More countries are involved in conflicts beyond their borders now than at any moment since World War II.
The U.N. has identified a “new era of conflict and violence” emerging in the 21st century. An era characterized by more fragmented and regionalized wars often fought by “non-state actors such as political militias, criminal, and international terrorist groups.”
But governments, too, are showing a “growing tendency to flout the UN Charter, international borders, basic human rights and the International Criminal Court,” notes Guardian foreign affairs commentator Simon Tisdall. Headline wars in Ukraine and Palestine and lesser-reported conflicts in Congo, Myanmar and elsewhere rage on, while simmering tensions and territorial violations between non-warring nations threaten to escalate. Early in 2026, the illegal abduction of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro by U.S. forces and threats against other Latin American countries have further destabilized the region; Trump’s repeated threats to annex Greenland “one way or the other” could spell the end of NATO as a collective defense and peacekeeping force.
In this atmosphere, a single spark could ignite a conflict that spreads to the homelands of billions. Governments are pledging more money for defense — but how do things stand right now?
As part of our NeoMam Labs initiative, we have analyzed military expenditure data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute to identify the countries with the highest annual military spending and the most equipped militaries worldwide.
| Key findings: |
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| → The United States spent $997.3 billion on its military in 2024 — three times more than any other nation. → The country that spent the most as a percentage of government spending was Ukraine (34.48% or $64.7 billion). → China has the most active troops (2.03 million) and tanks (4,700). → The U.S. has the most military aircraft: 12,921, including Air Force (5,036), Army (3,898), Coast Guard (200), Marine Corps (1,342) and Navy (2,445) aircraft. → The U.S. also has the most naval warships (470) — this is just six more than China (464). |
We hope this project will make it easier for members of the public to quickly share trustworthy facts, reducing the level of disinformation and misinformation on the subject that is likely to dominate 2026.
| What we did: |
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| We sourced data from the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database to collate reports of all commissioned active units within each national army. For warring nations like Russia and Ukraine, we used the best estimates from reputable research firms and recent news reports. Please note that the total number of vehicles and troops doesn’t equate to military power, as it doesn’t account for the quality of training and technology in each country. |
The five countries with the highest military expenditures
#5: India spends $86.13 billion on its military
The Republic of India. India spent 720,658 crore rupees (about $86 billion) on its military in 2024, making it the fifth-largest military spender that year. This represents 2.27% of the government’s total spending.
In fact, India spent nine times as much as Pakistan, one of India’s two main military threats. Tensions rose between India and Pakistan throughout 2024, and there has been daily gunfire across the frontier since April 2025, when 25 Indian tourists were killed in an attack claimed by the Kashmir Resistance. Both India and Pakistan have nuclear arms, and their rivalry continues to simmer.
#4: Germany spends $88.46 billion on its military
Despite having just the world’s 19th-largest population, Germany spends the fourth-highest figure in the world on defense: nearly €82 billion, or $88.46 billion.
In March 2025, as Trump wobbled in his support for NATO allies, Germany’s parliament voted to exempt military spending from its strict rules on national debt and radically raise the defense budget above 2% for the first time in 30 years.
“The decision we are taking today… can be nothing less than the first major step towards a new European defense community,” said then-soon-to-be head of the federal government, Friedrich Merz.
#3: Russia spends $148.97 billion on its military
Russia is the world’s third-biggest military spender, burning through nearly 14 trillion rubles or $149 billion in 2024. Minister of Defense Andrei Belousov told the Russian Ministry of Defense Board that spending had reached 6.3% of Russia’s GDP, or 32.5% of the total federal budget.
In fact, when calculating Russia’s military spending in purchasing power parity terms rather than cash, the Federation spent more on its military in 2024 than the rest of Europe combined, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
China, North Korea and Iran all provide Russia with military hardware or troops. But at home, Russia’s military ambition has become so central to the culture and economy that Putin finds himself between a rock and a hard place.
