Worldwide military spending in 2008 totalled an estimated $1.46 trillion, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday as it launched its 2009 Yearbook on Armaments, Disarmament and International Security.
The United States accounted for accounted for 58 percent of the global increase in worldwide military expenditure between 1999 and 2008, with its military spending growing by $219 billion in constant 2005 prices over the period, SIPRI said yesterday.
But the United States was not the only nation to show increases, as China and Russia both nearly tripled their military expenditures over the decade.
SIPRI said military expenditures show “an increase of 4 percent in real terms compared to 2007, and an increase of 45 percent since 1999.”
The top military spenders behind the United States are China, France, United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, Saudi Arabia, and India.
“The idea of the ‘war on terror’ has encouraged many countries to see their problems through a highly militarized lens, using this to justify high military spending,” Sam Perlo-Freeman, head of the Military Expenditure Project at SIPRI, said in a statement. “Meanwhile, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost $903 billion in additional military spending by the U.S.A. alone.”
Boeing [BA] leads the list of top 20 companies in the SIPRI Top 100 arms producing companies–excluding Chinese companies–for 2007, the most recent year with reliable data available, the institute said.
U.K.-based BAE Systems was in the No. 2 spot followed by Lockheed Martin [LMT], Northrop Grumman [NOC], General Dynamics [GD], Raytheon [RTN], European consortium EADS, L-3 Communications [LLL], Italy’s Finmeccanica and France’s Thales.
SIPRI detailed that 44 U.S. companies accounted for 61 percent of the Top 100’s arms sales in 2007, while 32 West European companies accounted for 31 per cent of the sales. Russia, Japan, Israel, and India accounted for most of the rest.