Defense trade intelligence

How Foreign Military Sales actually works. Stage by stage. Role by role.

The FMS process runs through ten stages and fifteen roles. Every page here traces to the SAMM, U.S. Code, CRS reports, and DSCA public releases — and tells you what practitioners actually watch for.

One email a month. No pitch, no spam.

The pipeline. Ten stages.

Walk the full pipeline →Find your role →

From the first requirements conversation to case closure. Each stage has an owner, a clock, and a failure mode. The deep-dives cover the stages where cases stall.

Requirements, demos, informal P&A. The stage nobody tracks and everybody pays for later.

01LOR Submission

The partner formally asks, via the SCO. Format errors here cost months.

02LOR Assessment

The IA scores it against Table C5.T3a. Actionable or not.

03Case Development

LOA Data built in DSAMS. MILAP is the milestone that matters.

04Congressional Notification

30 days statutory. Six months to three years in practice.

The Implementing Agency signs and sends the LOA. The offer clock starts running.

06Partner Acceptance

Signature plus initial deposit. No deposit, no case.

07Implementation

DFAS posts financial implementation. OA flows to the IA.

Contracts, production, delivery, training. Years, not quarters.

09Reconciliation & Closure

Supply Complete to Final Closed. Sustainment moves to follow-on cases.

Featured analysis

GuideDoes Congress have to approve arms sales?For a Foreign Military Sale at or above the statutory thresholds — $25M in major defense equipment for NATO members, Australia, Israel, Japan, the Republic of Korea and New Zealand, $14M for every other purchaser — the law requires a formal notification to Congress before the offer can be made, not an approval vote. Congress has 30 days (15 days for that first group) to block the sale by joint resolution; if it does not, the offer proceeds when the review period expires.Guides · Current as of 11 September 2026 GuideWhy does FMS take so long?The manual puts a clock on only part of the calendar: the Implementing Agency is expected to offer 85% of Letters of Offer and Acceptance within 45 days to 150 days of the request, a congressional notification runs through an informal review of 20 days to 40 days and then a statutory 15 days or 30 days, and an accelerated-closure case is expected to close within 24 months of its last delivery. Most of the rest — the requirements work before the request, the wait for the initial deposit, contracting and production lead time, reconciliation — carries no standard at all, and the manual's own list of extenuating factors explains why even the clocked stretch is met only 85% of the time.Guides · Current as of 11 September 2026 GuideWhy does Foreign Military Sales cost what it costs?By law the program must be managed to recover the full costs of defense articles and defense services, so a Foreign Military Sales price is the U.S. Government's estimated cost of the article or service plus a set of charges that recover the cost of running the program — among them the FMS Administrative Surcharge, currently 3.2 percent of applicable lines for lines implemented on or after June 1, 2018 (it was 3.5 percent and, before that, 3.8 percent). A purchaser of major defense equipment also repays a pro rata share of U.S. development and production cost, deposits money in the FMS Trust Fund before the U.S. spends it on its behalf, and, when the sale is from procurement, keeps a reserve on deposit against termination liability.Guides · Current as of 20 September 2026