UAV Exports

A recent Government Accountability Office report on export controls has an interesting nugget on exactly which technologies foreign governments want to get their hands on:

According to intelligence reports and law enforcement sources, as well as congressional testimony and law enforcement officials, a small group of countries is responsible for most of the efforts to acquire controlled technologies for military purposes. The countries included in this small group are detailed in the December 2010 classified version of this report. According to congressional testimony presented in September 2005 by the Director of the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive (ONCIX) . . . and intelligence assessments, some countries use some of their foreign nationals as part of organized programs to obtain controlled technologies while working, studying in, or visiting the United States. In addition, the Director of ONCIX also testified that the U.S. government has limited insight into foreign intelligence operations in the United States. The Director of ONCIX also said that much of the intelligence collection against the U.S. technology base is carried out by those who are employing nontraditional collection means against the United States, rather than by known intelligence officers. As a result, the U.S. government has little knowledge of when individuals who ostensibly come to the United States for legitimate business purposes might have illegitimate objectives, according to this official.

According to the ONCIX and other assessments, the technologies most often targeted for theft since 2002 have included aeronautics, computers and information systems, electronics, lasers and optics, sensors and marine technology, and unmanned aerial vehicles. In addition, according to ONCIX’s 2003 Annual Report, biotechnology has been of particular interest. Moreover, the ONCIX has expressed concern about emerging military technologies or commercial breakthrough technologies that have not yet been added to the CCL because these technologies are often hard to identify in their early phases and are more vulnerable to loss or compromise.

But just because potential enemies have been trying to get their hands on UAV technologies doesn't mean U.S. contractors don't want to sell UAVs to friendly nations -- and have had trouble doing so, as InsideDefense.com reported last October. Ill-defined and incoherent Pentagon policies governing foreign military sales have hindered exports of U.S. unmanned aircraft to partner nation forces, putting the United States and its allies in danger of losing its edge in a key area, according to a top industry executive. Further:

"It is a challenge to navigate through [that]  process . . . We are still struggling to sell unmanned aircraft, even to our allies," Northrop Grumman's President and Chief Executive Officer Wes Bush said during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"To rely on technical superiority as a strategy, we have to maintain those things that truly make us superior," Bush added. But in the case of export controls, industry and government "for years have made the perfect the enemy of the good," remaining too focused on protecting U.S. technological advantages, he said.

In many cases, that focus has resulted in "severe and unnecessary damage" to the U.S. defense industrial base, Bush said. The potential damage being done to the UAV market via those overprotective export measures is akin to U.S. efforts to regulate exports of satellite technology in the late 1980s.