Defense spending

Regional trends are hiding a slowdown in defense spending growth in the majority of countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Since Kyiv's plan to purchase up to 150 Gripen fighters was announced, a key question has been how the program would be funded.

South Korea has come under concerted pressure from Trump to increase defense spending and to raise contributions toward the U.S. military footprint there.

Poland was the main driver behind Europe’s defense budget growth from 2022-25, but is now running up against fiscal limits of what is sustainable going forward.

U.S. government figures show 2024 was a record year for Foreign Military Sales. The question is how long the European market renaissance which has driven the rise will continue for.

Last week NATO released its official statistics for alliance member defense spending covering the period up to 2025, which made for interesting reading.

Six U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific region have increased their military spending by a combined 18.9% over the last three years.

Europe's hope of reaching NATO's higher level of defense spending rests disproportionately with France and Germany, but a key potential obstacle is politics.

A slow but steady stream of data has been released on the U.S. FY26 defense budget request, which would represent a substantial hike of 11% in nominal terms.

French President Emmanuel Macron plans for a hike in the country’s defense spending to respond to the growing threat perception.

NATO’s June 2025 summit will no doubt go down as a key point in the alliance’s history. Headlines since the start of the meeting in the Hague firmly suggest that member states agreed to a massive increase in defense related spending with NATO shifting guidelines levels of defense spending from 2% of GDP to 5% by 2035. On paper this would increase European NATO member spending from $476.2 billion in 2024 to well over a trillion dollars by the middle of the next decade based on alliance figures.

Europe is a market transformed in terms of demand, but the task remains of beefing up the local defense industrial base, long accustomed to anaemic orders.

The new UK Strategic Defense Review is clear on threats and what is needed to deal with them, but opaque on how and when these measures will be funded.

A NATO ambition for member states to spend 5% of their GDP on defense will be on the agenda when the heads of member governments convene later this month.

For the first time since early on in World War II, Europe is set to spend more on the acquisition of military equipment than the U.S. this year.

The UK will publish its Strategic Defense Review within two weeks, says former NATO Secretary Gen. George Robertson, who has helped lead the effort.

Italy and Spain are testing the limits of what qualifies as military expenditure in their efforts to meet NATO’s 2% of GDP defense spending target.

Stockholm's raft of new measures to bolster funding for both its own armed forces and Ukraine represents a post-Trump adjustment to previously established plans.

During a press conference with Netanyahu last week, Trump announced that the U.S. would soon reveal its first $1 trillion defense budget.

European defense spending may be growing faster now than at any time since World War II, but trends continue to vary significantly from country to country.

With a general election looming, Australia announced an early 2025-26 budget which included a boost to defense spending despite a wider focus on tax cuts.

Investment in new defense equipment has exploded in Europe, nearly trebling from $60 billion to $175 billion, and this may only be the start.

With all eyes on the spat between the new administration in Washington and its allies in Europe, China quietly released details of its budget plans for 2025.

The news of additional defense spending will undoubtedly be welcomed within the UK Defense Ministry, but in truth, it probably does not go far enough.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has firmed up UK government plans to increase military spending, putting a deadline on the goal of putting 2.5% of GDP into defense.