US Ends Reports On Military Costs, Arms Transfers

The State Department announced in August that it will no longer publish World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers (WMEAT) reports, which have been released by the US government since the 1960s.

The WMEATs detail US global military spending, arms transfers, and related data for each country in the world. The 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) included an amendment that repealed a 1994 provision requiring the State Department to publish a WMEAT each year.

“Section 5114(b)(4) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 repealed the 1994 statutory provision that required the Department of State to publish an edition of WMEAT every year. Consistent with this repeal, the Department of State will cease to produce and publish WMEAT,” the State Department said on its website.

The State Department said that the report it published in 2021 was the “final edition” of the WMEAT. The 2021 WMEAT covered an 11-year period from 2009 through 2019 and found that the US was by far the world’s largest arms dealer.

During that period, about “79 percent of world arms trade by value appears to have been supplied by the United States.”– READ MORE