US Military Aid and Arms Transfers to Israel,
October 2023 – September 2025
Senior Research Fellow William Hartung / Costs of War & Quincy Institute

(October 7, 2025) — This brief was co-published by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and Brown University’s Costs of War Project

Introduction

The United States has provided at least $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, 2023. However, under both the Biden and Trump administrations, an additional tens of billions of dollars in arms sales agreements have been committed for weapons and services that will be paid for in the years to come.

This report covers the spending streams that have gone into that $21.7 billion, as well as detailing the billions in commitments that the U.S. government has promised for arms to be supplied in the future, much or all of which will be paid for by additional appropriations for military aid to Israel.

Given the scale of current and future spending, it is clear the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) could not have done the damage they have done in Gaza or escalated their military activities throughout the region without U.S. financing, weapons, and political support.

According to a companion report by Linda J. Bilmes, the U.S. has spent an additional $9.65 – $12.07 billion on military operations in Yemen and the wider region sparked by or in support of Israeli military operations since October 7, 2023, for a total of $31.35 – $33.77 billion and counting in U.S. spending on two years of war.¹

Table 1. U.S. Spending on Post-10/7 Wars, Oct. 2023 – Sept. 2025

Of the $21.7 billion already provided in military aid, the U.S. provided $17.9 billion in the first year of war and $3.8 billion in the second year.²Some of the $21.7 billion in aid has already been delivered to Israel in the form of weapons, bombs, and funding, while other portions will be delivered in future years.³ Essentially, the $21.7 figure is about how and when U.S. arms and military financing are paid for. It is a separate question to ask how long it will take to produce or deliver those weapons, or what it takes to keep them up and running in the midst of a war. In terms of combat capability, these are the most important questions. Yet they are also the areas where there is the least amount of public information.

The current U.S.-supported Israeli war was launched in response to the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, which killed approximately 1,200 people and wounded thousands more.⁴ The Israeli military is dependent on U.S. weapons, especially aircraft, bombs and missiles, which have done the majority of the damage in Gaza and fueled Israel’s attacks on other nations in the region.

To be effective, any U.S. government effort to impede Israel’s military operations in Gaza and beyond must include a ban on new sales, a suspension of arms in the pipeline that have been committed but are yet to be delivered, and a cut off of spare parts and support for the maintenance of Israeli weapons systems already in use.

What Has Gone Into the $21.7 Billion

The $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel is compiled from several channels:

• Foreign Military Financing (FMF), an aid program authorized by the State Department and implemented by the Pentagon that pays for U.S.-origin weapons and military services transferred to other nations’ governments;
• “Offshore Procurement”: U.S. funds given to the Israeli government that can be used to build up Israel’s own arms industry;
• Drawdowns from, and replenishing of, existing U.S. stocks to replace weapons supplied to and used by Israel, including a war reserve stockpile based in Israel;
• Special funding for ammunition procurement and arms production capacity to continue supplying weapons to Israel.

Table 2: U.S. Military Aid to Israel, Oct. 7, 2023 to Sept. 24, 2025, in Millions of $USD6⁵

In technical terms, all of the spending channels described above support “arms transfers” – a catch-all term for the supply of U.S. weapons to a foreign nation. But in most contexts, particularly at the beginning of the process, these transfers are referred to as “arms sales.”

Arms sales involve agreements to supply weapons, whether they are ultimately paid for through U.S. aid or paid for by the foreign customer. In the case of Israel, most arms sales are eventually paid for by U.S. aid, but some of that aid may be yet to come, authorized in future years as deals move forward from initial agreements towards final delivery.

Arms sales flow through two channels:

• Foreign Military Sales, which are brokered and negotiated by the U.S. governmen with the foreign customer. Once an agreement is reached on price, timing and delivery schedule, the supplying company receives payment in increments based on how far along they are on production of the system being prepared for export.⁶
• Direct Commercial Sales (DCS), which involve items that are licensed by the State Department, give more leeway to the supplying company to negotiate the terms of the deal, and tend to involve items that are not considered “major defense equipment,” including small arms and light weapons.⁷

Major arms sales of a certain value must be notified to Congress and can be blocked by a resolution of disapproval passed by two-thirds of each house of Congress.⁸

As noted above, the $21.7 billion total for military aid to Israel excludes arms sales agreements to be paid by the U.S. in the future.

Israel has developed its own arms industry, but Israel’s indigenous arms production capacity has been made possible in part through a provision that had historically allowed it to use 25% of its military aid from the U.S. for that purpose. For Fiscal Year 2025, that figure dropped to just $250 million of Israel’s U.S. military aid that could be used for its domestic industry, as part of an agreement to phase out this arrangement altogether by 2028.⁹

U.S. arms have been central to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israel Police operations in Gaza, the West Bank, and beyond. The weapons in Israel’s existing inventory that are being used in Gaza and the broader Middle East come mainly from the United States. Israel’s entire inventory of combat capable aircraft comes from the U.S., including 75 F-15s, 196 F-16s, and 39 F-35s. Israel’s attack and transport helicopters are also all of U.S. origin, including 46 Apache helicopters and 25 Sea Stallion and 49 Black Hawk transport helicopters.¹⁰

Israel’s U.S.-supplied weapons – which include not only its combat aircraft but also tens of thousands of bombs and missiles, and advanced targeting systems – have inflicted a devastating humanitarian toll on the people of Gaza. Over 60,000 Palestinians have died from direct Israeli military attacks, with tens of thousands more dying from starvation and preventable diseases provoked by the Israeli military’s brutal assault on Gaza, which many independent experts – including human rights organizations based in Israel – have defined as a genocide.¹¹

To read the entire report click the Quincy Institute here.