On the one hand, military spending has pushed the Russian economy to the breaking point.
But on the other hand, cutting military spending means destabilizing Russia’s military-industrial complex by laying off troops and reducing arms production. Plus, Putin fears he would look weak and Russia would look vulnerable, particularly since the war in Ukraine has stimulated military rivals to increase their own spending.
#2: China spends $313.66 billion on its military
China is the world’s second-biggest military spender, and in 2024, it spent more than twice as much as the third-biggest spender, Russia: 2.25 trillion Yuan, or nearly $314 billion. In fact, China spends as much on its military as the rest of Asia and Oceania put together.
The Chinese military maintains a little over two million personnel, or one and a half times as many as the U.S.
But a 2023 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute study noted that China “represents little or no direct threat to the United States,” “China’s military strategy is inherently defensive,” and “it has limited ability to project power outside of its own region.”
However, the Institute also warned that “war between China and the U.S. over the status of Taiwan would come at a high cost for all concerned, and might even escalate into a nuclear confrontation,” and advised that “cooperation between Washington and Beijing is essential to solving the world’s most urgent problems.”
#1: The United States spends $997.31 billion on its military
The world’s biggest military spender is the U.S., which spent $997.3 billion on defense in 2024. That’s more than three times China’s military budget.
Much of this was used to modernize military capabilities and the nuclear arsenal to maintain a strategic advantage over the nuclear powers of Russia and China. Indeed, U.S. military spending is higher than during the Cold War, even allowing for inflation.
Donald Trump began his second term by attempting to back America away from its role as global policeman while making his own threats to territories that he would consider taking by force. But these approaches have converged as policing foreign governments becomes a pretext for using force to acquire oil and power.
Figures show that the U.S. is not about to cede its position as the biggest boy in the playground: in 2025, around $182 billion was earmarked for military salaries, $170 billion for procurement of weapons and equipment and $143 billion a year for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation.
Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s newly announced plans to reshape the army, which include rolling back DEI initiatives and banning beards outside the Special Forces, will affect developments. And the president has mentioned raising the U.S. military budget by a further 50% to $1.5 trillion in 2027, posting that this “will allow us to build the ‘Dream Military’ that we have long been entitled to and, more importantly, that will keep us SAFE and SECURE, regardless of foe.” However, experts note that such a move would massively inflate the country’s national debt, with the effects felt in the daily lives of ordinary Americans.
The 20 biggest military spenders overall and as a percentage of total government spending
The big three spend more than the next 17 put together.
Between them, the U.S., China and Russia spent $1.46 trillion on their militaries in 2024. That’s 1.7 times as much as the next 17 biggest spenders altogether. Indeed, beyond the UK and Saudi Arabia, no single country has a military expenditure higher than half of Russia’s.
The UK spent £63.99 billion ($81.76 billion), or 2.28% of all government spending, on its military in 2024. It was one of 23 out of 32 NATO member countries to meet the target of spending 2% of GDP on defense expenditure and has committed to raising that to 2.5% by 2027 and 5% by 2035.
When measuring military spending as a percentage of total government spending (distinct from GDP), Ukraine is the biggest spender. Some 34.48% of the Ukrainian government’s spending in 2024 was on the military, eclipsing that of Russia (7.05%).
The countries with the most active troops
Only four countries have over a million active troops — but Ukraine is a close fifth.
Next, we looked at the countries with the most active troops. China is out ahead with China 2.04 million. This is 35.67% more than the second top country, Russia, which currently maintains 1.50 million active troops. India has a similar figure, and the U.S. has the fourth-most troops: 1.3 million.
Notably, Ukraine is the only other power with a comparable figure to the top four. The embattled country has 980,000 troops, twice the number of the next largest army (South Korea) and 65.3% the size of Russia’s — despite only having a population 22.5% the size of Russia’s.
