The United States led the ranking of the countries with the highest military spending in 2024, with 997 billion U.S. dollars dedicated to the military. That constituted almost 40 percent of the total military spending worldwide that year, which amounted to 2.7 trillion U.S. dollars. This amounted to 3.4 percent of the U.S.'s gross domestic product (GDP), placing the country lower in the ranking of military expenditure as a percentage of GDP, compared to Ukraine, Israel, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. China was the second largest military spender, with an estimated 314 billion U.S. dollars spent, with Russia following in third. Defense budgetAccording to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, the outlays for defense will rise to 1.1 trillion U.S. dollars by 2033. The largest parts of the budget are dedicated to the Departments of the Navy and the Air Force. The budget for the U.S. Air Force for 2024 was nearly 260 billion U.S. dollars.Global military spendingThe value of military spending globally has grown steadily in the past years and reached 2.7 trillion U.S. dollars in 2024. Reasons for this are the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022, the war in Gaza, as well as increasing tensions in the South China Sea. North America is by far the leading region worldwide in terms of expenditure on the military.

This dataset provides values for MILITARY EXPENDITURE reported in several countries. The data includes current values, previous releases, historical highs and record lows, release frequency, reported unit and currency.

As a share of gross domestic product (GDP), Ukraine spent more on its military than any other country in 2024, reaching 35 percent of the country's GDP. The high figure is due to the country being invaded by Russia in February 2022. Israel, that is fighting Hamas in the Gaza war, and Algeria followed behind.Leading military spending countriesIn gross terms, the countries with the highest military spending are the United States, China, and Russia. However, these are countries with large populations and GDPs, and smaller countries usually cannot compete alone, regardless of how much they invest. For this reason, they form alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO countries aim to pool two percent of their GDP towards their own militaries and to aid each other in case of war. Regional differencesThe past decade has seen an increase in global military spending. This has not been distributed evenly. That period saw large positive changes in military spending from several Asian countries, including a large increase from China. While this does not reflect the number of active conflicts, it reflects growing tensions in global affairs.

The average for 2022 based on 145 countries was 1.98 percent. The highest value was in Ukraine: 33.55 percent and the lowest value was in Haiti: 0.07 percent. The indicator is available from 1960 to 2022. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

In 2024, the military spending worldwide amounted to 2.7 trillion U.S. dollars, which was the highest during the period under consideration. Comparatively, global military spending was at 1.1 trillion U.S. dollars in 2001 and at 1.7 trillion U.S. dollars in 2010, past the peak of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Russia-Ukraine War The Russia-Ukraine War has been a major driver of more recent military spending increases. From 2021 to 2022, the ratio of Ukraine’s military spending to their GDP increased substantially from 3.8 percent to 33.5 percent, reaching 36 percent in 2023. By comparison, this ratio increased in Russia from 3.6 percent in 2021 to only 4 percent in 2022. As a result, large amounts of bilateral aid have gone towards Ukraine. While EU institutions have contributed the most financial and humanitarian aid, the United States has contributed the most military aid towards Ukraine. Spending by nation Globally, the United States had the largest amount of military spending by large in 2024. The United States spent 997 billion U.S. dollars in 2024 towards defense, compared to 314 billion U.S. dollars and 149 billion U.S. dollars spent by China and Russia, respectively. As a percentage of GDP, Ukraine spent the most globally, contributing nearly 35 percent of their GDP to defense, followed by Israel at 8.8 percent and Algeria at eight percent.

In 2022, the U.S. government spent more on healthcare than any other country, at 16.6 percent of GDP. In the same year, U.S. military expenditure was 3.45 percent of GDP. This statistic shows the healthcare and military expenditure as a percentage of GDP in select countries in 2022.

This dataset provides values for MILITARY EXPENDITURE reported in several countries. The data includes current values, previous releases, historical highs and record lows, release frequency, reported unit and currency.

Georgia: Military spending, percent of GDP: The latest value from 2022 is 1.43 percent, a decline from 1.61 percent in 2021. In comparison, the world average is 1.98 percent, based on data from 145 countries. Historically, the average for Georgia from 1996 to 2022 is 2.65 percent. The minimum value, 0.62 percent, was reached in 2000 while the maximum of 9.16 percent was recorded in 2007.

As of 2023, the military expenditure share of Lebanon's GDP was about 8.91 percent. In comparison,Iran allocated around 2.06 percent of their GDP for military expenditure for the same year.

This dataset provides values for MILITARY EXPENDITURE reported in several countries. The data includes current values, previous releases, historical highs and record lows, release frequency, reported unit and currency.

In 2025, Poland's defense spending as a share of gross domestic product was **** percent, the highest of all NATO member states, followed by Lithuania at *****percent, and then Latvia at **** percent. It is a target of NATO that every member country should spend at least two percent of their GDP on defense. As of this year, it is estimated that all the alliance's 32 member states would meet this target. The average expenditure on defense expenditure across all NATO member states was **** percent in this year. NATO, Trump, and the War in Ukraine Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shook many European powers out of a creeping complacency that had set in since the end of the Cold War. It led directly to the applications of Sweden and Finland to the alliance in 2022, with the latter joining later that year. The conflict has however also underlined how Europe's security is still underpinned by American military power, with the United States the main contributor of military aid to Ukraine. Furthermore, in overall defense spending, the U.S. spends far more than the rest of NATO combined. The current Trump administration has frequently criticized NATO states that they see as taking advantage of this discrepancy, urging other members to reach and even exceed the two percent threshold. Article 5 triggered in the aftermath of 9/11 While NATO was founded with the aim of deterring the Soviet Union in the Cold War, its central defense clause "Article 5" whereby an attack on one member is considered an attack on all, has only been triggered once; after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. NATO's involvement in the subsequent War in Afghanistan was a direct result of this, with troops supporting the operation from across the alliance. Although NATO's focus drifted towards counter-insurgency, and the threat from terrorism in this period, its original purpose has become far more important recently.

