The sole Ukrainian business on this year’s Top 100 list takes the lead for the largest defense revenue change, growing by 72% from fiscal 2022 to fiscal 2023.
And though the Ukrainian Defense Industry, formerly known as Ukroboronprom, declined to explain the significant increase, it is telling that the company’s defense revenue grew from about $755 million in FY21 to nearly $1.3 billion in FY22, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Most recently, for FY23, the firm is reporting $2.2 billion in defense revenue.
In fact, more than three-quarters of the companies on this year’s Top 100 list saw their defense revenues rise.
This is reflective of the list’s general — although inconsistent — increase year over year. Looking at just the last five fiscal years, the total defense revenue for those ranked came to:
- FY19: $524.4 billion
- FY20: $551.2 billion
- FY21: $595 billion
- FY22: $533.9 billion
- FY23: $603.9 billion
The latest growth – by 13% – comes amid the Russia-Ukraine war; Israel’s fight with the militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip and its clashes with the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah; as well as tension in the Asia-Pacific region over disputed territory and Taiwan’s independence.
In response to these events, governments around the world are spending more on defense, which in turn boosts industry earnings.
Deeper dive
U.S.-based businesses dominated the rankings with 48 listings, followed by:
- China and the United Kingdom, each with six.
- Germany and Turkey, each with five.
- Israel and South Korea, each with three.
- India, Italy, Norway and Spain, each with two.
- Australia, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sweden and Ukraine, each with one.
- Alone, France has four listings, and the Netherlands has one. However, it would be accurate to give them each one more in this count because Airbus lists its “main office” in the former and its “headquarters” in the latter.
There are notable gaps in this year’s list. Once again, there are no Russian businesses because they did not respond to our requests for information and we could not locate reputable data sources.
Japanese companies are also not on the list. Defense News contacted the businesses, as well as government officials, several times with requests for data. The government did not publish the relevant information online by press time.
Some private firms that likely earn significant defense revenue, such as General Atomics, opt against providing data, while technology companies, including Amazon and Google, don’t offer comprehensive information on their defense revenue and declined to do so for the list.
We also chose not to include medical and pharmaceutical companies because the list is meant to focus on those organizations producing weapons systems, military capabilities and associated technologies.
For Chinese businesses, we relied on a think tank to provide the data. The China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp. did not release figures for consideration in this year’s list by press time. The state-run organization last made the rankings two years ago, where it landed in 14th place with more than $13 billion in defense revenue for FY21.
This year we were able to collect information for two Indian companies. However, our correspondent there remains jailed. It has been almost a year since the Indian government arrested Vivek Raghuvanshi, a longtime freelance journalist with Defense News, and officials have declined to provide information about his safety, legal representation and allegations.
For ranked Turkish firms, an asterisk must be applied: Some revenue figures were calculated using so-called inflation accounting methods due to the nation’s high inflation rate. We used those numbers when they were provided; otherwise the data was run in its unadapted form. More information is provided in the footnotes.
We hope this list, which one could accurately describe as part art and part science, offers a snapshot of the state of the defense industry and perhaps what’s to come.
Click here to see the Top 100, a ranking of the largest defense companies in the world.
Chris Martin is the managing editor for Defense News. His interests include Sino-U.S. affairs, cybersecurity, foreign policy and his yorkie Willow.
