By Carlo Munoz
The Defense Department’s acquisition shop hopes to have a set of recommended changes to the current slate of rules governing the export of U.S. military hardware overseas complete by this summer, a senior department official told lawmakers yesterday.
Testifying before the Senate Armed Service’s emerging threats and capabilities subcommittee, DoD’s industrial policy chief Brett Lambert said the need to revamp the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) mandates was a “major area of concern” inside and outside the Pentagon.
Established and overseen by the State Department, DoD must ensure that all foreign military sales meet the criteria established under the ITAR mandates. However, many within industry and policy circles have argued those mandates have become too restrictive and ultimately harm American competitiveness in an increasingly globalized marketplace.
Further, Lambert characterized the reams of red tape that envelop potential foreign military sales (FMS) deals, as a result of conforming to ITAR standards, actually lends “passive support” to near-peer competitors such as China and Russia, which are looking to surpass the United States in the international arms market.
“Globalization is not an option, it is reality,” he told members of the Senate subcommittee.
While ITAR reform has long been topic of interest for DoD and their counterparts in industry, the issue has begun to gain traction with key decision makers across the U.S. government. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has thrown his weight behind ITAR reform, as well as senior officials within the State Department and the White House.
Noting that the key to any viable effort to change ITAR would have to begin from the top down, Lambert said the “perfect storm” of support emanating from key leaders has DoD “optimistic” that the department will hit that summer time frame for recommendations.
While giving credit to DoD for making advances toward retooling the ITAR process, subcommittee member Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) made clear that time was running out. “The sand is running out of the hourglass,” he told the Pentagon officials, noting that Congress was becoming “increasingly frustrated” at the department’s efforts to get changes put in place.
However, deputy DoD procurement executive Frank Kendall noted at the same hearing that as DoD continues to work that list of recommendations within DoD, acquisition officials are already making subtle changes to the ITAR process, to expedite those FMS deals already in the pipeline
However, department officials have already taken efforts to trim the time it takes for a proposed FMS to move through the ITAR approval process, as well as “gaining control” of the technology review process. Gaining control of that process, Kendall added, included consolidating the various steps in the technology review, to cut down on duplicative efforts.
Additionally, department officials are in the midst of identifying individual FMS cases going through the technical review and trying to find ways to “force them through in a timely way,” according to Kendall.