United States US: Military Expenditure: % of GDP data was reported at 3.149 % in 2017. This records a decrease from the previous number of 3.222 % for 2016. United States US: Military Expenditure: % of GDP data is updated yearly, averaging 4.864 % from Sep 1960 (Median) to 2017, with 58 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 9.063 % in 1967 and a record low of 2.908 % in 1999. United States US: Military Expenditure: % of GDP data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United States – Table US.World Bank.WDI: Defense and Official Development Assistance. Military expenditures data from SIPRI are derived from the NATO definition, which includes all current and capital expenditures on the armed forces, including peacekeeping forces; defense ministries and other government agencies engaged in defense projects; paramilitary forces, if these are judged to be trained and equipped for military operations; and military space activities. Such expenditures include military and civil personnel, including retirement pensions of military personnel and social services for personnel; operation and maintenance; procurement; military research and development; and military aid (in the military expenditures of the donor country). Excluded are civil defense and current expenditures for previous military activities, such as for veterans' benefits, demobilization, conversion, and destruction of weapons. This definition cannot be applied for all countries, however, since that would require much more detailed information than is available about what is included in military budgets and off-budget military expenditure items. (For example, military budgets might or might not cover civil defense, reserves and auxiliary forces, police and paramilitary forces, dual-purpose forces such as military and civilian police, military grants in kind, pensions for military personnel, and social security contributions paid by one part of government to another.); ; Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Yearbook: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security.; Weighted average; Data for some countries are based on partial or uncertain data or rough estimates.

In 2024, the United States spent an estimated ***** U.S. dollars per capita on defence, compared with the NATO average of ***** per head.

This dataset provides values for MILITARY EXPENDITURE PERCENT OF GDP WB DATA.HTML reported in several countries. The data includes current values, previous releases, historical highs and record lows, release frequency, reported unit and currency.

In 2020, military expenditure in Brunei amounted to approximately **** percent of the country's GDP. In comparison, military expenditure in Indonesia and Mongolia amounted to less than *** percent of each country's GDP in 2020.

This dataset provides values for MILITARY EXPENDITURE PERCENT OF GDP WB DATA.HTML reported in several countries. The data includes current values, previous releases, historical highs and record lows, release frequency, reported unit and currency.

In 2023, the annual military spending in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region was the highest for Saudi Arabia at about 75.8 billion U.S. dollars. MENA military trends Saudi Arabia was ranked fifth among the top global military spenders in 2019. It is the largest military spender in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Saudi’s military spending reached its all-time high during 2015 when it was the third-largest military spender globally. Saudi Arabia was expected to increase its military spending following tension with Iran after an Iranian missile attacked Saudi’s oil industry in 2019, and with its military operations in Yemen. The MENA region had the highest average military spending as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) compared to other regions. Military spending as a share of GDP in Saudi Arabia in 2019 reached eight percent. The high military burden reflects instability and conflict in the region. MENA budget deficit The military expenditure of the MENA region on average is above their fiscal capabilities as the budgets allocated to operations leave less than the required amounts for the demands of the public. The average public debt as a share of GDP of the MENA region was about 40 percent in 2018. The governments of the region have been favoring using tactics such as having a strong army to delay the involvement of the democratic wave in the governing process, over the option of changing their social approach to accommodate the needs of the public. However, the majority of the public has high confidence in the military and government institutions in the region. The military forces of countries of the MENA region are known to have a strong involvement in the economic matters of the countries such as high levels of military spending post the Arab Spring to dampen any further social mobilization or uprisings. In 2020, Yemen had the highest risk of development deficit and deprivation among conflict countries in the region, followed by Syria.

Agreement between observed country-year-variable values (orange boxes) and the posterior predicted point estimates for which the observed value is observed (light grey boxes). Dark grey boxes show the distribution for the full range of the posterior predicted point estimates (including estimates for which the original value is missing). Across all variables, these estimated values have a lower median value due to a bias in the missingness in the original data. We have more missing observations in earlier years, for which population levels are lower than in later years in the series. Conveniently for users, the posterior predicted values are estimated using the original unit-of-measurement. This means that the visual discrepancy is not an empirical discrepancy. It is simply the difference in the unit-of-measurement used for the observed dataset values (e.g., thousands of dollars units).

With its Global Militarisation Index (GMI), BICC is able to objectively depict worldwide militarisation for the first time. The GMI compares, for example, a country’s military expenditure with its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and its health expenditure. It contrasts the total number of military and paramilitary forces in a country with the number of physicians. Finally, it studies the number of heavy weapons available to a country’s armed forces. These and other indicators are used to determine a country’s ranking, which in turn makes it possible to measure the respective level of militarisation in comparison to other countries.

The latest GMI of 2023 is based on the latest available figures (in most cases data for 2022). The ten countries with the highest level of militarisation in 2022 are Ukraine, Israel, Armenia, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Greece, Singapore, Azerbaijan and Russia. These countries allocate particularly high levels of resources to the military in comparison to other areas of society. See project website for more information

This dataset provides values for MILITARY EXPENDITURE reported in several countries. The data includes current values, previous releases, historical highs and record lows, release frequency, reported unit and currency.