U.S. Relations With the People's Republic of China (2007)

U.S. Department of Defense
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs)

News Transcript

Presenter: Director for Operational Planning, Joint Chiefs of Staff Maj. Gen. Richard Sherlock

October 04, 2007 1:30 PM EDT

DoD News Briefing with Maj. Gen. Sherlock from the Pentagon

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Q: General, Iraq has said that it now will buy some weapons from China, because the U.S. system is too slow for them. They're not getting what they need fast enough. What can be done to move along the foreign military sales for them?

GEN. SHERLOCK: Well, first of all, we've never been the sole supplier for Iraq. When I was in Iraq, for example, we were bringing in weapons from Hungary and other countries as well. That said, OSD and the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which handles foreign military sales, have worked very hard for the last year-plus, to try to reduce that time frame from what started at about almost a year's worth of time down to an average right now of about 150 days from the time the letter of definition or requirements comes from the Iraqi government to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

Now, that timeline's an average. It depends on what equipment is being requested. It depends on whether it's in production, whether it needs to be placed in production, whether there's another claimant for those pieces of equipment that are in production or whether that equipment's on the shelf. So it does vary with the type of equipment, but OSD, DSCA and everyone is working very hard to try to compress that as much as possible.

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Q: One follow-up on the weapons purchase from China. Is the fact that Iraq is planning to purchase AK-47s and other light weapons from China a concern at all to the Pentagon? Particularly because some people have suggested that weapons purchased from other countries are not as easily tracked or inventoried once they get to Iraq. Is that a concern, that they're buying weapons from China?

GEN. SHERLOCK: No. We've never been the sole source. And again, as I said, that when I was in Iraq, we were bringing in weapons from Hungary and a variety of different nations.

What we're in the process of doing is building the Iraqi capacity in their logistic systems and in their administrative systems to be able to receive that, track that, contract for that, distribute that and to be able to sustain that. That's all part of making them an independent military that's able to sustain operations and accept more responsibility. So that's not an unusual thing. And that's not something that's new.

Q: So inventory control is not an issue when weapons such as AK-47s are purchased from other countries?

GEN. SHERLOCK: The same inventory controls that track U.S. weapons, that track Hungarian weapons will track Chinese weapons, so that's not an issue.

Yes?

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