Notes on export control in aviation, aerospace and defence.

With the end of 2025, the German Navy’s P-3C Orion fleet reached the end of its flight operations. From 2026 onward, the P-8A Poseidon will take over.

But while flight operations may stop, the stories tied to an aircraft rarely do.

My own P-3C story started in export controls. Among other things, it meant propellers and engines to the UK, radios and avionics components to the US. Every shipment had to be fully compliant from an export control perspective. A lot of responsibility, but also a lot of variety.

How that time strengthened my expertise and experience

Because the P-3C was built in the US, many topics naturally fell under US export control requirements.

• Hands-on experience with ITAR and EAR items and transactions.
• Deep exposure to Technical Assistance Agreements, Foreign Military Sales cases, and Third-Party Transfers.

Beyond that, I had the opportunity to manage in-service modifications as a project lead and to support my friend and former colleague Jürgen Wilke in material management. There was hardly a day without export control topics for both goods and technology.

Together with Frank Kayser, we also set up a completely new system support contract to ensure industry support for flight operations through the end of 2025.

Many thanks to Jürgen Wilke and Christian Maiershofer for their support and for sharing their experiences.

Everyone has their own story and memories, whether on the hangar floor or in the office.

A shipment from one German company to another German company. It still needed approval from Washington.

Sounds odd. It is not.

A client builds a US chip into its own product. Under ITAR, that chip counts as a defence article. The US supplier holds the export licence, and that licence names who may receive the chip. The test lab they wanted to use is not on it.

Security screening done. Training on Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) done. Neither of them replaces an ITAR authorisation.

ITAR follows the chip, no matter how deep it sits in your product. A new recipient means a retransfer request to the US Department of State before anything moves.
Fortunately, the client asked before shipping, so there is nothing to repair. The unit will go to the lab once the approval is in place.

Cases like this rarely end up on LinkedIn because nothing goes wrong. In my view, good compliance works exactly like that, quietly and without any drama.

Prefer your export compliance uneventful? Let’s talk.