Jewish World Update Sep/Oct 2026
What Does the U.S. Get for Its $3.8 Billion in Aid to Israel?
by John Spencer
(JNS)—I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard the questions, “Why does the United States give Israel $3.8 billion in military aid?” and “What do we get in return?” The United States provides military assistance through a program called Foreign Military Financing (FMF) that allows partner nations to buy American-made military equipment. Almost all the military aid given to Israel is spent in the United States.
People don’t realize the money directly supports American workers and manufacturing. Israel is permitted to spend up to 26% of its FMF allocation within its own defense industry. The rest must be spent in the United States. But even that exception is being phased out. By 2028, 100% of FMF aid must be spent in the United States on American-made defense goods and services.
No other major recipient of American military assistance operates under a similar arrangement. Egypt gets around $1.3 billion annually, and Jordan almost half a billion; but they have no such restrictions. Beginning in 2028, none of the money given to Israel will leave the American economy. It circulates through American factories and supply chains. Much of what critics describe as foreign aid flows directly to American workers, American defense companies, and the industrial base that equips the U.S. military.
Israel is the largest international operator of the F-35 fighter aircraft, purchasing the jets from Lockheed Martin in Texas. It also buys American helicopters, precision-guided munitions, communications systems, radar equipment, engines, components for its defense systems, and other military technology.
Besides the economic sphere, the partnership profits the United States in many other areas. U.S. personnel have benefited from Israeli advances in missile defense, tactics, training, battlefield medicine, casualty evacuation, trauma care, counter-drone technologies, tunnel warfare, artificial intelligence, battlefield decision-making, aerospace, software development, agriculture, and advanced manufacturing.
Trade between the two countries exceeds $50 billion annually. American companies maintain research and development centers throughout Israel, while Israeli firms employ thousands of workers across the United States.
Israel also provides many of the strategic advantages associated with a major American military presence without requiring the United States to deploy and sustain tens of thousands of personnel. Israel secures itself and funds the overwhelming majority of its own defense, contributing to regional stability and allowing the United States greater freedom to pursue its broader strategic priorities by reducing its burden in the Middle East.
For decades, Israeli intelligence has given the United States invaluable information on terrorist organizations and enemy military, contributing to efforts that protect American personnel and diplomatic facilities and interests overseas.
The United States spends billions of dollars every year studying future warfare through research programs, yet combat remains the ultimate proving ground. Israel’s military is constantly adapting to real-world threats. The operational data, technological innovations, and battlefield lessons from those experiences would be extraordinarily difficult, expensive, and often impossible for the United States to reproduce on its own.
Israeli battlefield experience often becomes American military knowledge without the United States having to pay for those lessons in blood. In fact, the United States would spend many times more than $3.8 billion attempting to independently develop, test, and combat-validate the things it has learned through decades of U.S.-Israeli cooperation.
So, the next time people ask what the United States gets for its $3.8 billion in aid to Israel, tell them this: jobs, a stronger defense base, intelligence that helps prevent attacks, technology, laboratory, instruction, innovation, a strong ally, and a greater freedom to focus military and economic resources elsewhere while helping preserve a favorable balance of power in the Middle East.
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