Arms Sales Monitoring Project
My name is Matt Schroeder and I am the manager of the FAS’ Arms Sales Monitoring Project (ASMP). Since 1991, the ASMP has worked to increase transparency, accountability and restraint in the arms trade, and to end the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons. To that end, we do original research on arms trade policy issues, maintain the largest free online source of data and analysis on U.S. arms trade policies and programs, and advise policymakers, the media, and civil society on arms trade issues.
I hail from Holland, Michigan (aka God’s Country) but have lived on the East Coast for nearly a decade. I spent five years in New York City, where I worked for a couple of NGOs and earned a master’s degree in international security policy from Columbia University. I moved to DC in 2002, but still consider myself a New Yorker.
I am looking forward to sharing my thoughts (and reading your reactions to my thoughts) on the critically important but oft-ignored issues surrounding the arms trade. Defense trade controls, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, and small arms/light weapons trafficking are my current foci, but many other issues will undoubtedly come up.
With 2000 nuclear weapons on alert, far more powerful than the first bomb tested in the Jornada Del Muerto during the Trinity Test 80 years ago, our world has been fundamentally altered.
As the United States continues nuclear modernization on all legs of its nuclear triad through the creation of new variants of warheads, missiles, and delivery platforms, examining the effects of nuclear weapons production on the public is ever more pressing.
While it is reasonable for governments to keep the most sensitive aspects of nuclear policies secret, the rights of their citizens to have access to general knowledge about these issues is equally valid so they may know about the consequences to themselves and their country.
Nearly one year after the Pentagon certified the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program to continue after it incurred critical cost and schedule overruns, the new nuclear missile could once again be in trouble.