Global arms trade soars in 2023 amid deadly conflicts

The top 100 global arms producers increased weapons and military-related sales by 4.3 percent last year, according to new research, as nations react to a more volatile and dangerous geopolitical environment sparked by wars in Europe and the Middle East.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in a Monday report that sales reached $632 billion in 2023 among the world's major arms producers.

Those 100 companies have also increased their revenue by 19 percent between 2015 and 2023, researchers wrote.

Lorenzo Scarazzato, a researcher at SIPRI, said "there was a marked rise in arms revenues in 2023 and this is likely to continue in 2024."

"The arms revenues of the Top 100 arms producers still did not fully reflect the scale of demand, and many companies have launched recruitment drives, suggesting they are optimistic about future sales," Scarazzato said in a statement.

The arms sales are inline with countries across the globe spending a record amount on defense in 2023, SIPRI said in a report earlier this year.

According to the new report, while sales increased worldwide, the regions driving most of the growth include in Russia, which is fighting a war in Ukraine, and the Middle East, where Israel is fighting in Gaza and regionally against Iranian-backed proxy groups.

Russia has two companies in the top 100 arms producers, which together saw a 40 percent increase from 2022 to around $25 billion.

In the Middle East, six top arms producers — three of which are in Israel and the other half in Turkey — saw a collective 18 percent bump to $19.6 billion.

Of the top 100 global defense companies, 41 of them are based in the U.S., and those firms recorded $317 billion in sales in 2023, a 2.5 percent increase from the year before.

While a majority of the U.S. companies increased arms revenues, two of the world's largest weapons producers, Lockheed Martin and RTX, saw a decrease in sales because of a struggle to ramp up production given supply chain issues.

Europe and China also saw slight increases in arms sales, but those were among the smallest bumps recorded in 2023. China is struggling with a lagging economy, while Europe is slowly ramping up its defense spending after the war in Ukraine.

The 23 top companies in Asia and Oceania saw a 5.7 percent increase, reaching $136 billion, as the Indo-Pacific in particular intensifies over competition and potential conflict between the U.S. and China.

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