Russian military industrial complex is catching up with American
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) summed up world trade weapons over the past five years
In their assessments, SIPRI experts use mainly not monetary, but physical indicators, according to which the total volume of transactions in 2010 – 2014 increased by almost 16% compared to the previous five-year period - 2005 – 2009.
This is explained both by the start of new cycles of rearmament of armies in countries such as India, China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and others, and by the intensification of military conflicts in Africa and the Middle East - in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
The five largest arms exporters, according to SIPRI, remained unchanged: the United States, Russia, China, Germany and France. In total, they control almost three-quarters of the global market. But within this group, radical changes have taken place in recent years. Thus, the share of Germany decreased from 11 to 5%, and France - from 8 to 5%. But the share of Russia and the United States, on the contrary, has grown. Five years ago, our country controlled only 22% of the world market, and now - 27%. Americans also increased the share, but not so much, from 29 to 31%. At the same time, the geography of arms exports from the United States is much wider than from Russia: 94 states against 56.
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"The United States has long viewed arms exports as the main tool of foreign policy and security, but in recent years it has increasingly been designed to help the US military industry maintain production levels while reducing military spending," says SIPRI military spending program director Od Fleran. In Russia, the export of military equipment is an ordinary business, and the main rate of enterprises of the domestic military industrial complex is to fulfill the state defense order. Its share in the total volume of almost all the largest defense enterprises in Russia has long exceeded 60 – 70%. As for the sale of weapons to foreign markets, over the past year it has declined from 15,7 to 13 billion dollars in the whole country. At the same time, the portfolio of export contracts still amounts to 48 – 50 billion dollars.
No less interesting changes are occurring in the group of the largest importers of weapons. Here the most important player is India, which almost doubled its share, from 7 to 15%. Saudi Arabia, which occupies second place in the camp of the main buyers, has sharply - fivefold - increased its share. But the share of China, on the contrary, decreased from 9 to 5%. This is primarily due to the development in China of its own defense industry, which over the past decades has learned how to manufacture several sophisticated weapons systems and naval equipment. The same applies to South Korea, which sharply reduced arms purchases abroad. As a result, its share fell from 6 to 3%. But these two cases are the exception. “In general, Asian countries are still dependent on imports of the main types of weapons, which have grown substantially and will remain at a high level in the coming years,” said SIPRI Senior Researcher Simon Wesemann. And if so, then Russia has very good chances in the next five years to circumvent the United States. And above all, because the traditional buyers of our weapons in Asia have not yet saturated their armies with new military equipment.
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