In 2014, the Boeing’s F-18 assembly line in St. Louis was expected to close down within two and half years after the US Navy decided to shift from F-18 to Lockheed Martin-manufactured F-35. Similar projections were also made about F-15 production line, which would come to an end after fulfilling a large order from Saudi Arabia.
Nevertheless, the two large deals with a pair of other American key partners in Middle East – Kuwait and Qatar – prevented those production lines from closures, helping their operations to extend into at least 2020.
The United States, followed by Russia, France, Germany, and China, is the largest arms exporter in the world. Incidentally the same five countries are also the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), which is primarily responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security.
Arms sales radically contribute to the US defense industry, a sector which directly employees 2.5 million workers. Every year, the US government manages about $40 billion of defense equipment transfers under foreign military sales (FMS).
The US Department of State’s report ‘World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers (WMEAT)’, published in December 2018, said – the United States accounted for the largest share of about 80% or $159.9 billion in the global arms deliveries that totaled $189.4 billion in 2016. The financial value of these arms transfers exceeds SIPRI’s estimate of $88.4 by whooping 114%.
According to the 36th edition of annual report on arms transfers – Russia ($11.9bn), Germany ($5.4bn), France ($4.2bn), and United Kingdom ($4.0bn) were the other leading arms suppliers in the world.
‘During the period (2006-2016), about 80% of the world arms trade, by value, appears to have been supplied by the United States, about 10% by the European Union, about 5% by Russia, and less than 2% by China. The U.S. share of the world arms market appears to have grown, while the EU share appears to have diminished, with no clear trend in the Russian and Chinese shares.’
It continued to drop ‘bombshells’, revealing that ‘unspecified or multinational entities’ and Japan were the largest arms recipients with imports of $43.9 billion and $24.9 billion respectively in 2016. The data also showed that both these political groups’ arms imports averaged $42.0 billion and $26.0 billion correspondingly for 2014-16.
US State Department elaborates the ‘unspecified or multinational entities’ as those which are the US exports mainly to Afghanistan, Iraq, and other international entities. The arms imports on account of this particular area saw a sharp increase from $3.0 billion in 2006 to peak $43.9 billion in 2016.
Despite 13% decline in arms imports, Japan continued to lead the global arms imports from 2006 through 2016, the report said. The Japanese arms imports averaged $20.5 billion for the 11-year period, which was substantially higher than the other leading arms importing nations’ mean: Saudi Arabia ($6.2bn); UK ($10.2bn); and South Korea ($6.9bn). The decline in the UK and the rise in Saudi Arms imports over the previous few years enabled the Kingdom to emerge third-largest arms buyer in the world.
Where is India, the most-hyped arms buying nation world over? Surprisingly it wasn’t even amongst the US State Department’s top-10. With a global share of just 2%, India ($4.1bn) was ranked 14th in leading arms importers in the world for 2016 – trailing behind Italy, Algeria, Egypt, United States, Iraq, Israel, Australia, UAE and others. Interestingly, the United States, the largest arms exporter was slotted at No. 10 in the biggest arms buyers listing.
Nevertheless, the WMEAT data contains some serious disparities with some of the other reports and estimates.
A report to Congressional Research Service (CRS) in December 2016 told that the United States ($16.9bn), Russia ($7.2bn), France ($7.0bn), China ($2.9bn), Italy ($1.8bn), Germany ($1.6bn), and the United Kingdom ($1.3bn) were the leading arms exporters to the world in 2015. Total arms deliveries by leading arms suppliers were $40.8 billion for the same year.
The latest of the CRS reports on arms transfers further said that only $33.6 billion of arms were supplied to the developing countries in the world (ostensibly the largest arms buyers). Egypt ($5.3bn), Iraq ($5.0bn), Saudi Arabia ($4.5bn), India ($1.9bn), and Algeria ($1.6bn) were the largest arms recipients in 2015.
Another report by Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) said that the US defense industry, which is composed of defense equipment manufacturing and service-providing conglomerates, shipped $20 billion of exports in 2017. In the last 10 years, the country’s defense-related exports grew considerable 75% from $11.5 billion in 2007.
It additionally noted that geographically, Asia Pacific (APAC) and Middle East were the largest destination of the US defense equipment – accounting for 62% of the total defense exports or $12.5 billion in 2017.
Moreover Security Assistance Monitor (SAM), a Center of International Policy program forecasted that the United States’ global arms deliveries totaled $26.9 billion in 2016 and $30.9 billion in 2017 – much lower to the State Department’s recent assertions.
Reminiscing that AIA and SAM extracts data from the US defense statistics and underscoring the CRS report, the recurrent irrationalities on the value of global arms trade by US State Department is patently absurd.