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Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, January 31, 2020 Airbus SE (Airbus or the Company), a global provider of civilian and military aircraft based in France, has agreed to pay combined penalties of more than $3.9 billion to resolve foreign bribery charges with authorities in the United States, France and the United Kingdom arising out of the Company’s scheme to use third-party business partners to bribe government officials, as well as non-governmental airline executives, around the world and to resolve the Company’s violation of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and its implementing regulations,...

The Trump administration is at the point of finalizing reform of antiquated Cold War rules which were used to target gunsmiths and small gun manufacturers. Included in the reforms is the transfer of responsibility for the export of most firearms and ammunition from the Department of State to the Department of  Commerce. In 2016, the State Department, under the Obama administration, “clarified” the definition of “manufacturers” who were required to register under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). The registration fee was $2,250 per year.  PNJ.com reports the actions of the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC):...

ATN’s Obsidian 4 app allows you to connect your smart phone to products like their X-Sight 4K Pro night vision or the ThOR 4 thermal optics. Snip Apple and Google have been ordered by the U.S. government to hand over names, phone numbers and other identifying data of at least 10,000 users of a single gun scope app, Forbes has discovered. It’s an unprecedented move: never before has a case been disclosed in which American investigators demanded personal data of users of a single app from Apple and Google. And never has an order been made public where the feds...

I think the Saudi goose is getting cooked. Folks, the following has been going on in Saudi Arabia. The ground war has now come inside Saudi Arabia. Yemeni forces are poised around Najran. Since June this year the US has steadily been cutting off arms, bombs, weapons and support to the Saudi aggression on Yemen. The US has cancelled a tank deal to replace Abrams tanks destroyed by the Yemenis. Resupply of cluster bombs have also been cancelled. Now military advisors have been withdrawn from Saudi Arabia. Here is the news :

If you thought building your own laser weapon at home was hot stuff, you haven't seen anything yet. Do-it-yourself fan Styropyro has built a laser "shotgun" whose eight 5W beams are adjustable with lenses, much like you'd adjust the choke on a conventional shotgun to narrow or widen its buckshot spread. As you might gather, 40W of combined laser power is pretty powerful -- and unbelievably dangerous. The gun can destroy everything from balloons to ping pong balls, and there are reflected beams that could easily smack someone's eye. Don't try this at home, folks. It's still an impressive feat...

Over the weekend, by way of the NRA some troubling news spread across the Internet: “Commonly used and unregulated Internet discussions and videos about guns and ammo could be closed down under rules proposed by the State Department, amounting to a ‘gag order on firearm-related speech,'” This stems from an Obama Regime reinterpretation of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). The State Department is updating the ITAR, which implements the Federal Arms Export Control Act (AECA). The net effect of this new ITAR amplification would be to reclassify gun blogs, forums, chat rooms, and firearms “how-to” web pages as...

Obama To Circumvent Congress With ‘Gag Order’ On Firearm Coverage by AWR Hawkins 7 Jun 2015 On June 1 Breitbart News reported on Obama’s Spring 2015 “Unified Agenda.” The gun control measures contained therein which were to be passed by executive fiat. Since that time Representatives like Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY-4th) have placed riders on a DOJ appropriations bill to stop portions of the executive gun control push in its tracks. Now the NRA-ILA is revealing that the Obama administration is working behind the scenes to stifle reporting on firearms. From the NRA-ILA: Even as news reports have been highlighting...

The Obama Administration’s endorsement of a Swiss global oversight scheme for government defense and security contractors is a warning for not only the shooting industry, but for civil arms rights and democratic national sovereignty. Geneva --(Ammoland.com)- On August 16th 2013, the Obama Administration signaled tentative plans to support a new scheme to legally bind government contractors into complying with international humanitarian law, human rights law, arms control and disarmament law, as well as other requirements of the United Nations (UN) Security Council.[1] The scheme applies to private military and security services contractors (and their subcontractors) doing business with the United...

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Why is Obama arming the enemies of freedom? This cat is dangerous and scary. Why the support of Islamic revolutions whose stated goal is sharia and a universal caliphate? What's he doing to protect the oppressed religious minorities in peril? America, time to remove your morphine drip. Wake up! More tanks for Egypt this year than the entire Marine Corps has... For the new Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood dominated government, the Obama Administration is ensuring another $1.3 billion annual shipment of state-of-the-art weaponry. More Perspective... This year alone, Obama will be sending the Egyptians 200 M1A1 Main Battle Tanks. Egypt already...

