Global arms sales rise by nearly 5% in 2018: SIPRI Report

A new report titled “SIPRI Top 100 arms-producing and military services companies, 2018” was released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute on December 9, 2019.
The report states that the sales of arms and military services witnessed an increase of 4.6 percent worldwide in 2018, while the market is dominated by the United States.
Key Findings
- Sales of arms and military services by the top 100 firms went up by 47 percent since 2002, the year from which comparable data is first available.
- The turnover of the 100 biggest arms manufacturers (excluding Chinese firms) came to 420 billion dollars, an annual increase of 4.6 percent.
- U.S. firms dominated the list with a turnover of 246 billion U.S. dollars (accounting for 59 percent of the global market), up 7.2 percent from the previous year.
- Russia was second in the rankings for arms production, with 8.6 per cent of the market, followed by United Kingdom on 8.4 per cent and France on 5.5 per cent.
- China was not included in the survey due to “insufficient data”.
- 80 of the world’s 100 top arms producers were based in the U.S., Russia and Europe. Of the remaining 20, six were based in in Japan, three each in Israel, India and South Korea, respectively, two in Turkey and one each in Australia, Canada and Singapore.