Weekly Commentary: Co-Production But With Full Israeli Indigenous Production

Weekly Commentary: Co-Production But With Full Israeli Indigenous Production
Dr. Aaron Lerner 5 June 2026

Section 224 of the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act
for Fiscal Year 2027 (NDAA), titled the “United States-Israel Defense
Technology Cooperation Initiative,” calls for the co-production of military
equipment with the idea that the United States would benefit from the
integration of Israeli technology in American equipment while Israel would
gain from co-producing equipment.

At the risk of offending my American readers, I am compelled to warn that we
Israelis must always keep in mind the very real possibility that supplies of
military equipment made in the USA may be either halted outright or
intentionally postponed in the future.

I would go so far as to suggest that when President Trump was recently
cursing out our Prime Minister for refusing to act against Israel’s critical
interests, if Netanyahu had ultimately stood his ground, it is within the
range of possibilities that a furious President might have responded with
action relating to weapons supplies.

So while it could most certainly serve our joint interests to co-produce
military equipment with the United States, we need full Israeli indigenous
production as well.

That’s not a set of tooling stored in an Israeli warehouse but actual serial
production of the complete product in Israel.

We need a domestic team with the experience which can only be gained by
engaging in production.

And we cannot find ourselves unable to complete production because the
Americans aren’t shipping some widget which only they have been making in
the co-production.

I appreciate that this approach may be less efficient.

But we simply cannot afford arrangements based on the assumption that
everything will be OK.

In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that the temptation to halt
supplies to Israel would be substantially lower if the only result of such a
sanction is lost American jobs as the Israeli production line covers the
loss of American supplies by changing its export:domestic ratio.

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