Exporting Small Arms

2007-03-13T17:07:00.001-07:00

Exporting weapons is a time-honored American tradition. We have happily armed other countries or even smaller groups since before there was a United States to regulate this lucrative business. Modern-day arms sales are subject to numerous controls & restrictions, in addition to the more mundane concerns inherent in any international sale. In 2005 the United States(The World leader in arms exports), send over 533 million dollars worth of sales overseas, more than double the second contender, Italy.

All exports from the US must comply to strict Commerce Department, State Department and Treasury Department codes. The relevant pieces of legislation for each department are, respectively, the Export Administration Regulations (“EAR”), International Traffic in Arms Regulations (“ITAR”) and the Trading with the Enemy Act, Int’l Emergency Economic Powers Act, plus a few others.

The Department of State administers the U.S. Munitions List (USML). If an item falls into one of the following categories then it is restricted.

I - Firearms
II - Artillery Projectors
III - Ammunition
IV - Launch Vehicles, etc...
V - Explosives, Propellants, Incendiary Agents and Their Constituents
VI - Vessels of War and Special Naval Equipment
VII - Tanks and Military Vehicles
VIII - Aircraft and Associated Equipment
IX - Military Training Equipment
X - Protective Personnel Equipment
XI - Military Electronics
XII - Fire Control, Range Finder, Optical and Guidance and Control Equipment
XIII - Auxiliary Military Equipment
XIV - Toxicological Agents and Equipment and Radiological Equipment
XV - Spacecraft Systems and Associated Equipment
XVI - Nuclear Weapons Design and Related Equipment
XVII - Classified Articles, Technical Data and Defense Services Not Otherwise Enumerated
XVIII - Reserved
XIX - Reserved
XX - Submersible Vessels, Oceanographic and Associated Equipment
XXI - Miscellaneous Art

The list of items controlled under the Commerce Department's ITAR(International Traffic in Arms Regulations) is more straightforward and is only 40 pages long. There are no subdivisions within categories.
Some of the items listed are broadly defined, such as those included in Category XV, Spacecraft Systems and Associated Equipment:
a) Spacecraft, including . . scientific satellites, research satellites, etc.
b) Ground control stations for telemetry, tracking and control of spacecraft or satellites
c) All specifically designed or modified systems, components, parts, accessories, attachments, and associated equipment for articles in this category
Many of the other broad category items are qualified with the phrase “specifically designed or modified for military application”
There is no ‘country chart’ or categories of ‘license exception’; if the article is on the list, you will need to secure a license for permanent or temporary export or temporary import of the item.

The US Commercial Service has this to say about the ITAR:
"For practical purposes, ITAR regulations dictate that information and material pertaining to defense and military related technologies may only be shared with US Persons unless approval from the Department of State is received or a special exemption is used. A "US Person" is a US citizen⁴ or permanent resident⁵ who does not work for a foreign company, a foreign government, or a foreign governmental agency/organization. It also means any corporation, business, organization or group that is incorporated to do business in the United States. United States companies can face heavy fines if the Department of State discovers they have exposed, without approval or the use of an exemption, non-US-Persons to ITAR-protected information, designs, test data, processes, software code, etc.

Many exporters readily jump to the conclusion that Munitions item status is relevant only for tanks, fighter jets, and missiles and fail to consider even the possibility that their products are defense articles. However, this is an erroneous (and rather dangerous) conclusion, because even a product as innocuous as a fuel gauge on an aircraft will qualify as a Munitions Item, if the aircraft in which the fuel gauge is installed is a Munitions List item and the fuel gauge was specially designed or specially modified for such aircraft.

Here is an interesting page set up by a former American who moved to the carribean island of Antigua & renounced his citizenship in order to export Cryptology software. The US laws forbidding the sale of such software has crippled the US cypto market(pun not intended).

There are many reasons why it is important for exporters to make correct determinations of the defense article status of their products. Foremost among these reasons is the fact that virtually all exports of defense articles require export licenses and that defense article exports made without such export licenses place the relevant exporter in violation of the ITAR – even in those instances when the exporter did not know that his or her product qualified as a defense article!"
In practical terms, overseas arms sales are difficult for a private individual. Since the US's signing of the UN Program of Action for Small Arms and Light Weapons (SA/LW) in 2001, requests to ship weapons overseas for personal reasons are routinely denied. 86 people were arrested in 2006 for doing exactly this. They shipped weapons to Columbia, Vietnam, the Philippines & China. State Dept Report

THE ROLE OF ARMS BROKERS

The lion's share of the international arms trade consists of above-board deals between corporate entities and national governments---Lockheed Martin selling a package of F-16 fighter planes to Chile, to cite one recent example. In such cases, private brokers have no role. Lockheed negotiates directly with Chilean government officials and submits the proper paperwork for review at the Office of Defense Trade Controls, the State Department agency charged with overseeing the arms business.

However, private brokers are essential in moving weapons to regimes under international embargoes or to insurgents or terrorists who have no legal means of purchasing arms. Brokers cover the tracks with complex financial transactions that make it almost impossible to follow the money, bribes to ensure that customs inspectors and other officials avert their gaze from illicit cargo, and bogus documents, especially "end-user certificates" that show a false destination for the arms. Once shipped, the goods are re-routed to their true destination.

During the Cold War, a small number of arms dealers with close ties to the CIA or KGB dominated the private weapons trade. As the Soviet bloc imploded, a new generation of arms dealers appeared on the scene. Their ranks include numerous Eastern European mobsters, who are likely to be involved in drug trafficking, prostitution, and other criminal activities as well as weapons peddling. Cold War-era arms dealers were certainly not paragons of virtue, but they sometimes had ideological as well as financial motives. Minin, like most of the new breed, arranged black-market transfers with only "the pure motive of pure profit" in mind (as George Bernard Shaw put it in Major Barbara, his satire of the arms business).

RECENT STEPS TO CONTROL THE INDUSTRY
Technically, it is quite feasible to mark weapons and ammunition at source to show manufacturer and batch, providing the necessary data to trace those responsible in the event of illicit transfers or practices contrary to the rules of war or human rights. There are various methods such as laser engraving, using multi-layered coloured tracers or embedding coloured particles in the product. Current research in Switzerland and Canada suggests that it is quite easy to mark the metal parts of weapons indelibly and introduce chemical additives into ammunition in the course of production.

The introduction of an effective marking system will require the cooperation of most manufacturers and exporting states. Not all are openly against the idea. Ilhan Berkol notes in this connection that at the end of 1999 the representative of the World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities (3) proposed to coordinate the development of a universal system of marking.

(FROM "The problem of proliferation")

Exporting Arms

Exporting Small Arms