Britain’s BAE Systems topped an international ranking of the world’s biggest arms groups, becoming the first non-US company to hold the spot, a leading defense think tank said yesterday.
The British group knocked US defense giant Boeing out of the top position in 2008, a ranking of the biggest defense groups worldwide tallied by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) showed.
“The main reason that BAE became the largest arms-producing company in the world in 2008 is the increase in its US sales, which outpaced decreases elsewhere including in the UK,” the think tank said in the study.
With arms sales in 2008 of US$29.2 billion, Boeing fell from first place in 2007 to third following BAE Systems with US$32.4 billion and US group Lockheed Martin with US$29.4 billion.
It was followed by three US groups, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon, ahead of European group EADS in seventh place, Italian company Finmeccanica in eighth, L-3 Communications in ninth and Thales of France in 10th position.
The biggest Russian group on the list, air defense systems maker Almaz-Antei, was No. 18 on the list.
In 2008, the 100 biggest defense groups had arms sales of US$385 billion, up 11 percent from the previous year, SIPRI said.
“This is more than three times the size of the total development aid of OECD countries in 2008,” SIPRI said, adding that such aid reached US$120 billion.
Putting the data in perspective, the think tank said that arms sales of Lockheed Martin alone topped US development aid by US$4 billion and that BAE Systems sales were greater than the GDP of 105 countries.
SIPRI’s ranking focuses on companies’ arms sales, which make up only 48 percent of Boeing’s turnover and 70 percent of Lockheed Martin’s revenues.
In BAE Systems’ case, arms sales make up a far larger share of its sales, with 95 percent of the total.
Born out of the merger of Marconi and British Aerospace in 1999, BAE Systems counts among its products the Eurofighter combat aircraft, the Bradley tank and the Astute submarine.
With 59 percent of BAE Systems’ sales coming from the vast US arms market, the group has major production operations in the country, as well as in Britain, Sweden, South Africa and Sweden.
“BAE really shows the increasing internationalization of the arms industry and the attractiveness of the US market,” SIPRI arms industry expert Susan Jackson said.
The group has benefitted from sales of mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles to the US government for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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