DRONES/MILITARY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “A day after President Trump promised to slash the red tape involved in weapons sales, the administration announced on Thursday [4-19-18] a new policy that could vastly expand sales of armed drones, a contentious emblem of the shift toward remotely controlled warfare. That change, in addition to a newly released update to the policy governing which nations are allowed to buy sophisticated American-made weapons, is intended to accelerate arms sales, a key priority of Mr. Trump. The president seemed to foreshadow the new policies on Wednesday [4-18-18] night, when he said at a news conference with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan that after allies order weapons from the United States, ‘we will get it taken care of, and they will get their equipment rapidly’…The new policies, though, will do little to change the often yearslong intervals between orders and deliveries of weapons, but the State Department announced that it intended over the next 90 days to re-evaluate the process that can sometimes lead to such gaps.”
–Gardiner Harris,”Trump Administration Seeks to Expand Sales of Armed Drones,” The New York Times online, April 19, 2018