On Dec. 15, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released its report, “The SIPRI Top 100 Arms-Producing and Military Services Companies, 2013.” In addition to valuable data on global arms and military services sales, the report also offers interesting insight into the Middle East. At a glance, here are some of the facts:
The 2013 revenues of the 100 largest arms and military services companies totaled $402 billion. The primary customers of these companies were their own armies. The report, which does not cover China because of a lack of transparent data, notes that the decline in global arms sales that started in 2011 is continuing and the reductions in the US defense budget have played a prominent role in the trend.