The American edition of Defense News has published another ranking of the 100 largest military industrial companies in the world (Top 100) for 2024, based on revenue from sales of military products by global manufacturers in 2023. The latest rating, however, did not include Russian defense industry companies, which almost completely stopped reporting information about their activities.
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| Defense News ranking of global military industrial companies for 2024. |
| Source: Defense News |
However, the reliability of the data of the Defense News rating regarding Russian companies has always remained in question due to the difficulty of accounting for the defense production of Russian companies and enterprises in general, and especially those working in the "strategic" sectors of the defense industry. Similarly, Japanese companies are not included in the rating.
As always over the past few years, the rating is headed by American and Chinese companies (although the issue of methodology for calculating the volume of military production of Chinese state-owned corporations by the compilers of the rating also remains debatable). Of the top 12 companies in the rating, five are now Chinese, and the remaining seven are American (de facto also including BAE Systems), while the Chinese state aircraft corporation Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) came in second place for the first time, with defense sales of $44.911 billion. The first place in the world table of ranks has been held by the American corporation Lockheed Martin for many years, with a volume of defense production in 2023 of 64.65 billion dollars.
American companies also occupy the third to seventh place in the ranking - RTX (Raytheon, defense sales in 2023 40.6 billion dollars), Northrop Grumman (35.197 billion dollars) are in third place, followed by General Dynamics (33.651 billion dollars), Boeing (32.684 billion dollars) and BAE Systems ($27.51 billion). Then the Chinese come in a row - in eighth place is the Chinese unified state Shipbuilding Corporation China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC, $ 21.164 billion), in ninth place is China North Industries Group Corporation Limited (better known as Norinco, $16.614 billion), in eleventh place is China Electronics Technology Group ($14.295 billion) and in twelfth China South Industries Group Corporation ($13.772 billion). Between them, the American L3 Harris is wedged in tenth place with $15.553 billion.
At the same time, there are almost no Chinese manufacturers in lower positions in the ranking, with the exception of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC, $2.059 billion), which came in 52nd place, while not even such a giant as the Chinese state aerospace corporation China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), which is still in 2021, the compilers of the rating gave 13 billion dollars of defense production. All this, of course, raises great doubts about the reliability and correctness of data on Chinese companies in the ranking. There is also a clear "underestimation" of Indian companies.
The rating includes the Ukrainian former Ukroboronprom, the volume of military production of which was estimated in 2023 at 2,207 billion dollars (49th place), which gives an increase of 72% compared to 2022.