The United Nations is putting the finishing touches on an Arms Trade Treaty that transcends borders and may even trample our Constitutional right to bear arms. Every indication is that the president will sign it. Like the New Start and Law of the Sea treaties before it, as well as the Kyoto Protocol and Agenda 21, the Arms Trade Treaty being finalized at the U.N. this month is one of those feel-good, can't-we-all-get-along pieces of parchment whose net effect is to accomplish little except to eat away at American sovereignty and freedom.

U.S. Industry Loses Big in India: Is ITAR to Blame? (Source: National Defense Industry Association blog; posted April 28, 2011) Defense contractors and industry experts are trying to come to grips with India’s decision to exclude The Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. from its $11 billion competition for a new fighter jet. No specific rationale has yet been given by the Indian government for its determination to jettison Boeing's F/A-18, Lockheed F-16 and Saab’s Gripen fighters, and proceed with a head-to-head contest only between two European offers — the Eurofighter and the Dassault Rafale. “Companies are very concerned about...

In this week's print issue of Space News, Mike N. Gold, who is the corporate counsel for Bigelow Aerospace (BA), has an op-ed in which he describes an effort by his company to force the State Department to change the way it implements the ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) process. Currently, essentially any technology related to space is considered a munition and must be reviewed before exported, or, as in the case of the Genesis vehicles, simply taken in hand outside the country by a US company to launch on a foreign rocket. (In a previous op-ed, Mr. Bigelow...

With Europe's first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) due to deliver supplies to the International Space Station this fall, NASA has begun training U.S. civil servants to help trouble-shoot if needed during what is supposed to be a largely Russian-European operation. Ordinarily, those problem-solving duties would fall primarily on NASA's contractors. But U.S. export controls governing the exchange of technical data have complicated matters for NASA and its partners as they prepare for ATV's debut. NASA asked the U.S. State Department in December for some space station-specific relief from U.S. International Traffic in Arms regulations that govern many space-related products and...

U.S. Barriers Hamper Our Military Spending by David J. Bercuson (Canadian) LEGION Magazine Published in January/February 2007 Over the past decade or so, the United States has often complained about Canada's foot dragging on defence matters. The Americans had two chief beefs: first, that Canada was engaging in virtual unilateral disarmament; second, that Canada was failing to bear an appropriate share of what they refer to as the Global War Against Terrorism. Now that Canadian troops are heavily engaged in the fight to block a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan--Canada is one of the very few North Atlantic Treaty Organization...

Multi-national defense programs have gone from isolated instances to a major defense industry trend over the last two decades, and technology transfers are a critical and often-overlooked aspect of that trend. They also play a major role in fostering interoperability among allied militaries, especially those who wish to keep up with the USA and its seemingly endless stream of high-tech kit. Britain is the USA's single most important global defense relationship, and they were promised a waiver for the USA's International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) under the Clinton administration in 2000. That waiver would enable the UK to acquire...

[b]The first half of the 109th session of congress is winding down, more ACTIVISM from NFA-RKBA supporters is critical! [/b] I would have preferred to post this under "Activism", but this section appears to get the most traffic. We need all of our members and lurkers to get much more active, congress is historically much braver regarding "controversial*" legislation in the first half of each session. In the second half they begin covering their back's in preparation for the next election! The author's of the several bills we support in our mission statement all took a significant career chance in...

European governments have tentatively decided to go it alone in developing a Mars rover after concluding that a cooperative effort with NASA is impossible given today’s U.S. technology-transfer laws, according to European government officials. Whether these governments will decide to finance the rover, whose costs are estimated at around 600 million euros ($756 million), will not be known until December, when European Space Agency (ESA) government ministers are scheduled to meet to decide the size and shape of ESA’s future programs. But as ESA sketches its longer-term space-exploration effort, called Aurora, the agency is gradually coming to the conclusion that...

US to halt nuclear fusion project 17:04 30 July 04 NewScientist.com news service Amidst a prolonged stalemate over where to build the world's largest nuclear fusion facility, the US is halting work on a homegrown fusion project. The decision caused concern among researchers at a fusion meeting earlier this week. The US is pinning its hopes on ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), which aims to lay the groundwork for using nuclear fusion as an inexhaustible and clean energy source. But the project has been stalled since December 2003 because its six members - the US, the European Union, China, Japan,...