The White House on Feb. 6 issued an executive order that will fundamentally change how the United States allocates foreign military sales, moving away from a long-standing "first-come, first-served" practice to a system that privileges customers with higher defense spending and greater regional strategic importance. The order, described by the administration as a "United States weapons prioritization strategy," directs federal agencies to give priority to partners that invest more in their own defence and sit in key geographic theaters.
The new rules require the Department of Defense to submit, within 120 days, a prioritized catalog of acquisition platforms and systems that the United States will encourage allies and partners to procure. The White House framed the policy as a fix for production bottlenecks and delivery delays caused by a mismatch between the previous partner-first approach and America's manufacturing capacity. Future sales, officials say, should be used to leverage overseas orders and funding to expand U.S. industrial scale and to safeguard American national interests.
For decades U.S. foreign military sales often followed a queue-based model, with adjustments made only for exceptional circumstances. This shift is therefore both administrative and strategic: it aligns arms exports with a broader industrial-policy goal and ties export priorities explicitly to burden-sharing and geopolitical value. In practice it will direct scarce American weaponry and industrial capacity toward partners deemed to offer the greatest deterrent value or to sustain U.S. supply chains.
The geopolitical implications are immediate. Wealthy, high-spending allies in Europe, the Gulf and East Asia are the obvious beneficiaries; countries such as Japan, South Korea and key NATO members are likely to find faster access to critical systems. Conversely, smaller or lower-spending partners—even if strategically located—may face longer waits or be nudged to increase their defence budgets to avoid downgrading in the new ranking system. Rival suppliers, from European firms to Russia and China, will see opportunities to court customers who lose priority under the new U.S. rubric.
Domestically, the order formalises a partnership between arms exports and the U.S. defence industrial base. By tying foreign orders to plans for scaling U.S. production, the administration seeks to relieve capacity constraints, bolster supply chains, and funnel foreign capital into American factories. That will please major contractors but also crystallise competition among platforms, as the 120-day DoD list could create de facto shopping lists that shape allied procurement decisions for years.
What follows next will be telling. The Pentagon's prioritized catalogue will reveal which systems Washington wants to scale and which partners it prizes most. The policy is a lever for burden-sharing and industrial resilience, but it also risks fracturing relationships with lower-budget partners and accelerating regional arms competition. Allies, competitors and Congress will all watch closely as the new mechanism converts political priorities into concrete procurement choices.