Boeing (BA) has signed a contract valued at about $289 million to provide Israel with up to 5,000 air-launched precision bombs, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday, citing three people familiar with the agreement.
The weapons are Boeing’s (BA) Small Diameter Bomb, a guided munition designed to strike targets more than 40 miles away when deployed from fighter aircraft.
The sources said the deal isn’t tied to the current U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. Deliveries aren’t expected to begin for roughly three years.
The order represents at least the third known purchase of the weapon by Israel. In February 2025, the U.S. State Department informed congressional foreign affairs committees that Israel planned to acquire 2,166 of the bombs. After Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Boeing (BA) accelerated shipments of about 1,000 units to the country.
Unlike many defense transactions involving U.S. allies, the latest agreement is structured as a direct commercial sale between Boeing (BA) and Israel rather than a government-to-government foreign military sale. Details of the contract are expected to appear later in the Federal Register.
The deal also was not included in a State Department announcement Friday describing a separate $151 million emergency foreign military sale to Israel. That transaction covers 12,000 BLU-110 1,000-pound bomb casings produced by Repkon USA.
According to a State Department official, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Congress that urgent circumstances justified bypassing the normal congressional review period for the BLU-110 sale.