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Biden Loosens Missile Technology Export Controls
March 2025
Among his final acts, U.S. President Joe Biden loosened controls on missile technology exports for “certain [U.S.] partners with strong export control systems.” The new policy guidance directing implementation of Category I military missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, and space-launched vehicles (SLVs) under the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) was contained in a national security memorandum issued Jan. 3.
It said that Biden sought a “renewed U.S. commitment to nonproliferation … strengthening allied defense capabilities, bolstering the U.S. defense industrial base, streamlining defense trade, and deterring adversaries.”
The memorandum loosened the policy set in 1993 by allowing additional exports of U.S. MTCR-class missiles to more countries; to MTCR member states for their own military missile programs; and to MTCR and non-MTCR SLV programs.
The change also undermines ballistic missile and SLV interchangeability, according to Vann Van Diepen, a former acting assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation.
In a Jan. 21 blog post for the Arms Control Association, he wrote that in the past “basic rules” for ballistic missiles and SLVs were the same and this interchangeability created the “bedrock of western opposition to SLV programs in Iran, North Korea, and other proliferant states.” With the new guidelines, the United States can now export to certain SLV programs in countries that are not MTCR members while banning exports to the countries’ Category I “military missile” programs.
Van Diepen wrote that the new guidance “make[s] it harder for the United States to prevent other countries from taking the same ‘national discretion’ approach and making missile-related exports to present and future U.S. adversaries who are their friends, especially in the guise of ‘SLV-related’ technology.”
The 2016 Trump administration reinterpreted MTCR implementation to expedite unmanned aerial vehicle sales to other countries and allow more rapid export of large drones to more potential buyers (see ACT, September 2020). It is unknown what the new Trump administration will do with the Biden guidelines.—LIBBY FLATOFF