions in this dossier: where the supplier controls access to an advanced platform and its supporting industrial ecosystem, political leverage can operate before operational sovereignty ever exists.

Administrative leverage is formalised in the FMS system

The Saudi, Iraqi and Turkish cases are not isolated anomalies because DSCA's current Foreign Military Sales rules explicitly provide for the suspension and cancellation of security assistance, while Chapter 6 states that when the Department of State determines that security cooperation must be suspended, DSCA directs implementing agencies regarding execution. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 6 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

The same chapter establishes that FMS execution can involve logistics, acquisition, supply, transportation, maintenance and training across a period of several years, while DSCA specifically requires coordination when a delay could affect planned operations, create significant political repercussions or concern a major component whose reliability, availability or serviceability determines whether the end item remains operable. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 6 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency

These provisions demonstrate why administrative decisions have operational significance, because a government that controls the case through which critical articles or services are procured can influence the timing, continuation and legal permissibility of that support even though the foreign state retains sovereign command over systems already delivered.

The relevant leverage is distributed rather than binary

The combined evidence supports a distributed model of supplier power in which no single mechanism needs to be decisive, because political leverage can be applied simultaneously or selectively across sales approval, munitions replenishment, software release, intelligence cooperation, training, contractor support, industrial participation, technical data and future modernization, while the operational effect depends upon which layer is affected and how resilient the recipient has become.

Case	Documented U.S. mechanism	Immediate military effect established by official record	What the case proves	What it does not prove
Saudi Arabia, 2021	Suspension of two munitions sales; restriction of support for offensive Yemen operations; adjustment of intelligence support	Selected offensive support restricted while territorial-defence support continued	Washington can differentiate missions through arms-transfer and support policy	That Saudi aircraft could be remotely disabled
Saudi Arabia, 2024	Policy suspension lifted	Renewed eligibility for previously restricted classes of weapons	Political constraints can be reversed administratively	That the previous restriction had eliminated Saudi combat capability
UAE	Conditional access to F-35/MQ-9 and advanced munitions; obligations extending before, during and after delivery	F-35 acquisition remained subject to negotiation and U.S. technology-security requirements	Access to sensitive technology is a source of bargaining power	That Washington possesses remote tactical control of UAE systems
Kuwait	Continuing Patriot sustainment and contractor support	No coercive interruption established in reviewed record	Structural logistical leverage exists	That it has been recently weaponised
Qatar	Long-term FMS sustainment and logistics ecosystem	No coercive interruption established in reviewed record	Structural dependence exists in high-end U.S.-origin systems	That Qatar lacks tactical control of its forces
Iraq	Contractor logistics, training, base support and remote technical assistance	Contractor departure had no immediate sortie effect but required continued Erbil and U.S.-based support	Fleet operations depend materially on external support infrastructure	That contractor departure instantly grounded the fleet
Türkiye	F-35 delivery suspension, training termination, programme exclusion and industrial workshare removal	Türkiye did not enter F-35 operational service	Supplier control can prevent acquisition and dismantle programme participation	That an operational Turkish F-35 was remotely disabled

The Saudi findings are documented in Department Press Briefing — 5 February 2021 — U.S. Department of State and Department Press Briefing — 12 August 2024 — U.S. Department of State; the UAE findings are documented in U.S. Approves Advanced Defense Capabilities for the United Arab Emirates — U.S. Department of State and Telephonic Press Briefing with Mira K. Resnick — U.S. Department of State; the Iraqi contractor findings are documented in the Lead Inspector General for Operation Inherent Resolve Quarterly Report, April–June 2021; and the Turkish findings are documented in the 17 July 2019 Department of Defense announcement.

Political leverage is constrained by inventories, time and substitution

The documented existence of administrative leverage should not be confused with unlimited American control because the immediate effectiveness of any restriction depends upon the recipient's ability to absorb it, while a state that possesses large munitions reserves, local repair capacity, trained national technicians and multiple supply channels can continue operations for a substantial period even after future deliveries are constrained.

Saudi Arabia's 2021 experience demonstrates this limitation particularly well because Washington curtailed specific forms of offensive support while maintaining defensive cooperation, yet the kingdom retained a large existing force structure and continued to possess weapons previously delivered, which means that the policy changed the future support environment and mission enablement rather than instantaneously erasing accumulated Saudi capability. U.S. Security Assistance in a Changing Middle East — U.S. Department of State

Iraq demonstrates the same temporal dimension from another direction because contractor departures did not immediately prevent F-16 sorties, but the fact that support continued through Erbil-based contractors and remote assistance from the United States shows why a longer interruption would have created a different analytical problem from a temporary evacuation. Lead Inspector General for Operation Inherent Resolve Quarterly Report, April–June 2021 — U.S. Department of Defense Office of Inspector General

Supplier leverage should therefore be understood as a function of time, because a restriction that has limited effect during the first week of a crisis can become decisive after months of high-tempo operations if missiles, engines, radars, repair parts or specialist maintenance capacity are consumed faster than they can be replaced.

Diversification reduces leverage but imposes its own costs

The principal countervailing force is diversification, because Gulf states and Türkiye can seek European, Turkish, South Korean, Chinese or indigenous systems in order to reduce dependence on any single supplier, while the effectiveness of that strategy depends upon whether diversification produces true substitution rather than merely additional incompatible inventories.

The Turkish case demonstrates both the potential and the cost of this path because Ankara's exclusion from the F-35 programme increased the strategic importance of alternative fighter programmes and domestic industrial development, yet the Pentagon's evidence that Türkiye had been expected to acquire 100 F-35s and that Turkish companies were producing close to one thousand programme components shows the scale of the industrial and capability relationship that had to be replaced. U.S. Begins Process of ‘Unwinding’ Turkey From F-35 Program — U.S. Department of Defense Department of Defense Press Briefing on the F-35 Program

The same logic applies to Gulf diversification because introducing a second fighter, missile-defence architecture or precision-strike ecosystem can improve political resilience while simultaneously creating parallel training, logistics, ammunition, maintenance and communications requirements, meaning that reduced dependence on Washington does not automatically produce lower military cost or greater wartime readiness.

