March 10 (Reuters) – Boeing has signed a new $289 million contract with Israel to deliver as many as 5,000 new air-launched smart bombs, a source told Reuters on Tuesday.
The new contract is not related to the ongoing U.S.-Israeli air strikes on Iran, with deliveries not scheduled to start for 36 months, Bloomberg News reported earlier, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Boeing declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.
The company’s Small Diameter Bomb is a guided munition that can be launched by Israeli jets at targets more than 40 miles (64 kilometers) away.
Last year, Boeing was awarded an $8.6 billion contract by the Pentagon to produce and deliver F-15 jets to Israel as part of a foreign military sale between the governments.
The U.S. has long been by far the largest arms supplier to its closest Middle East ally.
Reuters reported last week that President Donald Trump’s administration has bypassed U.S. Congress using an emergency authority to expedite the sale of more than 20,000 bombs to Israel worth around $650 million. A State Department official had said on Saturday that Israel will purchase an extra $298 million worth of critical munitions via direct commercial sales.
Earlier this year, the U.S. State Department approved more than $6.5 billion in three separate contracts for potential military sales to Israel, which include Boeing’s Apache helicopters.
(Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington, Mariam Sunny and Parth Chandna in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona and Sahal Muhammed)
