USA Dominates Global Arms Market in 2019

USA dominated the global arms market in 2019, while the Middle East appeared for the first time among the 25 largest arms manufacturers, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Monday. The US arms industry last year accounted for 61% of the world’s “25 largest manufacturers” sales, ahead of China (15.7 percent), according to the institute. Total sales of the “Big 25 Manufacturers” rose 8.5 percent to $361 billion, or 50 times the annual budget for UN Peacekeeping Operations.

Six American companies and three Chinese companies ranked among the top 10 arms companies. Only one European company was ranked in this ranking, the British company BAE Systems, which ranked seventh. The American companies Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics of the United States occupied the first five places, while the Chinese companies AVIC, CITC and Norinco of China ranked sixth, eighth and ninth. L3 Harris Technologies Group ranked tenth.

The United States has dominated the market for decades, but for China, whose companies’ sales rose by about five percent in 2019, this increase is consistent with the implementation of reforms to modernize the People’s Liberation Army, which have been underway since 2015.

For the first time, a company from the Middle East was included in the list of the top 25 companies, which is Edge, which has its headquarters in the United Arab Emirates.

The United States grew by 5.3 per cent to a total of $732 billion in 2019 and accounted for 38 per cent of global military spending. The increase in US spending in 2019 alone was equivalent to the entirety of Germany’s military expenditure for that year. ‘The recent growth in US military spending is largely based on a perceived return to competition between the great powers,’ says Pieter D. Wezeman, Senior Researcher at SIPRI.

The total for 2019 represents an increase of 3.6 per cent from 2018 and the largest annual growth in spending since 2010. The five largest spenders in 2019, which accounted for 62 per cent of expenditure, were the United States, China, India, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Global military spending in 2019 represented 2.2 per cent of the global gross domestic product (GDP), which equates to approximately $249 per person.

Source: Agencies