There is no documentary basis for a universal remote disablement claim

The cases examined in this chapter demonstrate substantial supplier leverage without requiring the existence of a hidden electronic command, while none of the reviewed Tier A or Tier B records establishes that Washington maintains a universal mechanism capable of remotely shutting down operational Saudi F-15s, Emirati F-16s, Qatari F-15QAs, Kuwaiti Patriots or Iraqi F-16s at will.

The documentary evidence instead identifies mechanisms that are more prosaic but institutionally stronger because they are legally authorised, contractually embedded and historically exercised: the United States can approve or deny sales, suspend categories of munitions, restrict intelligence cooperation, condition access to highly sensitive technology, remove a partner from a multinational weapons programme, terminate training, redirect industrial workshare and manage the government-to-government cases through which sustainment and logistics services are delivered. Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 6 — Defense Security Cooperation Agency U.S. Arms Sales and Defense Trade — U.S. Department of State

The analytical conclusion is therefore that the absence of a verified remote kill switch does not materially weaken the argument that Washington possesses leverage over U.S.-origin arsenals, because the demonstrated administrative and logistical mechanisms are sufficient to alter access, endurance, readiness and modernization without assuming direct electronic control over the weapon itself.

Key judgments

Saudi Arabia provides the strongest Arab evidence of mission-selective American leverage, because the United States suspended two munitions sales and ended support for offensive operations in Yemen while continuing to support Saudi territorial defence, before formally lifting the relevant suspension in August 2024; this sequence demonstrates that the practical scope of U.S.-enabled military capability can be narrowed and later widened through political and administrative decisions without altering Saudi title to existing platforms. U.S. Security Assistance in a Changing Middle East — U.S. Department of State Department Press Briefing — 12 August 2024 — U.S. Department of State

The UAE demonstrates a different mechanism because Washington's leverage is strongest before the transfer of uniquely sensitive technology, when access to the F-35, MQ-9B and associated weapons can be made conditional upon requirements governing technology protection, programme participation and obligations extending before and after delivery. U.S. Approves Advanced Defense Capabilities for the United Arab Emirates — U.S. Department of State Telephonic Press Briefing with Mira K. Resnick — U.S. Department of State

Iraq demonstrates that contractor dependence can constitute an operational vulnerability even without coercive intent, because hundreds of millions of dollars in FMS-funded support contracts were required for aircraft logistics, training, base operations and security, while the 2021 contractor evacuation did not immediately halt sorties but required continued support from Erbil and the United States. Department of Defense Contracts — August 2019 Lead Inspector General for Operation Inherent Resolve Quarterly Report, April–June 2021

Türkiye remains the clearest regional demonstration of supplier control because Washington suspended deliveries, removed Turkish personnel from the F-35 programme, terminated training and transferred Turkish industrial workshare after Ankara accepted the S-400, thereby denying access to a planned fleet of 100 aircraft without needing to disable a single operational Turkish F-35. U.S. Begins Process of ‘Unwinding’ Turkey From F-35 Program — U.S. Department of Defense Department of Defense Off-Camera Press Briefing on Turkey's Participation in the F-35 Program

What would change the assessment

The assessment of U.S. leverage would weaken substantially if regional operators demonstrated sustained combat operations through prolonged interruption of American ammunition, contractor, software and spare-parts support while maintaining high readiness through sovereign stockpiles, domestic repair facilities and alternative supply chains, because that evidence would establish that nominal dependencies visible in procurement documents do not translate into operational dependence under wartime conditions.

The assessment would strengthen if future U.S. restrictions on munitions, contractors, software or technical assistance produced measurable declines in mission-capable aircraft, sortie rates, interceptor availability or repair throughput in a Gulf or regional partner, because such evidence would connect the currently documented administrative mechanisms directly to quantified changes in combat readiness.

The Saudi experience would become particularly probative if future restrictions were broad enough and prolonged enough to permit comparison between pre-restriction and post-restriction readiness, while the Iraqi case would become more decisive if official records quantified the effect of prolonged contractor absence on aircraft mission-capable rates rather than merely reporting that the immediate 2021 evacuation had no near-term effect.

Open official record

No complete official public record presently quantifies the number of months for which Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar or Kuwait could sustain high-intensity operations if new U.S. ammunition and spare-part deliveries ceased, meaning that any claim that Washington could either immediately immobilise those forces or conversely exercise no meaningful leverage would exceed what the evidence presently establishes.

The official record also remains incomplete regarding the precise contractual and technical functions performed by U.S. contractors across each Gulf combat-air and air-defence fleet, particularly the boundary between tasks that indigenous personnel can perform autonomously and tasks that remain dependent upon proprietary knowledge, source-controlled components or specialised foreign support.

Finally, the reviewed official documentation does not establish a universal remote electronic disablement mechanism for exported U.S. systems, while the demonstrated evidence instead supports a model of administrative, logistical and technological leverage whose military effect develops through access, replenishment, sustainment, programme governance and time.

Sovereignty Is a Spectrum Rather Than a Binary Condition

Principal judgment

Operational sovereignty should not be treated as a binary condition in which a state either “controls” its weapons or does not, because the more defensible measure is the degree to which a national military can generate, sustain, replenish, repair, modify and regenerate combat capability after foreign political or logistical support is reduced, and by that standard the principal regional actors occupy materially different positions: Türkiye possesses the deepest indigenous defence-industrial ecosystem among the cases examined; the United Arab Emirates has developed increasingly consequential sovereign production in munitions, autonomous systems, secure communications and advanced manufacturing; Saudi Arabia is pursuing an exceptionally ambitious localisation programme but officially reported only 24.89 percent localisation of military spending at the end of 2024 against a target exceeding 50 percent by 2030; Qatar is deliberately building sovereign maintenance, software, ammunition and industrial capabilities through Barzan Holdings and joint ventures; while Kuwait and Iraq remain considerably more exposed in the publicly documented high-end U.S.-origin capabilities examined in this dossier. GAMI — Localization of Military Spending Reaches 24.89% EDGE — Defence Manufacturing Progress, 2026 Türkiye SSB — Strategic Plan 2024–2028

