If there is anything that qualifies as a true urban legend in the export areas, it’s the surprisingly widespread belief that shipments to overseas APO and FPO addresses aren’t exports. Of course, that’s no more true than the belief that the fate of a rider on an equestrian statute can be determined by the position of the horse’s hooves. (Not.)

The International Traffic in Arms Regulations (“ITAR”) aren’t uniformly clear in all aspects, but the definition of export is pretty clear in this respect. Section 120.17(a) defines export as “sending or taking a defense article out of the United States in any manner.” It doesn’t say “in any manner except by mail to an APO or FPO address.” And if you ask DDTC this question, they will tell you that an APO address outside the U.S. requires an export authorization by license or exemption like any other shipment that leaves the United States.

This urban legend is sufficiently widespread that even one government agency has propagated this bogus notion. And not just any agency but an agency itself intimately involved in dealing with exports — the U.S. Census Bureau — has said that APO and FPO shipments aren’t exports. As recently as December 22, 2010, Census said on its own blog, in a post that has now been flushed down the memory hole, that the “State Department does not license shipments to APO or FPO addresses.”

But we’ve heard from another exporter that it gets worse. According to that exporter, the mandatory Automated Export System does not allow you to enter an ITAR license number when shipping an item to an APO address. Part 523 of the USPS’s International Mail Manual says this:

Goods mailed to APO/FPO/DPO addresses are not subject to the Foreign Trade Regulations. Accordingly, customers are not required to file electronic export information via the U.S. Census Bureau’s Automated Export System or AESDirect Web site for such mailings, and they do not need to present a Proof of Filing Citation, AES Downtime Citation, or Exemption and Exclusion Legend.

The same exporter says that DDTC is saying in such a case that the exporter must provide its own notification of the export to DDTC when it can’t be done through AES. Although this is a nice courtesy to DDTC, there is nothing in the ITAR that requires the exporter to provide this notice to ITAR in these cases.

But there’s a larger point here: if the government can’t figure out its own export regulations, why should it expect anyone else to figure them out?