The World's Biggest Arms Exporters

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States remains the world's largest arms exporter responsible for 41.7 percent of international arms sales between 2019 and 2023, up from 38.6 percent between 2017 and 2021. During the most recent time span, the country supplied arms to more than 100 countries.

France moved up to second position, overtaking Russia, whose share in exports has been decreasing recently. Between 2019 and 20213, France was responsible for 10.9 percent of global arms exports (slightly up from 10.7). Russia came just behind at 10.5 percent calculated as the average from prewar years 2019-2021 and those after its invasion of Ukraine from 2022 to 2023. In the five years before the invasion, Russia's share in global arms export had stood at a much higher 18.6 percent.

Russia's and France's biggest customer is India, which is the biggest importer of weapons in the world overall. France shipped arms to 64 states in the given time period and exports of its Rafales combat aircraft rose to almost one third of these exports. Russia's exported arms to 41 countries. Both countries as well as the U.S. ship the majority of their weapons to Asia and the Middle East, with big customers also including China, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

U.S. supply of weapons to Ukraine has played a big role recently, with Germany and Poland coming out as the top 2 and top 3 suppliers between 2019 and 2023. One of Russia's main customer is Egypt, while France also supplied more than 9 percent of South Korea's imports in the given time frame.

With Russia scaling back exports, the relative importance of other players in the global market - including China, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom - grew slightly. Spain overtook Israel and South Korea once more in rank 8 of the list of the world's largest arms exporters after the latter country briefly seen exports spike.