WASHINGTON — Pentagon leaders working to revamp the U.S. process of selling arms around the globe are balancing the need to quickly close deals with that of protecting secrets about weapons’ inner workings, a senior official said.

The push to flush more American weaponry into the world market follows an increased appetite by governments to up-arm, Jed Royal, deputy director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, said at the Defense News Conference on Wednesday.

The establishment of a “Tiger Team” for streamlining the Foreign Military Sales mechanic — a rulebook for selling U.S. weapons abroad that includes congressional approval for each case — was first reported last week by the Wall Street Journal. Chief Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder confirmed the move on Sept. 6, saying the analysis was “exploring a wide range of immediate and systemic areas for reform of Department of Defense processes, platforms and regional perspectives to improve our ability to work with allies and partners.”

Ryder said the initiative is not aimed at a particular region, but Pentagon acquisition chief Bill LaPlante, one of the Tiger Team’s key figures, told conference attendees the effort is focused on Taiwan.

The Pentagon has long supported the island nation, which China claims as its own, with weapons to defend itself should Beijing decide to invade.

While much of the FMS revamp is still playing out behind closed doors, Royal said one of the sticking points has been finding ways to inject tech protection considerations into the process without holding things up.

“Our allies and partners are demanding increasingly sophisticated equipment — and they should. We need to make sure that U.S. technology that needs to be protected is protected through that process,” he said.

Whereas such evaluations now typically happen midway through a sales case, beginning them sooner could move the whole process along faster, Royal said.

U.S. weapons designed for export from the beginning, like the F-35 fighter jet, have a leg up, according to LaPlante. That fact, along with a hot production line at manufacturer Lockheed Martin, has made it easy to fit the aircraft’s recent sale to Finland of 64 planes into U.S. production plans, he explained.

The Pentagon signed a handshake deal earlier this summer with Lockheed for production lots 15 through 17, encompassing roughly 375 planes, which includes the Finnish order. That schedule would see the aircraft rolling off the production line within a mere two years, LaPlante added, quipping: “I don’t think the Finns are going to be ready for the airplanes.”

The sales process can take longer when foreign governments order heavily customized weapons, which requires extra analysis on protecting technological secrets.

“We should probably not allow people to customize their FMS order explicitly,” LaPlante said.

Joe Gould contributed to this story.