The decisive distinction is therefore between ownership sovereignty, which concerns legal title; command sovereignty, which concerns national authority to order employment; readiness sovereignty, which concerns the ability to keep systems mission-capable; replenishment sovereignty, which concerns replacement of consumed weapons and components; and technological sovereignty, which concerns the ability to maintain, modify, reprogramme and ultimately replace the system without external permission, because an armed force can rank highly in the first two categories while remaining substantially dependent in the latter three. The structure of the U.S. Foreign Military Sales system itself confirms why these dimensions must be separated, since DSCA's Total Package Approach encompasses training, technical assistance, initial support, software, ammunition, follow-on support and intelligence mission data in addition to the weapon system itself. DSCA — Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 4

Strategic autonomy begins with endurance, not procurement

A country becomes less vulnerable to supplier leverage not simply by buying weapons from several states but by increasing the length of time for which its armed forces can operate without renewed foreign approval or assistance, meaning that the most important indicators are wartime stocks of expendable munitions, domestic manufacturing capacity, repair throughput, availability of engines and other source-controlled components, indigenous software and electronic-warfare expertise, technical-data rights, depot-level maintenance, trained national personnel and the capacity to substitute locally produced systems for foreign ones as losses accumulate.

That framework changes the interpretation of diversification because purchasing an American fighter, a European fighter and a Chinese drone can reduce dependence on one government while simultaneously creating three separate logistical systems, three training structures, three ammunition families and several incompatible maintenance chains, whereas genuine sovereignty increases when diversification is accompanied by national capacity to integrate, sustain and replenish those systems domestically, rather than merely increasing the number of external suppliers.

The distinction is visible in Saudi Arabia's own industrial strategy, because the General Authority for Military Industries does not describe localisation primarily as an exercise in procurement diversification but explicitly links it to military readiness, strategic autonomy, self-sufficiency and a sustainable domestic military-industrial base, while its stated objective is to localise more than 50 percent of spending on military equipment and services by 2030. GAMI — Military Industries Sector Strategy

Saudi Arabia is reducing dependence, but has not yet eliminated the structural gap

Saudi Arabia represents the most consequential regional attempt to transform financial purchasing power into industrial sovereignty because Vision 2030 explicitly acknowledged that the Kingdom historically imported the overwhelming majority of its military requirements and established a target of localising more than 50 percent of expenditure on defence equipment and services by 2030, while the original Vision document identified domestic development of spare parts, armoured vehicles and basic ammunition as an initial phase before progression into more complex capabilities including military aircraft, maintenance, repair, research and development. Saudi Vision 2030 — Localized Defense Industries

The scale of progress is substantial but should not be overstated, because GAMI reported that localisation of military spending reached 24.89 percent by the end of 2024, while the Vision 2030 2025 annual report stated that the number of establishments associated with the sector had expanded from 5 to 311 and that 572 military licences and permits had been issued across manufacturing, services and supply activities by the end of 2024; these figures show rapid construction of an industrial ecosystem, but a localisation level of 24.89 percent simultaneously means that a large majority of military expenditure remained outside the measured domestic localisation base at that reference date. Saudi Vision 2030 — Annual Report 2025

Saudi industrial policy is also increasingly aimed at the categories most relevant to operational independence, because the Kingdom's National Industrial Strategy identifies defence electronics, conventional ammunition, guided weapons, UAV structures and systems, cyber capabilities, fixed-wing maintenance and repair, land-system maintenance, maritime-system maintenance and associated structural components among priority areas, meaning that Riyadh is attempting to address not merely assembly but several of the support functions that generate lifecycle autonomy. Saudi Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources — Military Industries Sub-Sector Strategy

GAMI has separately identified 74 investment opportunities across six military-industry domains through its supply-chain programme, while the authority's investment portal includes opportunities extending into light ammunition, electronic components and electric motors, reinforcing the conclusion that Saudi policy recognises supply-chain depth rather than final assembly as a condition of industrial resilience. GAMI — Military Industries Supply Chain Programme

Yet the continuing dependence documented elsewhere in this dossier remains material, because the February 2026 U.S. approval of a $3 billion F-15 sustainment package incorporating spare and repair parts, software, technical documentation, training and government and contractor assistance demonstrates that Saudi industrial localisation has not yet displaced the U.S.-centred sustainment architecture for one of the Kingdom's most important combat-air capabilities, while the January 2026 proposed acquisition of 730 PAC-3 MSE interceptors for an estimated $9 billion demonstrates continuing reliance on the United States for high-end missile-defence replenishment even as domestic industry expands.

The correct Saudi judgment is therefore neither continued near-total dependency nor achieved defence sovereignty, but rapid movement along the spectrum: Riyadh is building the industrial, regulatory and human-capital foundations needed to reduce American leverage, yet its most sophisticated U.S.-origin combat-air and missile-defence systems remain substantially connected to American supply, software, munitions and technical-support chains, meaning that the strategic effect of localisation will depend increasingly on whether Saudi industry penetrates those high-complexity layers rather than merely increasing aggregate domestic content.

The UAE has moved further into sovereign weapons production

The United Arab Emirates presents a different model because its domestic defence industry has already moved beyond a narrow maintenance or assembly base into substantial production of weapons, unmanned systems, communications, electronic warfare, secure technologies and precision-strike products, although much of the quantitative evidence is necessarily first-party because EDGE is the state-backed industrial group describing its own manufacturing footprint.

