The purpose of this guide is to provide you, the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) customer, with a simplified overview of the process the United States (U.S.) uses to transfer defense articles and services from the U.S. to friendly foreign governments or to specific international organizations.
Nothing in this guide takes precedence over any U.S. Government (USG) regulations or formal policy guidance - including the Defense Security Cooperation Agency’s (DSCA) Security Assistance Management Manual (SAMM), which is the most comprehensive source of information on policy and procedures.
The SAMM can be accessed at the following link: https://samm.dsca.mil.
Throughout this customer guide, we provide links to specific chapters within the SAMM and to other supporting documents. These links are in blue text and underlined to make them easier to identify as you read. Because the terminology used in Security Cooperation includes many acronyms, we’ll start by providing you this link to the SAMM’s List of Security Cooperation Acronyms and to the SAMM’s Glossary of Terms so that you might look up any unfamiliar acronyms or terms.
Date: 15 July 2018
All previous editions are obsolete