Breaking news
United States to give 308 Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles to Uzbek armed forces.
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Defence & Security News - United States and Uzbekistan
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| United States to give 308 Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles to Uzbek armed forces | |||
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The United States is donating over 300 armored vehicles to Uzbekistan's military, American officials have announced. According to Eurasianet, the deal, the largest ever transfer of military hardware from the U.S. to an ex-Soviet Central Asian states, comes just three years after Washington lifted a ban on weapons exports to Uzbekistan because of the country's poor record on human rights.
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 Under the Excess Defense Articles program, United States will give Uzbekistan 308 MRAPs and 20 support vehicles |
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In an interview with the Voice of America's Uzbek service, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Central Asia Daniel Rosenblum said that the U.S. is giving Uzbekistan 308 Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, along with an additional 20 support vehicles.
The possibility of the U.S. donating MRAPs has been discussed for some time now, but it's usually been framed in terms of getting equipment the U.S. discards as it pulls out from Afghanistan. That won't be the case with these vehicles, however, they are instead being delivered from the U.S. and other American military bases abroad under the Excess Defense Articles program, the standard way that the U.S. military gives leftover equipment to allies. Uzbekistan's government is paying the cost to ship them to Uzbekistan, Rosenblum said. The U.S. has given Central Asian states some used gear under the EDA program in the past, notably patrol ships to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and utility helicopters to Kazakhstan. But this dwarfs any of those transfers. It's not yet clear what variant of the MRAP Uzbekistan will be getting, but the DoD has valued most of the MRAPs it's given away lately at about $100,000 each, which would make this deal worth over $30 million. It also appears to be the largest transfer of MRAPs under the EDA program to date. According to the EDA program's database, the biggest recipient to date of MRAPs has been Croatia, which has gotten 212, followed by Jordan, with 131. Burundi, Djibouti, Poland, and Uganda also have gotten small numbers. |
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