In 2024, the United States exported more than $100 billion in weapons. In recent years, the volume of U.S. arms transfers has exceeded that of the next seven largest exporters combined. Despite repeated use of U.S. weapons in attacks that kill and maim civilians, U.S. law does not require the government to track whether weapons exported from the United States are used to harm civilians, and it does not render countries ineligible to purchase U.S. weapons if they use such weapons to commit war crimes. The use of U.S. weapons in Yemen and Gaza, however, has led to increased scrutiny from civil society and the U.S. Congress, resulting in new efforts to monitor U.S.-origin weapons use.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has rescinded key arms transfer policies that aimed to fill civilian protection gaps in statutory law. Amid this rollback, Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA), Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA), Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), and Rep. Bill Keating (D-MA) have introduced a bill that would require the creation of a program to track when U.S. weapons are used to harm civilians or violate international humanitarian or human rights law. In the case of the most serious violations using U.S.-origin arms, the program would create a pathway to determine countries ineligible for U.S. weapons under the Arms Export Control Act.
With the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Foreign Military Sales Task Force examining a range of legislative proposals related to U.S. arms sales, the Silver Shield Operational End Use Monitoring Act should receive substantial consideration in the coming months.
The Government Knows Where American Weapons Go, But How Are They Being Used?
The United States operates two primary end-use monitoring systems. The Golden Sentry program is managed by the Department of Defense (DOD) and is responsible for monitoring government-to-government foreign military sales. The Blue Lantern program, managed by the State Department, is responsible for monitoring commercial arms sales. Even at their best, these systems do not monitor how arms are used, but rather verify where they go. This means that they cannot assess whether arms are used in violation of U.S. or international law.
The need for more effective end-use monitoring processes that reflect the risks of U.S. defense exports became all too clear in 2018, when a 500-pound bomb manufactured in Texas killed 40 children in a Saudi-led strike on a school bus in Yemen. A report on the incident by the State Department Inspector General found that the department had failed to properly assess and mitigate risks of civilian casualties in Yemen when transferring precision-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia. A 2022 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report affirmed these findings, concluding that “DOD and State may not be able to assess the extent to which U.S.-origin equipment has contributed to civilian harm in Yemen” because they lacked proper policy guidance for reporting such incidents. In response, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Mike Lee (R-UT) called on the Secretaries of State and Defense to thoroughly investigate how U.S. support to Saudi Arabia contributed to civilian harm in Yemen.
Under congressional pressure to address the gaps identified in the GAO report, and to strengthen oversight of and accountability for the more than $114 billion worth of U.S. security assistance to Ukraine, the Biden administration adopted several new arms transfer policies. In February 2023, the administration released its updated Conventional Arms Transfers (CAT) Policy, which instructed the executive branch to block transfers if they “more likely than not” would be used in violation of international law, and called on the U.S. government to conduct “appropriate monitoring” to ensure that transferred arms were used responsibly. To support implementation of this new policy, the administration introduced a new system for reporting civilian harm, called the “Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance” (CHIRG). It directed State Department officials to investigate reports of civilian harm perpetrated with American weapons and to recommend penalties, including the suspension of arms sales.
Finally, National Security Memorandum 20 (NSM-20), signed in February 2024, required recipients of U.S. defense articles to provide credible written assurances that they would use the weapons in accordance with U.S. and international law and not impede the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Though global in scope, it originated as an amendment to a military aid package for Israel and was broadly seen as a response to Israel’s use of U.S.-origin weapons in its war in Gaza.
These policies had limited practical impact in part due to weakness in executive branch implementation. The Biden administration set up systems that lacked the political support, resourcing, or staffing to fulfill their mandates. Another significant factor with respect to the war in Gaza in particular was the Biden administration’s political commitment to the Israeli government to keep weapons flowing. Election year politics, and the sensitivity of interrupting U.S. support to Israel, were other major headwinds for meaningful enforcement of these policies in 2024.
