On August 15, 2024, the Department of State’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) published a final rule adding two activities to the definition of “activities that are not exports, reexports, retransfers, or temporary imports” in § 120.54 of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). The final rule, which goes into effect September 16, 2024, is long-awaited, having first been proposed by DDTC on December 16, 2022.
The first activity—to be codified at paragraph (a)(6) of § 120.54—provides that the taking of U.S. defense articles outside a previously approved country by either “armed forces of a foreign government” or “United Nation military personnel” on a deployment or training exercise does not constitute an export, reexport, retransfer, or temporary import. Importantly, though, there can be “no change in end-use or end-user with respect to the [U.S.] defense article” during and after its transport.
The second activity—to be codified at paragraph (a)(7) of § 120.54—states that a foreign defense article that entered the United States but is subsequently exported pursuant to a DDTC license or other approval is also not subject to the ITAR’s reexport or retransfer requirements provided that the foreign defense article “was not modified, enhanced, upgraded, or otherwise altered or improved in a manner that changed the basic performance of the item” while in the United States, nor had “[a] U.S.-origin defense article…incorporated into [it].”
The expanded definitions are significant because the activities listed in § 120.54 of the ITAR do not require an authorization from DDTC.