An Mi-17 helicopter being flown by members of the Afghan military U.S. Army
Obama Should Scrap that Russian Helicopter Contract, Too
The U.S. government is buying arms from the same dealer that supplies Bashar Assad's regime in Syria. By Sonni Efron
Now that President Obama is taking a break from Russian President Vladimir Putin, he should revisit another wildly dysfunctional piece of their relationship: The $1.1 billion contract for U.S. taxpayers to buy helicopters for Afghanistan from the same Russian arms dealer that's supplying Syria's Bashar al Assad.
The deal was conceived in the glow of the 2010 "reset" of U.S.-Russia relations with then-President Dmitri Medvedev. It looked appealing at the time, since the Mi-17 chopper was cheap and could fly "hot and high missions" in Afghanistan.
Now that the U.S.-Russian relationship status has been updated to "it's complicated," here are 10 reasons to dump the exclusive, no-bid contract with Russia and start playing the field:
Read more at The Atlantic.