Under the Biden administration, no transfers of defense articles were stopped under the updated CAT policy. The CHIRG amassed nearly 500 reports of civilian harm perpetrated with U.S. weapons in Gaza that were never investigated. A report commissioned by President Joe Biden to evaluate the credibility of Israel’s assurances under NSM-20 found that “it was reasonable to assess” that Israel had violated international law, but military aid kept flowing.
To confront these continued challenges, Congress has put forward several proposals to strengthen existing end-use monitoring systems. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) introduced the Values in Arms Export Act of 2022, which would enable the United States to designate “countries of concern” that violate human rights principles and to block future arms transfers to those countries. In the House, Representative Sara Jacobs (D-CA) proposed an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which required a report on how end-use monitoring practices address human rights violations, leading to a subsequent GAO report, published in April, on State Department monitoring of civilian harm caused by U.S. arms transfers.
The bicameral “Safeguarding Human Rights in Arms Exports Act of 2023” (SAFEGUARD Act), introduced by Representative Gregory Meeks (D-NY) and then-Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), sought to expand congressional oversight of arms transfers by clarifying that end-use monitoring must track violations of international human rights and humanitarian law and embed those requirements in formal export agreements. Though these efforts ultimately did not pass, they illustrate a commitment by some members of Congress to condition U.S. arms transfers on recipients’ compliance with international law and civilian protection principles.
The Silver Shield Act
Rep. Jacobs’ new bill is the first to not just require monitoring of whether U.S. weapons are used to violate international law, but to envision what that program might look like in practice.
The Silver Shield Act takes its name from the new end-use monitoring program that it would require to monitor the “operational end-use” of U.S.-origin weapons in civilian harm, violations of international humanitarian law (IHL), or violations of international human rights law (IHRL).
The Silver Shield Act deals with two categories of conduct. First, the Silver Shield program would be designed to monitor credible information that U.S.-origin weapons have been used to carry out civilian harm, IHL violations, and international human rights law (IHRL) violations. Second, if monitoring finds that weapons from the United States have been used to commit genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, or other serious violations of IHRL, the president would be required to make a determination regarding the recipient country’s continued eligibility to buy arms from the United States.
These eligibility determinations are already part of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) for other types of violations, such as unauthorized retransfer. The AECA eligibility provisions have factored into historic U.S. government arms transfer debates. For example, in 1981 President Ronald Reagan suspended a shipment of F-16s to Israel after it used F-15s and F-16s from the United States in airstrikes on the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq, which President Reagan found violated the AECA requirement that U.S.-origin weapons systems be used only for legitimate self-defense. The Silver Shield Act would extend these provisions to serious violations of IHL and IHRL.
To conduct monitoring, the Silver Shield program would draw from a range of sources, including satellite imagery, media reports, embassy input, and public portals. An external advisory board comprising academic and non-governmental experts would ensure the methodological rigor of any evaluation. This is a positive departure from other monitoring programs, which have prevented decision-makers from acting on the full range of available information. The two current systems, Blue Lantern and Golden Sentry, rely on U.S. government inspections, inquiries, and reports. Particularly in high-intensity or difficult-to-access conflict zones such as Ukraine and Gaza, external reporting is vital to ensure comprehensive monitoring of arms use.
The bill requires the government to design the program based on lessons learned from previous frameworks, including the Blue Lantern and Golden Sentry programs, but also the CHIRG, NSM-20, and Leahy vetting, which identifies credible information implicating foreign security force units in gross violations of human rights. Key aspects of the bill codify processes from the Biden administration’s CHIRG, CAT policy, and NSM-20, the latter two of which the Trump administration has rescinded.
The Silver Shield Act also includes amendments to the AECA, the framework legislation that has governed U.S, arms sales for nearly 50 years. The AECA defines a limited set of approved purposes (including internal security and legitimate self-defense) for arms sales and requires that the government monitor compliance with those purposes. Substantial violations of these approved purposes, incorporated into bilateral agreements between the United States and an arms-purchasing country, render a buyer ineligible to purchase arms from the United States until they are no longer in violation. Although advocates have argued that the State Department should interpret the AECA as inclusive of IHL and IHRL obligations, neither framework is explicitly mentioned in the text of the statute.
