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Foreign Military Sales Guides

The questions people ask about the process, answered from the sources themselves — the and other public sources, quoted as they stand.

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.GuideHow do you read a Foreign Military Sales case identifier?A Foreign Military Sales case identifier is the six-digit string that appears on every page of a Letter of Offer and Acceptance: a two-letter country code for the purchaser, a one-letter code for the Implementing Agency that prepared the case — B for the Army, P for the Navy, D for the Air Force — and a three-letter case designator that agency assigns, whose first letter usually signals the category of what is being sold. Read left to right it says who is buying, which department is selling, and which of that purchaser's cases with that department this one is; a Building Partner Capacity case keeps the same 6-position shape but carries a program code where the country code would be.GuideWhat are the Foreign Military Sales process steps?A Foreign Military Sale moves through ten stages: pre-Letter of Request engagement, the Letter of Request and its assessment, case development, a Congressional Notification gate that applies only when the case meets the Arms Export Control Act thresholds, the offer, the partner's acceptance, implementation, execution, and reconciliation and closure. The case development standard expects 85% of Letters of Offer and Acceptance to be offered within 45 days to 150 days of the request depending on case category, and the accelerated closure goal is 24 months after the case is supply/services complete for all but training cases.GuideWhat has changed in Foreign Military Sales since Executive Order 14268?No section of the manual cites Executive Order 14268, and the one DSCA policy memorandum that names the order, DSCA 25-97, changed no manual text; the closure requirement it announced entered the manual through DSCA 26-84, which requires Letters of Offer and Acceptance implemented in fiscal year 2017 and prior to reach final closure by September 30, 2027. The sections below are the manual's own text where it has changed since the order — legacy-case closure, closure adjustments, interim-to-final closure, government property and inventory accounting, Enhanced End Use Monitoring, training reporting, Building Partner Capacity redirection — and, for the notification thresholds the order is associated with, the text that has not changed; the memorandum behind each change is listed in the references.GuideForeign Military Sales vs Direct Commercial Sales: which one, and who decides?As a matter of policy the U.S. Government is neutral on whether a partner buys U.S. defense articles through Foreign Military Sales or commercially, with one class of exceptions: the articles and services the Secretary of State has designated Government-to-Government-Only, which may be transferred only through government channels. Within that boundary the purchaser decides — a U.S. company can ask DSCA for a Direct Commercial Sales preference on a specific solicitation, valid for one year, and Foreign Military Financing may fund a commercial contract only for eligible partners, currently all NATO members and Major Non-NATO Allies (as of 11 September 2026).GuideWho works in Foreign Military Sales, and how are they trained and certified?Foreign Military Sales is run by the security cooperation workforce — the military and civilian personnel of the implementing agencies in the three military departments and the defense agencies, the security cooperation organizations in U.S. embassies, and the program offices that buy for a partner alongside their own service — with U.S. industry on the other side of most contracts. The Defense Security Cooperation University trains and certifies that workforce: certification is a condition of employment for civilians and an order for service members, at proficiency levels that are currently Level 1 Foundational, Level 2 Practitioner, Level 3 Expert, and Level 4 Executive (as of 20 September 2026).GuideWhat is a Letter of Request?A Letter of Request is a partner government's written request to the U.S. Government for defense articles or services — a letter, message, e-mail or request for proposal in any format — addressed to the Implementing Agency authorized to sell the item, with DSCA on distribution. Case development cannot start until the Implementing Agency has assessed the request against the manual's mandatory "actionable" criteria; the manual sets no performance standard for that assessment but encourages follow-up with the purchaser after 30 days, gives the Implementing Agency 10 working days to comment when an LOR Advisory is required, and expects a rough-order-of-magnitude pricing response within 30 days.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.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.

Portions of these guides are adapted from the management textbooks published over many editions by the Defense Institute of Management and its successor, the Defense University — U.S. Government works in the public domain. FMS Edge maintains the text from here.