Worldwide weapon sales go up!

We know that this isn’t exactly the news you’d like to read, but we couldn’t skip to inform you about the unexpectedly quick rise of arms sales worldwide. The current report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute shows that the main beneficiaries are armaments groups in the US and Western Europe.

Munitions, tanks, drones: The global trade in arms and military services increased again in 2016, for the first time in five years. It was up 1.9 percent on the previous year — and 38 percent compared to 2002. In 2016 the world's 100 biggest armaments groups sold $374.8 billion (€317.7 billion) of weapons and weapons systems.

Particularly in the United States, armaments groups are producing and selling more weapons. According to the report, sales from US firms rose 4 percent in 2016, totaling $217.2 billion. This was not only because of the US' own military deployments abroad: The figure was also boosted by the purchase of large weapons systems by other countries. The US group Lockheed Martin — the biggest weapons producer worldwide —did lucrative business selling its new F-35 to countries like Britain, Italy and Norway. Its biggest customer, though, is the United States Air Force.

While French and Italian firms are selling fewer arms, German and British groups — despite Brexit —increased their turnover. The German tank manufacturer Krauss-Maffei, for example, and Rheinmetall, which makes military vehicles, profited from the demand for their products in Europe, the Middle East and South-East Asia.