This Map Shows The US And Russia's Worldwide Arms-Sales Race
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The U.S. and Russia are two of the world's leading military powers, with defense industries aimed towards maintaining that status. They supply weapons outside of their borders as well, and the countries have turned into the two biggest weapons providers on the planet.
To compare the exports of the two nations, we took numbers from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute for 2012-2013 to see who the two rivals were supplying with weaponry. The U.S. dealt to 59 nations that Russia doesn't sell or send weaponry to, while Russia dealt to just 16 nations that don't receive U.S. arms.
There were also 15 countries that recieved weaponry from both the U.S. and Russia, including the notably conflict-prone nations of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The country that recieved the highest dollar amount of U.S. weaponry was the United Arab Emirates, with more than $3.7 billion in arms received over that period. Russia dealt the greatest value of weapons to India, sending more than $13.6 billion.
Overall, the U.S. sent more than $26.9 billion in weaponry to foreign nations while Russia sent a total exceeding $29.7 billion in weaponry around the globe.
Interestingly, the U.S. actually recieved roughly $16 million worth of weaponry from Russia. This was part of a $1 billion helicopter deal the two nations made, so that the U.S. could supply Afghan security forces with equipment they were already more familiar with.
Importantly, SIPRI's totals don't measure the cost of the transaction but the cost of the weapons' production. The numbers are listed as the production value of the weapons sold rather than the amount they were actually sold for.
In addition, SIPRI does not track the transfer of certain small arms.
SIPRI gives several examples to explain their chosen method. In 2009, 6 Eurofighters valued at $55 million each were delivered by Germany to Austria. Therefore the delivery was valued at $330 million, even though the actual transaction likely netted a much higher total.
You can read the full explanation of SIPRI's calculations here.
To compare, the New York Times listed the overall total of weapons sold by the U.S. worldwide at $66.3 billion. For the same year, SIPRI listed the total, based off of production cost, at roughly $15.4 billion.