Speaker: The New Face of U.S. Export Controls on Satellites and Spacecraft

Mr. Dearth is currently the Acting Managing Director of the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls until a permanent replacement is identified. He has been the Director of Licensing with the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls since November 2013, where he is responsible for directing the actions of 56 personnel across four operational licensing divisions. The core function of Licensing is the adjudication of all direct commercial sale export requests received under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation. His staff provides authoritative guidance and direction to government agencies and defense industry to ensure compliance with federal statutes and regulations. His staff also participates in domestic and international outreach activities. From July to October 2015, he served as the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Defense Trade Controls, providing executive leadership to the entire 150 member Directorate of Defense Trade Controls during a critical senior leadership transition period in the Bureau of Political Military Affairs. He has been with DDTC since Nov 2003. His former duties within DDTC include: Chief of Special Projects, Chief of Aircraft Division, Chief of Space and Missile Technology Division, Senior Analyst, and military Agreements Officer.



While Chief of Special Projects, he was responsible for bringing the USXports IT system into service at DDTC under the President's Export Control Reform (ECR) initiative. He worked closely with the Department of Defense Program Manager and contractors at the Defense Technology Security Administration for 3+ years defining requirements, managing migration of historical data, and extensively testing the system prior to operational implementation in July 2013. He was also the Department of State lead for the roll out of the 1248 Report to Congress on proposed changes to legislation affecting spacecraft and associated equipment, as well as preparing all of DDTC staff for the implementation of ECR in October 2013 when USML Categories VIII (Aircraft) and XIX (Gas Turbine Engines) became effective.



Mr. Dearth is a retiree from the U.S. Air Force, where he served for twenty-one years across several positions in nuclear operations, command and control (C2), and consequence management (CM) focusing on systems engineering, policy formulation, procedure development, exercise design/execution, arms control inspections, export licensing, safety, surety, training, and test & evaluation. His most recent assignments include: Emergency Actions Officer for U.S. Pacific Command, Camp H.M. Smith, Hawaii; Chief of the Nuclear Accident/Incident Exercises (Europe) for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Alexandria, Virginia; and Deputy Site Commander Votkinsk Portal Monitoring Facility (Russia), On-Site Inspection Agency, Dulles, Virginia.



Mr. Dearth graduated from the Reserve Officer Training Corp program at Kansas State University in 1984 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and he earned a Master of Science in Systems Management in 1987 from the University of Southern California.



Mr. Dearth is married to the former Ms. Theresa (Terry) Forman and has two adult children.