Total global military expenditure increased by 0.7 percent in real terms in 2021, to reach $2113 billion. The five largest spenders in 2021 were the United States, China, India, the United Kingdom and Russia, together accounting for 62% of expenditure, according to new data on global military spending published today by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
“Even amid the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, world military spending hit record levels,” said Dr Diego Lopes da Silva, Senior Researcher with SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme. “There was a slowdown in the rate of real-terms growth due to inflation. In nominal terms, however, military spending grew by 6.1 percent.”
sipri.org
World military spending continued to grow in 2021, reaching an all-time high of $2.1 trillion. This was the seventh consecutive year that spending increased. As a result of a sharp economic recovery in 2021, the global military burden-world military expenditure as a share of world gross domestic product (GDP)-fell by 0.1 percentage points, from 2.3 percent in 2020 to 2.2 percent in 2021.
sipri.org
US military spending amounted to $801 billion in 2021, a drop of 1.4 per cent from 2020. The US military burden decreased slightly from 3.7 percent of GDP in 2020 to 3.5 percent in 2021. China, the world’s second largest spender, allocated an estimated $293 billion to its military in 2021, an increase of 4.7 percent compared with 2020. China’s military spending has grown for 27 consecutive years. The 2021 Chinese budget was the first under the 14th Five-Year Plan, which runs until 2025. Russia increased its military expenditure by 2.9 percent in 2021, to $65.9 billion, at a time when it was building up its forces along the Ukrainian border. This was the third consecutive year of growth and Russia’s military spending reached 4.1 percent of GDP in 2021.