EDGE reported in April 2026 that more than 80 percent of its systems were manufactured in the UAE, that it had completed 68 advanced-manufacturing transformation projects across 28 production facilities, that those projects had doubled production capacity across 13 entities, and that the group generated AED 596 million, approximately $162.4 million, in in-country value during 2025, while reporting a 2025 order intake of $7.96 billion and a current order backlog of $20.4 billion; these are company-reported figures rather than independently audited measurements of national defence sovereignty, but they indicate an industrial ecosystem considerably deeper than simple foreign-system maintenance. EDGE — Defence Manufacturing Progress at Make It in the Emirates 2026

EDGE had previously reported more than 170 manufacturing and assembly facilities in the UAE and stated that more than 80 percent of a portfolio exceeding 220 products and solutions was manufactured domestically, while the group described local procurement, CNC machining, rapid prototyping and supply-chain localisation as central elements of its strategy; those claims remain evidence of EDGE's stated industrial capability rather than proof that every critical subsystem is domestically sourced, but they show that the UAE has built physical manufacturing depth across multiple defence sectors rather than merely relying upon offset agreements. EDGE — Made in the UAE Defence Capabilities, 2025

The most strategically important UAE development concerns ammunition because in February 2025 EDGE announced an AED 4.36 billion contract under which its LAHAB DEFENCE SYSTEMS entity would manufacture and supply MK 81, MK 82, MK 83 and MK 84 general-purpose aerial munitions to the UAE Ministry of Defence, explicitly presenting the agreement as a means of ensuring national control over production of mission-critical ordnance. EDGE — UAE Ministry of Defence Aerial Munitions Contract

That development genuinely reduces one category of external dependency because locally manufactured bomb bodies can increase national replenishment resilience, but it should not be extrapolated into complete strike sovereignty, since general-purpose aerial munitions are only one layer of the modern precision-strike chain and do not by themselves replace externally sourced air-to-air missiles, specialised seekers, guidance kits, electronic components, engines, advanced interceptors or platform-specific software.

The UAE is also attempting to localise sustainment of imported technology itself, as shown by the June 2025 EDGE–Thales memorandum exploring dedicated UAE capability for production and maintenance of advanced electro-optical systems already operated by the UAE Armed Forces; because this remains an MoU rather than completed sovereign capability, it should be treated as an indicator of direction rather than an accomplished transfer, but the strategic logic is important because moving maintenance from external vendor facilities into national territory shortens the chain through which supplier leverage can operate. EDGE — Localisation of Thales Optronic Maintenance in the UAE

The UAE therefore appears closer than most Arab operators to selective capability sovereignty, particularly in munitions, autonomous systems, secure communications and certain domestic weapon families, while remaining less sovereign in capabilities based on sophisticated imported American architectures such as F-16, Patriot and THAAD, where the deeper supply, software and missile ecosystems remain substantially external.

Qatar is pursuing sovereignty through joint ventures rather than complete autarky

Qatar is constructing a different model centred on Barzan Holdings, which functions as the commercial gateway for the national defence sector and deliberately uses foreign partnerships to acquire production, sustainment, software and industrial expertise rather than attempting to recreate every capability independently from first principles; this approach does not eliminate foreign dependence immediately, but it can move selected functions from external procurement toward nationally embedded joint production and maintenance.

A particularly significant development occurred in January 2026 when Türkiye's state-owned MKE and Qatar's Barzan Holdings agreed to establish a joint venture in Qatar whose stated objectives included creating explosives-production capability inside Qatar, while the same arrangement included the prospective acquisition of the Turkish TOLGA short-range air-defence system; because the agreement had been signed but the production capability had not yet been demonstrated at scale, it represents an autonomy-building pathway rather than completed self-sufficiency. MKE — Strategic Partnership with Barzan Holdings

Qatar has simultaneously pursued indigenous sustainment capability for its U.S.-origin fleets, because Boeing and Barzan signed a January 2026 Letter of Intent covering manpower support, maintenance, sustainment, training and logistics for Boeing platforms operated by Qatar, including the C-17, AH-64 Apache and F-15QA, with Boeing describing the objective as building sovereign maintenance solutions and improving aircraft availability and readiness; again, an LOI is not evidence that these functions have already been transferred, but its subject matter directly identifies the capabilities Qatar believes it must internalise to increase autonomy. Boeing — Barzan Holdings Defence Collaboration, DIMDEX 2026

Barzan is also pursuing higher-level software capability, because its January 2026 agreement with General Atomics creates a framework for joint development of battle-management software intended to improve theatre-level situational awareness, intelligence correlation and multi-domain decision-making, which is strategically important because sovereign capability increasingly depends upon command software and data integration rather than exclusively upon manufacturing physical weapons. General Atomics — Barzan Holdings Battle Management Software Cooperation

Qatar's defence-industrial approach has also produced a significant Turkish industrial exposure through Barzan's 49.9 percent stake in BMC, whose Ankara facility inaugurated in October 2025 is associated with production of the Altay tank, giving Qatar an ownership position inside a major foreign defence manufacturer even though industrial equity abroad is not equivalent to sovereign production capacity physically available in Qatar during a crisis. Qatar News Agency — Barzan Stake in BMC and Altay Production Facility

The Qatari trajectory should consequently be classified as growing but partnership-dependent autonomy, because Doha is deliberately internalising maintenance, explosives production, unmanned-system integration and software capability while retaining extensive reliance on foreign primes and technology providers, meaning that the transition becomes strategically meaningful only when announced joint ventures produce functioning facilities, trained national workforces, validated production output and wartime-scale sustainment capacity.

Kuwait remains more exposed in the high-end systems visible in the public record

Kuwait presents substantially less public evidence of a domestic defence-industrial ecosystem capable of replacing the critical support functions surrounding its high-end American weapon systems, while the available official Kuwaiti Ministry of Defence record identifies national workshops and technical-support functions but does not establish indigenous production or sovereign lifecycle support comparable with the Saudi, Emirati or Turkish programmes described above. Kuwait Ministry of Defence — Institutional Achievements and Workshops

That gap becomes strategically significant when read against Kuwait's January 2026 request for an $800 million Patriot sustainment and follow-on technical-support package encompassing spare and repair parts, stockpile reliability activity, missile-support-centre functions, operator and maintenance assistance, technical documentation, training and U.S. government and contractor support, because the package demonstrates that important layers of the country's principal air-defence architecture remain embedded in a U.S.-managed sustainment system.

The available evidence therefore places Kuwait toward the more supplier-dependent end of the spectrum for sophisticated missile defence, although that judgment should remain confined to the capabilities documented here rather than extrapolated to every branch of the Kuwaiti Armed Forces, because the public record does not provide sufficiently detailed information about national stockpiles, maintenance autonomy or classified technical arrangements to support a broader categorical conclusion.

Iraq remains constrained by sustainment depth more than by legal control

Iraq's experience demonstrates that sovereignty can be weakest not because a foreign government directly controls the national chain of command but because the domestic maintenance and logistics system lacks sufficient depth to replicate external functions, while the Iraqi F-16 programme has repeatedly required U.S.-managed contractor logistics, training, base support and remote technical assistance.

As established in the previous chapter, the 2021 withdrawal of Lockheed Martin personnel from Balad following security threats did not immediately halt operational sorties, which is evidence that Iraq possessed meaningful residual operating capacity, but continued contractor presence in Erbil and remote assistance from the United States simultaneously showed that the fleet's sustainment ecosystem had not become fully autonomous.

The relevant autonomy threshold for Iraq would therefore not be the continued ability to fly occasional missions during a short contractor disruption, but the demonstrated capacity to conduct engine, avionics and structural maintenance; regenerate trained technical personnel; maintain mission systems; source critical components; and preserve high sortie rates for months without returning to the external support architecture on which the fleet has historically depended.

Türkiye is the strongest regional case of industrial substitution, but autonomy remains capability-specific

Türkiye occupies the most advanced position among the regional states examined because its defence policy has deliberately pursued localisation not simply through assembly but through domestic platform design, subsystem production, supply-chain development and export-oriented industry, while the Presidency of Defence Industries' 2024–2028 Strategic Plan explicitly calls for maximising use of national resources in developing platforms and systems, strengthening the domestic supplier ecosystem, developing disruptive technologies and ensuring lifecycle support capability. Türkiye Presidency of Defence Industries — Strategic Plan 2024–2028

The industrial scale is materially larger than it was when Türkiye entered the F-35 programme, because the Presidency of Defence Industries reported $7.154 billion in defence and aerospace exports during 2024, including NATO and service exports, representing a stated year-on-year increase of 29 percent; export value does not itself prove sovereign readiness, but a defence sector able to compete in external markets and support hundreds of programmes possesses substantially greater substitution capacity than a force whose industrial base is confined primarily to imported-system maintenance. Türkiye SSB — 2024 Defence and Aerospace Export Results

The KAAN national fighter programme is the clearest strategic expression of this trajectory because the Presidency of Defence Industries states that the aircraft is intended to meet future Turkish Air Force requirements through maximum domestic industry participation and technological indigenisation, including advanced mission and sensor systems, thereby addressing precisely the vulnerability exposed when Türkiye was excluded from the U.S.-led F-35 ecosystem. Türkiye Presidency of Defence Industries — KAAN National Fighter Aircraft Development Project

KAAN nevertheless demonstrates why sovereignty remains a spectrum even in Türkiye, because the existence of a national fighter-development programme should not be conflated with current ability to reproduce every propulsion, sensor, electronic, weapons and materials technology domestically at production scale, while a prototype or development programme does not automatically replace a mature operational fleet; the relevant indicator will therefore be progression from indigenous airframe development into serial production, sovereign engine capability, national weapons integration, domestic mission-system support and sustained operational availability.

Türkiye's localisation doctrine explicitly recognises this distinction because official SSB guidance differentiates systems that must be nationally developed, critical technologies for which domestic development or joint production should be pursued, and less critical systems that can be sourced through diversified procurement while considering lifecycle cost, thereby treating sovereignty as a hierarchy of strategic criticality rather than demanding autarky across every component. Türkiye SSB — Localisation and Nationalisation Guidance

National ammunition production is the first serious test of wartime sovereignty

Among all autonomy indicators, domestic munitions production deserves particular weight because platforms can remain operational for decades while consumable weapons are expended within days or weeks of intensive combat, meaning that a country possessing sovereign bomb, missile, interceptor or ammunition production can absorb external political pressure significantly longer than one whose magazines depend upon continuing foreign deliveries.

The UAE's AED 4.36 billion domestic aerial-munitions contract is therefore more strategically relevant to resilience than its headline number alone suggests because it establishes a continuing local production line for several general-purpose aerial bomb types rather than merely purchasing another batch from abroad, although the resulting sovereignty remains partial because those weapons represent only one component of the air campaign and do not replace every precision-guidance, air-to-air or missile-defence requirement. EDGE — UAE Aerial Munitions Production Contract

Saudi Arabia is moving in the same direction through its strategy of localising conventional ammunition, guided weapons and associated supply chains, while Qatar's 2026 MKE–Barzan arrangement explicitly seeks to establish explosives-production capability inside Qatar, but both examples must be assessed through actual production output rather than agreements or strategic objectives before they can be treated as proven wartime autonomy. Saudi Military Industries Sub-Sector Strategy

For Patriot-class missile defence, by contrast, the regional dependence remains substantially deeper because the January 2026 Saudi request for 730 PAC-3 MSE interceptors and the Kuwaiti sustainment package demonstrate continued reliance on the American ecosystem for high-end interceptors, stockpile support and associated technical functions; until equivalent interceptors can be produced, maintained or substituted domestically or through genuinely independent suppliers, air-defence sovereignty will remain materially different from sovereignty over simpler ammunition families.

Maintenance sovereignty can matter more than manufacturing the platform

A state does not necessarily need to manufacture an entire aircraft in order to reduce external leverage substantially, because sovereign depot-level maintenance, repair, overhaul, component refurbishment and engineering support can extend operational endurance even when the original platform remains foreign-designed.

This is why Saudi industrial strategy specifically prioritises fixed-wing aircraft MRO, UAV MRO and maintenance of land and maritime systems, while Qatar's 2026 Boeing–Barzan framework focuses on sovereign maintenance and sustainment of F-15QA, Apache and C-17 platforms rather than attempting immediately to replace those fleets with indigenous aircraft. Boeing — Qatar Sovereign Sustainment Cooperation

The UAE's proposed localisation of Thales electro-optical maintenance follows the same logic, because moving repair, testing, calibration and component-support capability into national facilities reduces the number of failures that require foreign intervention even if the underlying technology remains partly foreign-owned, while true sovereignty increases further when local technicians gain authorised access to technical data, diagnostic software and repair processes rather than merely performing limited line maintenance. EDGE–Thales — Local Maintenance Capability Agreement

Sovereign software and mission data are becoming the hardest frontier

The most difficult transition may ultimately concern digital rather than mechanical independence because contemporary combat systems increasingly derive capability from software, electronic-warfare data, threat libraries, secure networks, sensor fusion, mission planning and battle-management systems, while DSCA's current Total Package Approach explicitly identifies software and intelligence mission data alongside ammunition and follow-on support as possible elements necessary to operate transferred systems effectively. DSCA — Total Package Approach