The Silver Shield Act would change that, incorporating civilian harm, human rights, and IHL standards into the AECA. The Act would amend the AECA to clarify that “the violation of international humanitarian law or international human rights law may not be construed to be an authorized purpose for military sales or leases by the United States.”
If Congress passes the bill into law, and the president signs it, recipients of U.S. weapons will have to commit to not use such weapons in violation of IHL or IHRL, similar to the requirements of NSM-20. Serious violations of IHL or IHRL would render the country in question ineligible to buy U.S. weapons until they are no longer in violation of their commitment, subject to a presidential waiver.
Next Steps
Unfortunately, the current Congress appears more interested in accelerating U.S. arms sales than strengthening oversight. The original cosponsors of the Silver Shield Act are members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Foreign Military Sales Task Force. Established by Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), chair of the committee, and led by Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) and Rep. Madeline Dean, the task force is considering a range of far-reaching amendments to U.S. arms transfer law.
Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA), among others, has emphasized the United States’ duty to comply with international and domestic law, and to ensure that “U.S.-made weapons of war are not used against the most vulnerable or to exacerbate already dire humanitarian conditions around the world.” The Task Force follows a similar effort from the last Congress, the “Foreign Military Sales TIGER Task Force” headed by former Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL). At the same time, however, the current leadership of the bipartisan group is working with arms industry representatives to ease existing rules, streamline sales, and ensure recipients can obtain U.S. weapons “as fast as possible.”
The full committee has already begun considering some proposals from the task force. In a mark-up on July 22, the House Foreign Affairs Committee debated six bills addressing aspects of the arms sales process. The bills would generally decrease transparency and reduce congressional oversight opportunities for major arms sales. Two bills would push the State Department to speed up arms sales. None of the bills under consideration dealt with human rights, IHL, or civilian protection consequences of U.S. arms sales.
The Trump administration has spearheaded a parallel effort to further undermine accountability in U.S. arms exports. On April 9, the president signed an executive order directing the DOD and the State Department to restructure the foreign military sales system to “ensure predictable and reliable delivery of American products to foreign partners,” “reduce rules and regulations,” and “[a]dvance United States competitiveness abroad.” The order rescinds the Biden administration’s NSM-20, simplifies exports of sensitive defense technologies such as missiles and drones, and streamlines transfers of conventional arms to an expanded list of priority partners. It also directs executive agencies to work with Congress to increase the monetary threshold that triggers Congressional reviews of arms sales.
Last year, the Foreign Military Sales TIGER Task Force produced the TIGER Act, which narrowly passed out of committee but was never taken up in the Senate. This year, the House Foreign Affairs Committee is working through a lengthy State Department authorization process that is likely to incorporate proposals from the Foreign Military Sales Task Force. Unfortunately, bills designed to protect civilians and promote accountability for abuses seem unlikely to make it into that process. Nevertheless, members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House of Representatives at large should see the Silver Shield Act as a key part, along with bills like the SAFEGUARD Act, of a more comprehensive effort to promote accountability in U.S. arms sales. Cosponsoring the bill and pushing for a markup are important ways to build support and increase the likelihood of passing it into law, potentially in a future Congress. Indeed, human rights and civilian protection safeguards will be all the more important if the task force succeeds in increasing the volume and speed of U.S. arms sales.
The debate around monitoring the use of U.S. weapons in human rights and IHL violations has now resulted in the creation and failure of multiple executive branch policies and processes. Human rights have been a consideration in U.S. arms export policies since the 1970s. Civilian casualties in Yemen sparked renewed efforts from Congress and the White House to monitor and sanction harm perpetrated with U.S. weapons, often with little practical impact. Now, as documented civilian harm from U.S. weapons is climbing and congressional oversight comes under attack from the Trump Administration, Silver Shield offers Congress the opportunity to protect civilians by codifying crucial limitations on arms exports. While the political headwinds it faces now may be too strong to see passage this Congress, building support for realigning EUM policies with civilian protection imperatives and international law is a crucial first step. If and when Congress is ready to take real action to prevent civilian harm from U.S. weapons transfers, it can turn to the Silver Shield Act.