Sep 19
The Arms Sales Monitoring Project has obtained, via the Freedom of Information Act, a copy of the Defense Department’s contribution to the annual “Section 655” report* on U.S. arms transfers and military assistance.
The report contains data on the five main U.S. security assistance programs: the Direct Commercial Sales Program (administered by the State Department), and the International Military Education and Training Program, Defense Drawdowns, the Excess Defense Articles Program, and the Foreign Military Sales Program (administered by the Defense Department).
While much of the data is available elsewhere, the “655 report” is unique in that it provides detailed information on the type of defense articles and services licensed through the Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) program and delivered through the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Program to a particular country, not just the aggregate dollar value of these sales. The DCS and FMS sections are arranged by country (or international organization), and describe the category of defense articles/services licensed or delivered, the quantity, and the dollar value. Data on certain countries (Australia, Finland, Japan, and Taiwan), and on most missile transfers, has been redacted in the FMS section.
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written by Matt Schroeder
Sep 19
Earlier this month, The Department of Homeland Security added two new sections to the Ready.gov website, one for people with disabilities and another for seniors. However, when you take a close look at them, you will notice that all they have done is shuffled the information they already had on the site onto two new pages. There is no new information on the web pages themselves.
What they have also done is supplied two new downloadable brochures that have very good information for seniors and people with disabilities. Kudos DHS! It is absolutely puzzling to me, however, that they have not taken the information from their brochures and simply added it to the new web pages. It would take very little time to do this and having two different sets of information on the site, one on the web page itself and one in the brochure, will almost certainly lead to confusion.
We applaud their efforts to improve their site and hope they will move quickly to rectify the shortcomings we identified in our previous analysis. We have formally offered DHS the content of reallyready.org at no cost, but have yet to hear word if they are going to take us up on our offer.
Finally, we have received several suggestions that we change the graphics on our nuclear threat page from a reactor because it implies that nuclear reactors pose a threat of nuclear explosion. This is an excellent point. The graphic was taken directly from ready.gov and we have changed it on our site to reflect the reality of a nuclear threat.
written by Michael Stebbins