The Qatari decision to pursue battle-management software cooperation with General Atomics and the UAE's investment in sovereign communications and cryptographic technology are therefore strategically significant even though neither establishes complete independence, because internalising software engineering, secure communications and data-fusion competence reduces dependence in areas where the supplier relationship would otherwise persist even after substantial mechanical manufacturing had been localised. General Atomics — Qatar Battle Management Software Cooperation

The UAE has additionally announced a November 2025 strategic alliance between EDGE's KATIM and Space42 intended to establish sovereign manufacturing of advanced satellite-communications hardware in the UAE and combine it with government-grade secure communications and cryptographic technologies, providing another example of an autonomy strategy expanding beyond weapons into the information infrastructure required to command them. EDGE–Space42 — Sovereign SATCOM Manufacturing Alliance

A practical spectrum of regional operational sovereignty

The verified record permits a comparative assessment provided that it is understood as capability-specific rather than a universal national score, because the same state can possess relatively high sovereignty in small arms, drones or conventional ammunition while remaining highly dependent in ballistic-missile defence or sophisticated combat-air systems.

State	Domestic industrial depth	Indigenous ammunition / weapons capacity	Sovereign high-end sustainment	Exposure of major U.S.-origin systems	Current analytical standing
Türkiye	Deep and diversified; national platforms, electronics, missiles, UAVs and substantial exports	Extensive across multiple categories	Increasingly strong, though capability-specific imported dependencies remain	Lower than Gulf states overall, but residual foreign subsystem dependencies persist	Highest regional autonomy among cases examined, but not autarkic
UAE	Rapidly expanding; EDGE reports >80% of its systems manufactured domestically	Significant, including domestic aerial munitions and indigenous weapon families	Expanding through local production and maintenance agreements	Material for U.S.-origin F-16, Patriot, THAAD and associated missiles	High selective sovereignty; substantial imported-system dependency remains
Saudi Arabia	Rapidly expanding national ecosystem; 311 establishments reported for 2024	Developing across ammunition, UAV, electronics and guided-weapons priorities	Expanding MRO capability, but major U.S. sustainment packages continue	High for F-15, Patriot and other advanced U.S.-origin capabilities	Intermediate and improving rapidly
Qatar	Smaller but deliberately expanding through Barzan joint ventures	Developing through partnerships and planned local production	Sovereign maintenance programmes under development	High for F-15QA, Apache, Patriot and other imported systems	Intermediate-low today, with clear upward trajectory
Kuwait	Public evidence of high-end indigenous industrial depth remains limited	No comparable verified national missile or combat-air production base in reviewed record	U.S. Patriot sustainment dependence remains explicit	High for Patriot and other sophisticated U.S.-origin systems	Relatively high supplier dependence
Iraq	Limited capability in relation to advanced combat-air requirements examined here	Insufficient verified indigenous replacement capacity for principal U.S. systems	Contractor dependence demonstrated in F-16 programme	High for F-16 sustainment architecture	High supplier dependence in the capability examined

The underlying Saudi metrics derive from the Saudi government's reported 24.89 percent military-spending localisation rate and 311 establishments, while the UAE standing reflects EDGE's reported domestic manufacturing footprint and munitions-production contracts, Türkiye's standing reflects its official localisation strategy, national fighter programme and export-oriented industrial ecosystem, and Qatar's standing reflects the Barzan joint ventures described above; the table is therefore a comparative analytical judgment derived from documented capability indicators rather than a mathematically fabricated sovereignty index. Saudi Vision 2030 Annual Report 2025

Stockpiles can postpone dependence but do not eliminate it

Large national inventories can materially delay the effect of an American suspension because aircraft can continue flying with spare components already held domestically and missiles already present in national magazines, while a state with deep reserves could retain substantial operational freedom during the early phase of a political dispute even if new U.S. deliveries stopped immediately.

The problem is that current operational war-reserve levels are not available in a sufficiently complete official public record for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait or Iraq, while Foreign Military Sales notifications record proposed quantities and maximum estimated case values rather than verified current inventories or mission-ready stockpiles; consequently, the number of weeks or months for which any Gulf military could sustain intensive combat after a comprehensive U.S. supply interruption cannot be responsibly calculated from the open official evidence.

This limitation is particularly important for Saudi Arabia because the January 2026 notification covering 730 PAC-3 MSE interceptors represents U.S. approval of a possible sale rather than confirmation that all 730 missiles have already been delivered into operational Saudi stocks, so the figure demonstrates scale of procurement demand and continuing supplier dependence but cannot be used as the Kingdom's current interceptor inventory.

The relevant sovereignty measure is therefore days of combat autonomy rather than missiles authorised on paper, and that measure would require classified or otherwise non-public data concerning actual on-hand inventories, storage condition, consumption rates, launcher availability, expected threat intensity, repair throughput and domestic replacement capacity.

Industrial ownership abroad strengthens bargaining power but is not identical to wartime autonomy

Another distinction is required between industrial investment and geographically sovereign capacity because regional states increasingly purchase equity in foreign defence companies, establish joint ventures or finance production facilities outside their own borders, while those investments can improve technological access and negotiating leverage without guaranteeing that production remains available during a geopolitical rupture.

Qatar's 49.9 percent ownership in Türkiye's BMC facility is strategically important because it connects Doha directly to a major armour and engine industrial project, but a factory physically located in Türkiye remains subject to Turkish territorial jurisdiction, export policy, workforce availability and transport routes, meaning that ownership of foreign industrial capacity should be treated as an intermediate form of resilience rather than equivalent to production under sovereign national control. Qatar News Agency — BMC Factory and Qatari Ownership

The same principle applies to co-production arrangements across the Gulf because technology transfer, joint ventures and foreign investment improve sovereignty only to the extent that they produce nationally accessible technical knowledge, local tooling, trained personnel, domestic component supply and legal authority to continue production when the foreign partner is unwilling or unable to participate.

