Manufacturing and Technical Assistance Agreements:
Licenses Authorized

The United States often allows defense companies to sell the production of weapons, as well as weapons themselves, abroad.  The table below was compiled from State Department's portions of the "655 Report," an annual report to Congress on arms exports and licenses. Since the requirement for this report was only reinstated in 1996, only three fiscal years are included.  

Notes:  

1. Manufacturing agreements and technical assistance agreements are lumped together by the State Department's categories, but cover a wide range of agreements.  Manufacturing agreements constitute the bulk of the dollar values, but figures for Bosnia-Herzegovina (for instance) represent technical assistance agreements in which MPRI, an American "mercenary" business, has been hired to "establish a formal structure for civilian control of the military, train the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina forces in defensive tactics, and improve their capability to deter hostile forces and defend their territory if deterrence fails."
2. These manufacturing and technical assistance agreements represent only one of many ways in which American weapons technology, military expertise, and arms production capacity are exported abroad.  For more information, check out our offsets and foreign military training pages.  
3. For examples of manufacturing agreements, go to our online database, click on the "description" field and search for "manufacturing."  However, most manufacturing agreements summarized below do not meet the criteria for notification to Congress and are therefore not included in our database.  Searching for "manufact" will bring up a broader sample of sales of weapons production and related equipment.   
4. These licenses issued by the State Department (under the direct commercial sales (DCS) program) are valid for several years, but are not necessarily used.