State's Shapiro Touts Growth in Defense Trade, Improvements in Processing
Growth of U.S. defense trade "has been truly remarkable," said Andrew Shapiro, assistant secretary of state-Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, in a Nov. 28 speech to the Defense Trade Advisory Group. He said State had already received more than 73,000 license requests for Direct Commercial Sales by the end of October, 2,000 more than the same period last year.
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Some 50 per cent of the license requests have been adjudicated in less than 10 days and 80 per cent in less than 30 days, Shapiro said: "We are averaging about 18 days overall for all license types."
For four consecutive years, U.S. Foreign Military Sales or FMS have exceeded $30 billion, Shapiro said: "This is a significant increase over the last decade, when Foreign Military Sales averaged just $12 billion. This past year FMS sales grew at an enormous rate -- more than doubling the totals in FY2011."
"DDTC has also been busy reforming U.S. export controls," Shapiro said. "With the election over and as President Obama transitions to his second term, our export control reform efforts will continue apace. ... To accomplish this, we focused our primary efforts on the re-write of the U.S. Munitions List, or USML, and the Commerce Control List, or CCL, to create clear bright lines between munitions and dual-use items."
Shapiro said State is showing a 40 percent reduction in congressional committee staff review times for FMS, to 29 days, and a 35 percent reduction in review times for DCS, to 58 days: "We project that in 2013 we will see further efficiencies demonstrated in reduced review times."