BAE Systems Named World’s Biggest Arms Maker

The New York Times reported that BAE Systems has “topped the list as the world’s biggest armaments company.” The company has “sharply expanded its sales of armored vehicles for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The report said that BAE moved up two spots in 2008 with military sales of $32.4 billion, surpassing rivals Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, and General Dynamics.

Based in the UK, BAE is the first non-US company to hold this spot. Despite not being a US company, BAE does more than half its business in the US. In fact, North American companies dominate the list with 60-percent of the arm sales of the top 100 companies. It’s noted that Chinese firms were absent from the list despite the Institute ranking China’s military spending as second only to the US. It is explained that Chinese firms would rank higher, but there is inadequate or unreliable information.

Global news source AFP reported that BAE had arm sales of 20.98 billion pounds ($32.4 billion) compared to Lockheed Martin’s 19.36 (29.9) and Boeing’s 18.9 (29.1). SIPRI arms-industry expert Susan Jackson noted, “BAE really shows the increasing internationalization of the arms industry and the attractiveness of the US market.”

It is also very interesting to note that BAE’s sales were greater than the gross domestic product of 105 countries (according to SIPRI). Along those same lines, the total sales of the 100 largest defense groups had arms sales of 249 billion pounds ($384 billion). That figure is more than three times the size of the total development aid of OECD (Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development) countries, which was only 77.73 billion pounds, or $120 billion.

Read the full article in the New York Times

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