The US State Department has approved a $239 million sale of M88 Hercules armored recovery vehicles to Morocco. The deal includes machine guns and smoke grenade rounds. The U.S. State Department has approved a possible foreign military sale to Morocco of twenty-five M88 Hercules armored recovery vehicles, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) announced Tuesday in a news release. The possible sale is for an estimated cost of $239.35 million (around MAD2.2 billion), the agency said, adding that it had delivered the required certification notifying Congress of this possible sale. According to DSCA, the government of Morocco «has requested twenty-five M2 .50 caliber machine guns, twenty five export Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINCGARS), twenty five AN/PSN-13A Defense Advanced Global Positioning System (GPS) Receiver (DAGR) with Selective-Availability/Anti-Spoofing Module (SAASM); thirty AN/VAS-5B Driver Vision Enhancer (DVE) kits; twenty five M239 or M250 smoke grenade launchers and one thousand eight hundred M76 (G826) or L8A1/L8A3 (G815) smoke grenade rounds». Morocco has also requested «communication support equipment; communication equipment integration; tools and test equipment; training; training simulators; repair and return program; U.S. Government and contractor engineering, technical, and logistics support services; Technical Assistance Field Team (TAFT); and other related elements of logistics and program support». Morocco, the biggest MENA region customer for American arms in 2019 DSCA indicates in its news release that the proposed sale will help Morocco «meet current and future combat vehicle recovery requirements» and «use the enhanced capability to enable armored forces training to strengthen its homeland defense and deter regional threats». «Morocco intends to use these defense articles and services to modernize its armed forces by updating their combat vehicle recovery capability in pace with their armored unit upgrades». The US Defense Security Cooperation Agency Implementing the sale will see around 30 U.S. government or contractor representatives travel to Morocco for «equipment deprocessing/fielding, system checkout and new equipment training». For the record, Morocco was the biggest MENA region customer for American arms in 2019, according to data compiled by the Forum on the Arms Trade from the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program and relayed by Forbes. In fact, Rabat has concluded deals «worth some $10.3 billion, almost all of it going on the Royal Moroccan Air Force» in 2019, the American magazine said. The same source explains that in March 2019, the US «State Department announced a deal to sell $3.8 billion worth of F-16 aircraft and associated equipment to Rabat». Forbes recalls that Morocco «has also firmed up plans to upgrade its existing fleet of F‐16 fighter jets at a cost of $985 million and ordered 36 of the AH-64E Apache attack helicopters at a cost of some $4.25 billion». While Morocco heads the list of MENA customers, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait come second agreeing $14.2 billion worth of deals.
