DECA: How Israel Licenses $14.7 Billion in Defense Exports

Every Israeli defense export — every Hermes drone, every Iron Dome interceptor, every PULS rocket — runs through one agency before it leaves the country: the Defense Export Controls Agency, known as DECA, inside the Israeli Ministry of Defense.

In 2024, that agency licensed $14.795 billion in new defense contracts. A record. The fourth consecutive one. Up 13% over 2023, and more than double the figure five years earlier. Europe took 54% of the total. More than half the deals signed last year were valued above $100 million each.

DECA is the regulatory chokepoint behind those numbers. It decides who can market Israeli defense equipment, who can sell it, what they can sell, and to which countries. Without DECA’s sign-off, no Israeli defense company can legally negotiate, no Israeli engineer can legally transfer know-how, and no Israeli product can legally leave the port.

How DECA was built — and who pressured Israel into building it

DECA was established in July 2006 as a department of the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The underlying statute, the Defense Export Control Law 5767-2007, was enacted by the Knesset and entered into force in late 2007.

The agency wasn’t a domestic Israeli initiative. It was a response to a confidence crisis with Washington.

In the early 2000s, U.S. officials accused Israel of insufficient controls on the transfer of dual-use and defense technologies, particularly to China. The most consequential dispute involved Israeli upgrades to Chinese Harpy attack drones that had been originally sold to Beijing in the 1990s. The U.S. demanded that Israel halt the upgrade program. Israel did. The episode prompted Washington to push Tel Aviv toward a formal, codified export-control architecture.

DECA was the result. The 2007 law that followed locked the structure into Israeli statute. Then-Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman publicly tied the agency’s creation to the U.S.–Israel strategic relationship: “The establishment of DECA and its success are closely tied to the deep friendship between Israel and the United States.”

Today the agency operates under the authority of the Defense Minister, with the head of DECA empowered to grant export licenses alongside the Ministry of Defense Director-General. A 2025 amendment to the law created limited exemptions from licensing requirements for certain low-risk transactions — an attempt to ease the bottleneck for exporters who had been forced to apply for exemption rulings even when no license was actually required.

What DECA actually controls

Two types of license: marketing license and export license.

A marketing license is required before any Israeli company or representative agent can engage in negotiations to sell defense equipment, know-how, or services to a foreign customer. The license can be granted with stipulations — restrictions on which products can be marketed, which countries can be approached, and how long the authorization is valid.

An export license is required for the actual physical transfer of the equipment or transfer of the know-how. It’s a separate authorization with its own conditions.

Both license types apply to anyone engaged in defense exports operating from Israel, including intermediaries and brokers, not just manufacturers.

DECA’s control list draws from the international export-control regimes Israel mirrors without formally joining: the Wassenaar Arrangement Munitions List, the Missile Technology Control Regime, and the relevant chapters of the Wassenaar Dual-Use list when the end use is military. Israel is not a signatory to any of these regimes. It adopts the lists as a matter of policy.

For dual-use items intended for civilian end users, jurisdiction shifts to the Export Control Agency inside the Ministry of Economy and Industry. DECA and that agency coordinate on items that could fall under either authority.

Where DECA intersects with U.S. export controls

This is where the agency becomes operationally complex.

A large share of Israeli defense systems contain U.S.-origin components — chips, sensors, software, sub-assemblies — procured under U.S. Foreign Military Financing or commercial agreements. Any product containing those components is subject to U.S. re-export controls under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and, for items on the U.S. Munitions List, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).

Practical consequence: even if DECA approves an Israeli export, the deal can be blocked if a U.S. component inside the system would require State Department approval to be re-exported to the proposed end user.

Israeli exporters are required to disclose foreign customer identity to U.S. component suppliers and provide end-user certificates. This is the architecture that periodically stops Spike missile sales, blocks certain Iron Dome transfers, and constrains F-35 sub-system exports to countries Washington wants to exclude.

The system is a two-key one. DECA holds one key. The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security and the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls hold the other. Either can stop a deal.

The 2024 export data — and what DECA approved

The 2024 figures are the cleanest snapshot of how the agency has been operating since October 7.

European countries took 54% of all exports, up from 35% in 2023. That’s the Ukraine effect. European militaries are rebuilding inventory after transferring stockpiles to Kyiv and, in many cases, choosing Israeli systems for replacement because they’re available now, combat-proven, and structurally easier to procure than U.S. systems with longer lead times.

Asia and the Pacific took 23%. Abraham Accords countries took 12% — the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco continuing to deepen procurement relationships locked in under the 2020 agreements. North America took 9%. Latin America and Africa took 1% each.

By category: missiles, rockets, and air defense systems accounted for 48% of total export volume, up from 36% the year before. Satellite and space systems jumped to 8% from 2%. The rest split across UAS, intelligence systems, naval platforms, and electronic warfare.

Mega-deals, contracts above $100 million, made up 56.8% of the total volume.

What DECA can’t do

The agency licenses transactions. It does not write Israeli foreign policy.

When the cabinet decides a specific country should not receive Israeli defense equipment, that decision flows down through DECA’s licensing. When the cabinet decides a specific export advances Israeli national interest, DECA processes the paperwork.

The agency operates as a regulatory instrument, not a policy maker. Strategic decisions about which countries Israel arms, and at what scale, are made at the political level. DECA’s role is to make those decisions enforceable — and, increasingly, to make them defensible to Washington, to European procurement authorities, and to the international export-control regimes Israel adheres to without joining.

The agency is small. Its staff numbers in the low hundreds. Its workload, given record-breaking export totals four years running, is not.