Israel and United States Military Assistance to Egypt

In January 2018, with little fanfare, the United States and Egypt signed a bilateral communications security agreement known as the Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA), which protects and regulates the use of sensitive American avionics and communications systems. Until now, Cairo refused to sign CISMOA, objecting to the invasive access it accords the US to Egypt’s facilities and communications systems. The lack of an agreement affected the level of the telecommunications and navigation devices on the US-made platforms and armaments sold to Egypt, limiting them to low standard commercial-grade systems. Consequently, the precision guided munitions (PGMs) sold by the US to Egypt were limited to the laser-guided kind, and only recently, with the purchase of the Rafale fighter jets from France, Egypt acquired European-made GPS-guided PGMs, such as the AASM Hammer bomb. The signing of CISMOA now allows, for the first time, the acquisition by Egypt of US-made high precision GPS-based air-to-ground weapon systems and components, as well as advanced air-to-air missiles.

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