Insights
Plain explanations of how the public United States programs work, written for people who have to work inside them, with every statement linked to its source.
Scope
The first set covers the Foreign Military Sales programme administered by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency: its statutory basis, the agencies involved, how a case is built and executed, and how it differs from a direct commercial sale. Related programmes follow.
Every factual sentence links to the statute, the manual section or the official page that supports it. Where no source exists, the sentence does not.
Each piece carries the date it was published, the date it was last reviewed, and the date its sources were checked. Policy changes, so the pages are revised.
These notes describe how the programmes work. They take no position on any government, transfer or policy, and they are not advice on a particular case.
Published
The statutory authority, the division of responsibility between the State and Defense departments, how eligibility is decided, and what the published figures actually measure.
Read →Who holds the contract in each route, who issues the export licence, what the manual says about neutrality, and which items are restricted to the government to government channel.
Read →The Letter of Request, the three kinds of answer a purchaser can ask for, the response times the manual actually publishes, and the difference between an amendment and a modification.
Read →The statutory thresholds and review periods, the informal review that precedes them, and why the dollar figure in a published notification is a ceiling rather than a price.
Read →Who holds the contract, which organisations run a case, how the ordinary acquisition rules apply, where a foreign customer's influence stops, and what the surcharge is.
Read →