The 3rd Largest Military in the World is Fourth Largest Military Spender

By siliconindia | Friday, 16 December 2016, 06:00 Hrs

BENGALURU: It's not just the recently elected U.S President who's hell-bent on military build-up. According to IHS Jane's latest annual Defense Budgets report, amid rising feuds and pockets of instability, global defense spending is expected to grow sharply in the next decade.

Principal analyst at the London-based defense and security analysis firm, Craig Caffrey says Global defense expenditures rose to $1.57 trillion this year from $1.55 trillion in 2015 as Asian nations act on growing nervousness around the South China Sea. Fenella McGerty, another analyst at IHS Jane's, expects spending levels to return to pre-2008-2009 financial crisis levels by 2018.

Here we bring a breakdown of expenditure on military operations at different regions:

Asia, especially India

Pakistan spent $9.5 bn on military expenses last year, which is $1.2 bn more than what they did in 2014, according to data published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). China's defense budget is expected to reach $233 billion by 2021, which will be almost four times what the U.K. spends and more than the combined expenditure of Western Europe. India overtakes Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the fourth-largest spender in the world; India's military spending in 2015 was $51.3 billion.

Combined budget of EU members

According to the report, European Union members boosted their combined budget to $219 billion in 2016, with Western Europe leading the charge.

The only thing that has been holding them back is the economic constraints in the south and the problems related to Brexit.

Russia

Russia, on the other hand, has been cutting budget since the late 1990s to $48 billion this year.

"Despite a hit from the dramatic drop in oil prices, the Middle East as a whole is not expected to dramatically reduce expenditures considering regional instability," Caffrey told Bloomberg.

America

The US remains in pole position at $622 billion in 2016; its budget accounting for about 40 percent of the global total, reveals the report. The Pentagon's "investment levels going forward were to decrease by 1.1 percent in real terms, but with the election of Trump, the expectation is that both investment and readiness will receive injections of much-needed funds," said Guy Eastman, a senior analyst.