Aerospace Group Seeks More Speed, Outreach in Foreign Arms Sales Process

“Many of these issues are long-known challenges, and AIA has weighed in on them before,” said Dak Hardwick, the group’s vice president for international affairs, in a post on LinkedIn. “It's time to turn evergreen challenges to enduring solutions.”

AIA’s six-page proposal would increase communication between the U.S. government and exporters with moves such as providing companies more and earlier information about the status of cases. Having the government share more regular license policy and guidance updates with industry would also be helpful, the group said.

To prevent proposed sales from getting bogged down in opaque government bureaucracy, AIA said it would give the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) decision-making authority over all other Defense Department offices involved in arms sales, and it would require the Defense and State departments to complete policy and technical reviews and consult with other agencies within 60 days. It would clarify that State’s role in arms sales is led by the undersecretary for arms control and international security.

To further reform the process, the group suggested that the government act on Foreign Military Sales (FMS) letters of request upon receipt instead of waiting for incomplete information to be addressed. It would enforce existing timelines for letter of acceptance deliveries, use more flexible types of contracting methods, and form an FMS contracting officer “corps” to help when an FMS purchase is added to an existing U.S. contract.

AIA also called for the government to review items on the FMS-only list every two years to determine which ones could be removed. The government would explain its rationale for each determination. A singular FMS-only list would be available to industry, and FMS-only designations would be removed from DOD’s Security Assistance Management Manual.

In September, the House passed a bill that would direct State to review annually whether any defense exports available through FMS but not the Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) defense export licensing process should become eligible for the more flexible DCS process (see 2509030002).

Among its other recommendations, AIA would streamline the congressional notification process by replacing the case-by-case approach for the Australia-U.K.-U.S. partnership and NATO members with an annual report for transfers under $1 billion. For other countries, it would adjust monetary thresholds for inflation and automatically move cases after 40 days.

The group also would remove unmanned aircraft from the U.S. compliance regime with the multilateral Missile Technology Control Regime. State announced in September that it would make such a move for certain advanced drones (see 2509160027).

AIA said it would have the defense acquisition system place more emphasis on foreign sales, such as by establishing exportability as a key performance parameter. With U.S. foreign arms sales totaling $318.7 billion in the last fiscal year -- more than the Pentagon’s procurement and research, development, test and evaluation accounts combined -- “U.S. defense manufacturers rely on exports to manage production capacity, throughput, and reduce the cost of domestic acquisitions,” the group said.

Despite its many recommendations, AIA said it supports the government's existing efforts to improve the arms sales process, including President Donald Trump’s April executive order on Reforming Foreign Defense Sales to Improve Speed and Accountability (see 2504100009) and the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Foreign Arms Sales Task Force (see 2504300020).