Special Training For Pentagon Negotiators To Increase US Weapons Sales

US Air Force has started special training protocols to improve Pentagon employees' way of communicating their case when dealing with foreign weapons buyers and also to understand exactly their requirements.

The move was taken in the wake of increasingly time-consuming and unsatisfying negotiations between foreign weapons buyers and US weapons sellers, and the Pentagon.

The US Air Force have instituted new protocols to train American armament vendors to more efficiently service the needs of their expanding clientele.

The process of negotiating with foreign buyers has been inefficient and often goes "back and forth for months" without finalizing a sale, US Air Force Deputy Undersecretary for International Affairs Heidi Grant said.

"If you have the right trained person with the right language skills and skill sets, and that wants to be there, we feel like the requirements process from the very beginning is going to be much better," Grant added.

Many US FMS employees possessed the appropriate language skills but had little knowledge or interest in the technical aspects of weapons development and deployment, Former Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James and current Air Force Chief of Staff General Dave Goldfein said. He signed a memo on August 17, 2016, calling for the Air Force to establish new training protocols.

The new program would ensure that US weapons sales representatives, operating directly with potential buyers overseas, can fine tune their sales pitches by being provided with the tools to understand precisely what kind of weapons the buyers want and in what circumstances they would be used.

It could take as long as three years to complete the training of a new overseas US weapons sales team, Grant added.