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.
This report outlines a framework relying on “Cooperative Technical Means” for effective arms control verification based on remote sensing, avoiding on-site inspections but maintaining a level of transparency that allows for immediate detection of changes in nuclear posture or a significant build-up above agreed limits.
The grant comes from the Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY) to investigate, alongside The British American Security Information Council (BASIC), the associated impact on nuclear stability.
Satellite imagery of RAF Lakenheath reveals new construction of a security perimeter around ten protective aircraft shelters in the designated nuclear area, the latest measure in a series of upgrades as the base prepares for the ability to store U.S. nuclear weapons.
It will take consistent leadership and action to navigate the complex dangers in the region and to avoid what many analysts considered to be an increasingly possible outcome, a nuclear conflict in East Asia.