Genuine autonomy requires substitution, not merely localisation statistics

Local-content metrics are useful indicators of industrial development but can become misleading if interpreted as measures of military sovereignty because one dollar spent domestically manufacturing vehicle structures is not strategically equivalent to one dollar spent acquiring sovereign missile seekers, encrypted communications, aircraft engines or electronic-warfare software, while a country can localise large volumes of low-complexity spending and remain dependent on a small number of foreign components whose absence immobilises the entire system.

Saudi Arabia's own industrial strategy implicitly acknowledges this problem by identifying high-priority strategic sectors including defence electronics, guided weapons, UAV systems, cyber capabilities and aircraft MRO alongside less complex production, which is why movement from 24.89 percent toward the 50 percent target should be assessed not only quantitatively but according to which dependencies are actually being removed. GAMI — Saudi Defence Localization Strategy

Similarly, EDGE's claim that more than 80 percent of its systems are manufactured in the UAE is a significant industrial indicator but does not mean 80 percent of every component, technology or raw material is Emirati, because manufacturing location, intellectual-property ownership, subsystem origin and sovereign ability to reproduce replacement components are different measurements; the relevant evidence of deeper autonomy will therefore be the localisation of engines, seekers, propulsion, electronics, encrypted communications, maintenance data and other critical subsystems rather than domestic final assembly alone. EDGE — UAE Manufacturing Localization, 2026

Observable indicators of genuine transition

A genuine shift toward regional operational sovereignty would become visible when domestic industry begins replacing the foreign-controlled functions that currently determine endurance rather than merely expanding nominal production volumes, and the first decisive indicator would therefore be verified serial production of mission-critical munitions, including not simply unguided ammunition but precision-guided weapons, air-to-air missiles, air-defence interceptors and their seekers, propulsion systems and guidance electronics.

The second decisive indicator would be sovereign depot-level maintenance for major combat aircraft and air-defence systems, demonstrated by national facilities performing engine overhaul, radar and avionics repair, structural work, software diagnostics and component refurbishment without requiring foreign technicians for routine critical functions, while the Saudi aircraft-MRO strategy, Qatar's Boeing–Barzan sustainment initiative and UAE localisation programmes should therefore be assessed against actual transferred capabilities rather than announced intentions. Saudi Military Industries Strategy — MRO Priorities

The third indicator would be domestic control over mission software, threat data and secure communications, because locally manufactured hardware remains strategically constrained if electronic-warfare libraries, cryptographic functions, mission-planning tools or battle-management software can only be updated externally, while Qatar's battle-management software programme and the UAE's secure communications investments represent early evidence that regional governments increasingly recognise this layer of dependence. EDGE–Space42 — Sovereign SATCOM Capability

The fourth indicator would be successful replacement of single-source imported critical components, particularly engines, missile propulsion, radar modules, seekers, semiconductors, electronic-warfare equipment and specialised test systems, because those components offer the supplier disproportionate leverage relative to their share of total programme expenditure.

The fifth indicator would be combat endurance after an actual interruption, because the ultimate empirical test of sovereignty is whether a force maintains readiness, sortie generation, missile availability and repair throughput when the external supplier is temporarily absent, while Iraq's 2021 experience demonstrates why a short disruption can reveal dependence but is insufficient by itself to establish how a fleet would perform during a prolonged supply cutoff.

The five-year direction is toward less exclusivity, not complete independence

The balance of current evidence supports a five-year trajectory in which American leverage over Gulf military capability becomes more differentiated and less comprehensive, because Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar are all investing in domestic manufacturing, ammunition, maintenance, software, supply chains and alternative partnerships, while Türkiye has already demonstrated that a sufficiently mature indigenous industrial base can provide meaningful alternatives when access to a U.S.-controlled programme is denied. Türkiye SSB — KAAN Programme

That trend does not imply the disappearance of American leverage because the Gulf's installed inventories of F-15s, F-16s, Patriot, THAAD, Apache and other U.S.-origin systems will continue requiring maintenance, ammunition and modernization over long service lives, while replacing an established military ecosystem requires considerably more than buying a competing platform because bases, trained personnel, weapons stocks, test equipment, command networks and doctrine all represent sunk institutional investment.

The more probable structural transformation is therefore from single-supplier dependency toward managed interdependence, in which Gulf states retain large U.S.-origin fleets while manufacturing selected munitions locally, creating national maintenance centres, purchasing Turkish or European alternatives, building domestic drones and missiles, establishing sovereign software capabilities and using industrial partnerships to reduce the number of operational functions that can be interrupted by a single external decision.

Where American leverage will remain strongest

American leverage will remain strongest where three conditions coincide: the weapon is technologically complex, the United States retains control over critical consumables or proprietary support, and no operationally equivalent national or alternative system is available at meaningful scale, which makes sophisticated combat aircraft, certain long-range precision weapons and high-end air and missile defence substantially more sensitive than categories such as small arms, conventional bomb bodies or relatively simple unmanned systems.

The dependence becomes particularly durable when replacing the U.S. system would require not merely another weapon but an entirely new military architecture, because substitution of Patriot or a major fighter fleet implies new training, maintenance, ammunition, communications, identification, infrastructure, doctrine and integration costs, while a state can therefore reduce dependence more rapidly by localising sustainment and ammunition for the existing system than by attempting immediate wholesale replacement.

Conversely, American leverage will decline fastest where regional industry can manufacture acceptable substitute capabilities independently, as the UAE is increasingly attempting in munitions and autonomous systems, Türkiye has demonstrated across drones, missiles and several platform categories, Saudi Arabia is targeting through industrial localisation, and Qatar is attempting through technology-transfer and joint-venture arrangements. STM — Qatar Joint Production of Unmanned Systems

Sovereignty therefore consists of layers that can be accumulated

The principal strategic conclusion is that an Arab state does not need to become completely autarkic to acquire materially greater military sovereignty, because each domestically controlled layer—ammunition production, depot maintenance, technical training, software engineering, secure communications, local spare-part manufacture and alternative sourcing—extends the period during which national political decisions can be translated into military action without external consent.

A state that controls seven of ten critical layers possesses meaningfully more strategic freedom than one controlling two, even if both operate the same foreign-designed aircraft, while the practical objective for regional governments is therefore not necessarily to eliminate all foreign technology but to remove single points of external failure from the capability chain.

