On November 20, Romanian Defense Minister Mihai Fifor said that Romanian plans to procure $3.9 billion worth of Patriot air defense system technology in the first half of 2019. This statement followed Romania’s Senate’s defense committee formally approving the acquisition, which still needs to pass the rest of the Senate for the purchase to go through. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently visited Romania and was reportedly told by Romania’s Foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu that the full Senate may approve the deal sometime this week.

This transfer was approved by the U.S. State Department on July 10, 2017. In addition to technical equipment for the Patriot system, at this time the deal included 56 Patriot MIM-104E Guidance Enhanced Missile-TBM (GEM-T) missiles and 168 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) missiles.