COCOM tightens space exports
The Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls tightens the rules on space-grade hardware and software flowing to the Eastern Bloc. Whole categories of routine civilian components quietly become criminal to export.
A working catalogue entry, kept current. Each paragraph is drawn from the publicly documented record.
The Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls — COCOM — tightens its rules on space-grade hardware and software flowing from Western countries to the Eastern Bloc, classifying whole categories of routine civilian components as militarily sensitive.
The 1987 Toshiba-Kongsberg scandal, in which dual-use machine tools enabled quieter Soviet submarine propellers, supplies the political momentum for the most stringent revisions COCOM ever makes. Western component suppliers are forced to rewrite their export procedures — a reform that travels intact, post-Cold-War, into the Wassenaar Arrangement and survives to this day.
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