ITAR International Traffic in Arms Regulations
The US export-control regime that governs defense articles, technical data and services on the US Munitions List, administered by the State Department.
ITAR is a US federal export-control regime that decides who is allowed to buy, build, or even discuss a defense system that touches US technology. It is administered by the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC)1 under 22 CFR Parts 120 to 130,2 and it covers everything on the US Munitions List (USML): weapons, munitions, military aircraft and vessels, and the technical data and services that go into building or maintaining them.
If a system, component, or even an engineering drawing falls under the USML, exporting it (or sharing the underlying technical data with a foreign national, even inside the US) generally requires a State Department license or an approved government-to-government sale. That is a much narrower gate than most commercial export rules. It applies regardless of where in the supply chain a part sits: a foreign manufacturer that integrates a single US-origin, ITAR-controlled component can find the entire end product re-export-restricted as a result, a fact that shapes how allied nations design their own defense industries around US technology.
Why it shows up across a spec database
Two practical effects show up repeatedly in defense-procurement coverage. First, “ITAR-free” is a real marketing claim some non-US manufacturers make, specifically to tell customers a system can be resold or re-exported without touching the US approval chain. Second, US-origin systems are typically sold abroad through one of two channels: Foreign Military Sales (FMS), a government-to-government process, or a Direct Commercial Sale (DCS), a licensed company-to-government sale, both of which sit downstream of ITAR clearance.
WeaponSpecs does not publish classified or export-controlled technical data. Every figure in the database comes from public manufacturer pages, defense-ministry releases, and reference publications, the same sourcing standard described in our methodology. ITAR governs what a government or company can legally transfer, not what is publicly disclosed, so a system can be fully public in its specifications while still being tightly controlled for actual export.
Sources
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