This model explains why Saudi Arabia's localisation programme, the UAE's domestic production ecosystem, Qatar's joint ventures and Türkiye's indigenous platform strategy matter strategically even where foreign dependence remains visible, because each represents an attempt to move from purchasing finished capability toward controlling increasingly consequential stages of its lifecycle. Emirates News Agency — EDGE–Barzan Strategic Joint Venture

Key judgments

Saudi Arabia is making measurable progress but remains inside a substantial U.S.-dependent high-end ecosystem, because military-spending localisation reached 24.89 percent by end-2024, substantially above earlier levels but still below the 2030 target exceeding 50 percent, while major F-15 and Patriot support and replenishment requirements continue to pass through U.S. government and industrial channels. GAMI — Saudi Localization Rate, 24.89%

The UAE possesses the strongest selective sovereign industrial capability among the Arab Gulf states examined, particularly in domestically manufactured weapons, autonomous systems, secure communications and munitions, while EDGE's reported manufacturing footprint and the AED 4.36 billion national aerial-munitions contract demonstrate capacity that can genuinely reduce reliance on foreign replenishment in specific categories without eliminating dependence on U.S.-origin high-end systems. EDGE — UAE Aerial Munitions Sovereign Production

Qatar is moving from pure procurement toward partnership-based sovereignty, particularly through prospective local explosives production, sovereign maintenance, unmanned-system co-production and battle-management software cooperation, but the majority of these initiatives remain sufficiently recent that announced agreements must not yet be equated with proven wartime-scale autonomous capability. MKE — Qatar Explosives Production Joint Venture

Türkiye has moved furthest toward substitution of foreign capability through national industry, as demonstrated by the KAAN programme, a defence sector reporting $7.154 billion in 2024 exports, and an official strategy explicitly prioritising national technologies, supplier depth and lifecycle sustainability, although sovereign production must still be assessed system by system rather than assumed from aggregate industrial success. Türkiye Presidency of Defence Industries — KAAN

Kuwait and Iraq remain the most exposed of the cases examined in relation to the advanced U.S.-origin capabilities documented here, because Kuwait's Patriot readiness continues to rely on extensive American sustainment support while Iraq's F-16 architecture has demonstrated substantial contractor and logistical dependence, although unavailable classified information concerning national reserves and maintenance capabilities prevents converting that qualitative judgment into a precise endurance estimate.

What would change the assessment

The Saudi assessment would move decisively toward higher operational sovereignty if localisation advances from aggregate spending into serial domestic production of sophisticated guided munitions, aircraft components, missile propulsion and electronics; sovereign depot-level F-15 maintenance; domestic software and electronic-warfare reprogramming; and measurable reductions in contractor or Foreign Military Sales sustainment requirements, because those developments would address the most strategically consequential dependencies rather than simply raising local-content percentages. GAMI — Strategy and Strategic Autonomy

The UAE assessment would strengthen further if its extensive domestic manufacturing base demonstrated sovereign production of more critical subsystems—particularly propulsion, seekers, air-defence missiles, advanced sensors and combat-air software—while independent evidence confirmed that a growing share of systems described as manufactured domestically could be sustained without foreign-controlled components; conversely, major supply disruptions revealing dependence on imported subsystems would require the current assessment to be revised downward. EDGE — Manufacturing and Supply-Chain Localization

The Qatari assessment would change most substantially when the agreements announced in 2025–26 move from memoranda and joint-venture structures into verified production output, operational national maintenance centres and independently sustained software capability, because the distinction between industrial ambition and deployed autonomous capacity remains especially important in Qatar's rapidly developing programme. Boeing–Barzan — Sovereign Maintenance Cooperation

Türkiye's standing would strengthen further if KAAN enters sustained serial production with increasingly sovereign propulsion, avionics, mission systems and weapons integration, while its standing would weaken if imported critical subsystems continue to represent irreplaceable bottlenecks despite national control over the platform architecture. Türkiye SSB — National Fighter Aircraft KAAN

Open official record

The most important missing record across all Arab cases is a credible, comparable account of war-reserve ammunition and interceptor inventories, because authorised sales, procurement announcements and industrial capacity figures cannot establish how long a national air force or missile-defence system can sustain high-intensity combat after external replenishment stops.

The second critical gap concerns the exact division between indigenous and foreign responsibility for depot-level maintenance of F-15, F-16, Patriot, THAAD, Apache and other complex U.S.-origin systems, because publicly available procurement records identify substantial contractor support but generally do not reveal the complete task-by-task boundary between nationally executable maintenance and functions requiring foreign technical intervention.

The third gap concerns technical data, software authority, cryptographic control and electronic-warfare reprogramming, because public documents establish that these functions can be consequential but rarely disclose precisely which rights, source materials or reprogramming capacities individual Gulf operators possess.

The fourth gap concerns the actual domestic content of systems described as locally manufactured, because final assembly, component manufacture, intellectual-property ownership and sovereign reproduction rights are separate categories, while future analysis should therefore distinguish made locally, designed locally, maintained locally, supplied locally and replaceable locally rather than reducing autonomy to a single localisation percentage.

The fifth unresolved variable is combat performance during prolonged external interruption, because no recent Gulf case provides a controlled public test in which a sophisticated U.S.-origin fleet continued high-tempo operations for months without American munitions, spares, software or contractor assistance, making this the decisive empirical observation that would either confirm or materially weaken the assessment developed across the three pillars.

The final net judgment is consequently that regional military sovereignty is increasing but unevenly, and American leverage is being eroded at the margins rather than disappearing at the core: Türkiye has constructed the deepest substitution capacity; the UAE has achieved meaningful sovereignty in selected weapons and industrial domains; Saudi Arabia is executing a large but incomplete transition from importer to producer; Qatar is converting foreign partnerships into local capability; while Kuwait and Iraq remain more dependent in the sophisticated systems visible in the public record. The strategic contest over autonomy will therefore be decided less by who legally owns the next fighter or missile battery than by who manufactures its munitions, repairs its failures, controls its mission software, reproduces its critical components and keeps it fighting after the external supply chain stops. GAMI — Saudi Strategic Autonomy and Military Industries Strategy