Western arms makers see sales fall, Russia rises

Arms manufacturers in North America and Western Europe dominated international arms sales in 2014, but their market share dropped while Russian and Asian companies saw theirs rise, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported yesterday.

Total turnover for the 100 biggest arms and military services companies declined for the fourth year in a row, falling by 1.5 percent from 2013 to stand at $401 billion (364 billion euros).

The top company was US-based Lockheed Martin, which saw sales grow by 3.9 percent to $37.5 billion for 2014.

Companies based in Western Europe and the United States continue to dominate the top 100, with 80 percent of the total market share. But sales for Western European and US companies decreased by 3.2 percentage points between 2013 and 2014.

In Western Europe "a large part of the defence spending, which is missing, is from procurement. It's easier to cut procurement than to cut salaries -- so the quickest thing to do is just buy less," said Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher at SIPRI's Arms and Military Expenditure Programme.

Meanwhile, the 36 companies representing the rest of the world on SIPRI's list saw their sales soar by 25 percent, boosted by an almost 50-percent rise in Russian arms sales.

"Russian companies are riding the wave of increasing national military spending and exports," said Wezeman. The combined annual revenue growth of the 11 Russian companies on SIPRI's list from 2013-14 was 48.4 percent, according to the report.

The top Russian company on the list was Almaz-Antey, taking 11th place with a turnover of $8.84 billion. Almaz-Antey manufactures the BUK missile, which was allegedly used to shoot down a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 on July 17, 2014 in Ukraine.