The New York Times reports (and Yahoo! News repeats without any paywall) that the government of Saudi Arabia is threatening to sell $750 billion in treasury securities and other unidentified assets if Congress passes the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. The bill would allow foreign governments to be sued by 9/11 victims and their families. The threat was issued by Saudi Arabian foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir to unnamed US lawmakers while he was visiting Washington sometime last month, on the grounds that these assets could be in danger of being frozen by US courts.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2016, @07:38PM
They do not have to do that.
They just cut off the supply chain to those weapons.
Most of our military equipment has parts in it that *must* be replaced at particular intervals or they basically stop working.
It is why there are so few of the old fighter planes remain. Without the extensive supply chain for them they are basically unusable. Then on top of that to be qualified to fly/use these things you have to put in hours of work. You can only get that by using them. That time is basically consumable. Our whole military is like that.
The Russians have a different view. They sell you fairly sturdy equipment that is not quite so finicky and easy to get parts for. However, it is usually 1950s/1960s generations of equipment. It is however dominated by anything newer.