Pentagon Taps “Tiger Team” to Rush Weapons to Israel

The Pentagon is working to expedite weapons exports to Israel by deploying a so-called Tiger Team of experts to facilitate the transfers, according to procurement records reviewed by The Intercept. Some of the arms sales will be carried out through a new Army initiative designed specifically for the provision of weapons to Israel.

The Israel-specific program, called the Israel Significant Initiatives Group, is located within the Army’s Defense Exports and Cooperation office, which oversees policy for U.S. arms sales.

The Tiger Team meets daily with the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency, or DSCA, which executes U.S. arms sales, to overcome barriers to arms sales to Israel. The “tiger team,” a crisis rapid response team involving a diverse set of experts, is supposed to examine potential bottlenecks and delays in weapons transfers and offer advice for alleviating the issues.

The existence of both the Tiger Team and the Israel Significant Initiatives Group have not been previously reported.

“As implementer of the vast majority of both State and Defense Department security assistance, DSCA sits at the center of our arms transfers to Israel,” said Josh Paul, a former director for the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, which oversees U.S. arms transfers. He said the creation of a Tiger Team is a policy choice by President Joe Biden to get weapons to Israel as fast as possible.

“This shows that at all levels of government, from policy to implementation, the Biden Administration is doing all it can to rush arms to Israel despite President Biden’s recent explicit statement that Israel’s bombing of Gaza is ‘indiscriminate,’ and despite extensive reporting that the arms we are providing are causing massive civilian casualties,” said Paul, who resigned from the State Department in protest of the Biden administration’s ongoing weapons assistance to Israel. “This will not be a proud moment for the Biden Administration, the State Department – or for DSCA.”

The Defense Department did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the Tiger Team and the Israel Significant Initiatives Group.

According to a source familiar with the Tiger Team, who asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations, the group of experts has raised harm to civilians in Gaza as a potential issue with U.S. weapons sales to Israel.

“The Tiger Team is looking at issues of civilian harm, and is raising those issues, but is being met with absolute lack of interest and direction from the top to keep the process moving,” the source said.

“The Tiger Team is looking at issues of civilian harm, and is raising those issues, but is being met with absolute lack of interest.”

Both the Tiger Team and the Israel Significant Initiatives Group are using defense contractors to staff up. Reference to the Tiger Team appears in a job posting by the Hoplite Group.

“In response to the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas on Israel, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency has served as the implementer of the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) process with Israel,” the job listing says. “There is a desire to generate real-time Lessons Learned to assess major bottlenecks, anticipate major hurdles to overcome, and analyze the limits of FMS support to Partner Nations.”

Another defense contractor, Sigmatech, listed a position for an “operations support specialist” to work on the Israel Significant Initiatives Group. The listing has since been removed.

The White House convened a Tiger Team in preparation for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to the Washington Post. After the invasion, the Tiger Team reportedly developed contingency plans for how to respond in the event that Russian President Vladimir Putin resorted to chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.

According to Paul, the new Tiger Team for Israel shows that the arms sales system, already supercharged after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is still not fast enough for the administration.

“The assembling of a Tiger Team demonstrates that the Biden administration believes that all of the existing mechanisms of arms transfer — mechanisms which have proved their extreme ability to expedite arms transfers to Ukraine for the past two years — do not work fast enough,” Paul said.

The Defense Exports and Cooperation office has previously touted its work providing security assistance to allied countries. Over the past year, for example, it has posted copies of several Defense Department press releases detailing security assistance to Ukraine, as well as other partner countries like Colombia and the Philippines. 

“U.S. Sends Ukraine $400 Million in Military Equipment,” a March press release is titled. The release includes a picture of a tank unit billowing smoke from its howitzers. Another press release, from December of last year, detailed a security package to Ukraine, right down to the specific numbers of munitions like artillery, tank, and mortar rounds. 

When it comes to Israel, the Defense Exports and Cooperation office has not posted a single press release this year. Secrecy has been a hallmark of the Biden administration’s weapons transfers to Israel, as The Intercept has previously reported.

White House spokesperson John Kirby acknowledged the secrecy in October. “We’re being careful not to quantify or get into too much detail about what they’re getting — for their own operational security purposes, of course,” he told reporters. 

Shortly after the October 7 Hamas surprise attack against Israel, the White House asked Congress to remove key restrictions on Israel’s ability to access U.S. weapons stockpiles in the country, as The Intercept reported last month. The White House request sought to “allow for the transfer of all categories of defense articles” from the stockpiles, as well as to remove requirements that such weapons be obsolete or surplus in nature.

In other instances of weapons sales to Israel, the administration has cut out Congress entirely. Last week, the Biden administration bypassed Congress to authorize the sale of 13,000 tank shells to Israel.

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