International Traffic in Arms Regulations: U.S. Munitions List Targeted Revisions

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF STATE <CFR>22 CFR Parts 121 and 126</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Public Notice: 12744]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1400-AF42</RIN> <SUBJECT>International Traffic in Arms Regulations: U.S. Munitions List Targeted Revisions</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Department of State. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; interim final rule adopted with changes. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Department of State (the Department) amends the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) to remove from the U.S. Munitions List (USML) items that no longer warrant inclusion, add to the USML items that warrant inclusion, and clarify certain entries. With these amendments, the Department also updates the interim final rule it published on January 17, 2025. In addition, the Department is adding a new license exemption for certain activities related to unmanned underwater vehicles described in the exemption. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> As of August 27, 2025, amendatory instruction number three in the interim final rule published at 90 FR 5594 on January 17, 2025, is withdrawn. <E T="03">Effective date:</E> This rule is effective September 15, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Mr. Chris Weil, Office of Defense Trade Controls Policy, Department of State, email <E T="03">DDTCCustomerService@state.gov</E> ; SUBJECT: ITAR Amendment—RIN 1400-AF42. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The Department of State's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) administers the ITAR (22 CFR parts 120 through 130) to, among other things, regulate the export, reexport, retransfer, and temporary import of defense articles and defense services described on the USML at ITAR § 121.1. Items not subject to the ITAR or to the exclusive licensing jurisdiction of any other department or agency of the U.S. Government are subject to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR; 15 CFR parts 730 through 774), which include the Commerce Control List (CCL) in Supplement No. 1 to part 774. The EAR is administered by the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), U.S. Department of Commerce. This rule does not modify the list of defense articles and defense services controlled for purposes of permanent import by the Attorney General, as enumerated on the U.S. Munitions Import List (USMIL) at 27 CFR 447.21. Section 38 of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA; 22 U.S.C. 2778), the authority from which the ITAR is derived, requires periodic review to determine what articles and services, if any, no longer warrant designation on the USML at ITAR § 121.1. In maintaining the USML, DDTC's Office of Defense Trade Controls Policy (DTCP) identifies articles and services for review for addition to or removal from the USML, or for clarification on how they are described on the USML, through a variety of methods, including public feedback and interagency consultations, commodity jurisdiction reviews, advisory opinions, and technology monitoring. The Department maintains the USML such that it comprises those defense articles or defense services that provide a critical military or intelligence advantage or, in the case of weapons, have an inherently military function. The Department, informed by consultations with its interagency partners, determined that the additional items this rule designates on the USML warrant ITAR control and those articles it removes from the USML no longer do. This rule also amends certain language that describes items on the USML to provide additional clarity to the regulatory text. Although it is not seeking public comment in this final rule, the Department nonetheless welcomes submissions from members of the public identifying specific descriptions of items that, in their view, the Department should consider revising, removing, or adding to the USML in future rulemaking. As members of the public are often uniquely positioned to provide information that can assist the Department in its review of the USML, including technology developments, commercial use of defense technology, and industry interpretation and application of particular terminology, the Department accepts the submission of such views to help inform its monitoring of the technology frontier via <E T="03">DDTCPublicComments@state.gov.</E> On January 17, 2025, the Department published an interim final rule (the IFR) in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> at 90 FR 5594 amending the ITAR to remove from the USML items that no longer warrant inclusion, add to the USML items that warrant inclusion, and clarify certain entries. That rule included a request for comments on the revisions therein and was scheduled to go into effect on September 15, 2025. Having reviewed and considered the comments submitted in response to the IFR, and having separately considered other changes to the USML based on its ongoing assessments and periodic review of the USML, the Department is publishing this final rule, which revises the ITAR and the IFR. In summary, in response to feedback the Department received from the IFR, and based on other assessments and the discretion afforded it, the Department is making some alterations to the changes implemented therein and making certain additional changes to the ITAR with explanations provided in the section of this preamble titled “Responses to Comments Received.” Those changes include removing lead-free birdshot, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) anti-spoofing and GNSS anti-jam systems, and certain anti-jam antennas from the USML. They also include adding a new exemption for some of the underwater vessels the IFR added to USML Category XX(a)(10) that, although they provide a critical military or intelligence advantage such that they warrant description on the USML, the Department assesses are also highly suitable for scientific research and specific commercial operations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Regulatory Implementation</HD> The Department is, with this final rule, superseding and replacing the amendments to § 121.1 that were scheduled to be made on September 15, 2025 by the IFR. For administrative purposes and to conform to procedures of the Office of the Federal Register (OFR), the desired replacements made by this rule are procedurally accomplished by withdrawing the IFR's amendatory instructions for § 121.1 ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the IFR's amendatory instruction number three) in the preceding “Date” section heading of this rule, and having the amendatory instructions for § 121.1 made by this rule ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> this final rule's amendatory instruction number three) take effect on the same date, September 15, 2025. Because the changes to the list of definitions in the updated § 121.0 are implemented by providing new regulatory language in amendatory instruction number two, in both the IFR and this final rule, and both sets of regulatory language are scheduled to take effect on the same effective date, the corresponding revisions made by this final rule will take effect on September 15, 2025. More specifically, OFR will implement both revision instructions on the effective date in the order in which they were originally published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . Thus, the amendatory instructions in this final rule reflect all relevant amendatory instructions from both this final rule and the IFR that will be implemented on the September 15, 2025 effective date. In summary, all of this is done so that the reader does not have to combine two separate sets of sequential amendments and instead can more easily view the changes made in one place and in one rule. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Responses to Comments Received</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">22 CFR 121.0</HD> In response to the IFR, one commenter raised concerns that having an Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar is insufficient to distinguish an advanced aircraft from other less sensitive military aircraft within the definition of “foreign advanced military aircraft” in § 121.0. The Department notes both the IFR and this final rule specify that having an AESA <E T="03">fire control</E> radar is an advanced military capability meeting the definition's criteria. Aircraft that only have AESA radar not associated with a fire control system do not meet the AESA <E T="03">fire control</E> radar criterion in this definition. Additionally, in response to informal feedback, the Department is amending the definition's criteria to clarify that “integrated” applies to both “electronic warfare (EW) systems” and “signature management” systems. Integrated signature management is included in the overall design of the aircraft, while integrated EW systems do not include federated ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> standalone) EW systems. The Department is also reformatting the foreign advanced military aircraft definition for clarity and ease of use and adding the definite article “the” to certain definitions for clarity. <HD SOURCE="HD2">USML Category II</HD> A portion of the IFR's amendatory instruction that this rule withdraws was included in the IFR to correct a typographical error in Note 2 to paragraph (d) of Category II. As that error has since been corrected through separate administrative action, State is not reissuing that portion of the amendatory instruction in this rule. <HD SOURCE="HD2">USML Category III</HD> Separate from the IFR, the Department is taking this opportunity to revise paragraph (d)(6) of USML Category III to exclude common lead-free birdshot ammunition, even if it is made from tungsten or steel and thus has a core produced from tungsten or steel. The Department does so consistent with its assessment that such projectiles do not provide a critical military or intelligence advantage and do not have an inherently military function. The Department of Commerce's Export Administration Regulations c ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 74k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━