The 15 countries with the highest military budgets in 2017

Global military spending reached $1.739 trillion in 2017, up 1.1% from 2016, according to a report released on Wednesday from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

"Continuing high world military expenditure is a cause for serious concern," Ambassador Jan Eliasson, chair of the SIPRI governing board, said in the report. "It undermines the search for peaceful solutions to conflicts around the world."

China's military spending increased again in 2017, up 5.6% from 2016, SIPRI reported, as did India's, up 5.5% from 2016.

Russia's military spending decreased for the first time since 1998, down 20% from 2016, SIPRI reported.

"The increases in world military expenditure in recent years have been largely due to the substantial growth in spending by countries in Asia and Oceania and the Middle East, such as China, India and Saudi Arabia," Nan Tian, a SIPRI researcher, said in the report. "At the global level, the weight of military spending is clearly shifting away from the Euro-Atlantic region."

Although the US' budget remained unchanged, it "spent more on its military than the next seven highest-spending countries combined," SIPRI reported.

Here are the 15 countries that spent the most on their militaries in 2017: