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Top 100 Defense Companies: Remember arms industry profits depend on war [1]

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Date: 2023-10

This week saw the publication of one of the leading surveys of the world’s military corporations.

Put out by the US-based Defense News, it identifies and ranks the world’s 100 biggest arms companies, using a combination of its own research, the work of think tanks and some government departments, and data from the corporations themselves.

Where it is particularly useful is that it separates out military from non-military outputs. Airbus, for example, would be one of the world’s largest defence companies if its ranking combined military and civil aviation, but it doesn’t, meaning that it comes in at 15th rather than well into the top 10.

Looking at the overall list, three elements stand out as significant. One is the sheer size of the larger corporations. The current UK budget for all military spending – equipment, pay, research and the rest – stands at $68.5bn, but this is very nearly matched by a single military corporation, the US-based Lockheed Martin. Apart from the United States, with its massive $877bn budget, and China with $292bn, all the other states worldwide, including Russia, have budgets at or below the output of the largest corporations.

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The second element relates to the continued dominance of US corporations in the global list, taking six of the top ten positions (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics and L3Harris Technologies). Those six corporations account for revenues of well over $200bn. This dominance has held sway since the end of the Cold War, and even the UK-based BAE Systems (ranked seventh, with defence revenue of $25.3bn) does much of its business in the United States.

However, the third element is the steady rise of Chinese corporations in the global list. This year three Chinese corporations are in the top ten, one being a recent joiner, and all three have improved their relative standing. The Aviation Corporation is up two places at fourth, China North Industries is up one place at eighth and China South jumps three places to tenth.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/military-corporations-survey-wealth-profits-war-damage-death/

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