Export Controls

Inside the Pentagon reported today that the next round of the Obama Administration's export-control reform rules will go into effect on Monday, making it easier for U.S. firms to export a variety of military products as part of a multiyear process to ease restrictions on the sale of military equipment abroad:

In October, the administration shifted several categories of items that are currently part of the tightly controlled U.S. Munitions List (USML) to the less restrictive Commerce Control List (CCL). Components that go into aircraft and gas turbine engines, among other products, are more available to foreign customers as a result, and American companies that make those products should be presented with a clearer and more easily understood compliance process.

Next week, four more categories will move from the USML to the CCL. Those include military vehicles; vessels of war; submersible vessels and oceanographic equipment; and auxiliary and miscellaneous military equipment. According to a notice in the Federal Register, the White House has determined that those items "no longer warrant control on the United States Munitions List."

Brandt Pasco, an attorney at the law firm Kaye Scholer LLP in Washington and a member of the National Security Council task force on export control that helped design this reform process, spoke with Inside the Pentagon on Dec. 31 about the impact of the regulatory changes coming on Jan. 6.

The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security this morning issued a notice in the Federal Register that "adds to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) controls on energetic materials, personal protective equipment, shelters, military training equipment, articles related to launch vehicles, missiles, rockets, military explosives, and related items that the President has determined no longer warrant control on the United States Munitions List (USML)."