by James Wright | Sep 21, 2026 | Aerospace Compliance & Quality, Blog, Defense Manufacturing
ITAR and CMMC get treated as interchangeable in casual conversation, and they’re not. One governs who’s allowed to touch defense technical data. The other governs how securely you have to protect it once you do. Quick summary: ITAR (22 CFR Parts 120–130) is an...
by James Wright | Sep 11, 2026 | Aerospace Compliance & Quality, Defense Manufacturing
ITAR gets talked about as though it’s a certification you pass once and hang on the wall. It’s not. It’s a set of federal export control regulations that restrict who can access defense-related technical data — including engineering drawings, CAD files, process...
by James Wright | Aug 28, 2026 | Aerospace Compliance & Quality, Aerospace Machining, Defense Manufacturing
First article inspection is the reason your first aerospace production run costs more than every run after it. FAI per AS9102 is a complete dimensional verification of every single feature on the drawing — not a sampling plan, not a spot-check. Every dimension, every...
by James Wright | Aug 7, 2026 | Aerospace Compliance & Quality, Aerospace Machining, Blog, CNC Machining, Defense Manufacturing, Manufacturing & Cost Estimating
The single biggest sticker shock in aerospace machining isn’t the material or the machine time. It’s everything around them — the compliance documentation, the first-article inspection, the material certification, the ITAR overhead, the NRE for fixturing a part...