President Vladimir Putin called up 160,000 men aged 18-30 as part of a spring conscription drive in March 2025. That’s 10,000 more than during the spring conscription in 2024. Human rights lawyer Timofey Vaskin says that authorities “are coming up with new forms of refilling the army” and that the call-up has become like a lottery.
The countries with the largest tank fleets
Only a handful of countries maintain large numbers of tanks — but the vehicle remains relevant.
Right now, China (4,700 tanks) and the U.S (4,640) maintain the largest tank fleets. Only ten countries have over 1,000 tanks each, while a further seven are in double digits.
The first “tracked armoured vehicle” was an armoured car body fixed onto a tractor to meet the unique challenges of trench warfare during World War I. But the development of uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs) and anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) over recent years has put a question mark over the continued usefulness of military tanks.
The strength and power of the tank, along with improvements in active protection systems (APS) and adaptable armor, however, have kept them on the shopping lists of global militaries. Poland recently spent a reputed €6 billion on buying 180 South Korean K2 tanks, which will be partially constructed in Polish factories. With its proximity to the war in Ukraine, Poland has raised its military spending from 2.7% of GDP in 2022 to around 4.7% in 2025.
The countries with the largest air forces
The UK outpunches its weight in the skies but is looking to add still more aircraft.
The U.S. has 3.9 times as many military aircraft as China, with 12,921 compared to China’s 3,309.
America’s fleet is divided between the Air Force (5,036 aircraft), Army (3,898), Coast Guard (200), Marine Corps (1,342) and Navy (2,445). The Air Force considers its fleet to be of importance both strategically and optically, leaving no doubt that its fighting planes empower the States to “maintain air superiority around the world.”
The UK has the fifth-highest number of military aircraft (824) despite having just a fraction of the population numbers of the countries above it. Still, the UK is looking to fortify this fleet in light of the current geopolitical climate.
“With the prospect of UK involvement in a major war on the European continent closer than it has been for decades,” stated a 2023 Defence Select Committee, “there are serious questions as to whether the UK’s reduced combat air fleet still provides a sufficient deterrent and whether its limited numbers of admittedly highly capable aircraft could overcome a peer adversary in a warfighting context.”
The countries with the largest naval fleets
Turkey, Japan and South Korea join much larger countries among the most equipped navies.
Finally, we looked at the number of naval warships each country maintains. Again, the U.S. (470) and China (464) have comparable numbers and significantly more than any other country.
With 142 naval warships, Turkey has the fifth-largest fleet of naval warships. Turkey also has the seventh-most troops, the sixth-largest tank fleet and the ninth-largest military aircraft inventory.
“History shows us that the country that possesses naval power is always destined to be supreme,” said Turkey’s then-defense minister Hulusi Akar in 2019. “And the country that does not have naval power is weakened. We needed this power yesterday and we need it today, and we will need it tomorrow.”
The state of the art of war
The world is in a dangerous place — but more arms do not guarantee more peace.
Some argue World War III is already here. World Wars I and II both began with relatively local conflicts involving regional powers. They expanded as foreign allies joined for humanitarian reasons or in the hope of protecting or changing the prevailing world order.
Outgoing United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted in 2025 that the reason institutions like NATO were established was “to try to make sure that we never had another global conflagration after World War II. And the strength of an alliance like NATO is in the basic bargain that countries make in joining it, and that is: an attack on one is an attack on all.”
But this “all-for-one” mechanism is not triggered automatically, warns Edward R Arnold, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. Arnold also notes that the presence of more arms and more conflicts increases the chance of a misunderstanding: “The chances of a miscommunication where one ship accidentally fires on another, I think that goes up. We need to be really prepared about what that means.”
Still, the global economic impact of violence reached $19.97 trillion (or 11.4% of global GDP) in 2024, more wars are being fought than since the end of World War II, and 122 million people are now forcibly displaced. The question of when World War 3 begins—or if it has already begun—may be a question of where you’re sitting.
| Methodology: We sourced data from the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database to collate reports of all commissioned active units within each national army, excluding reserve troops, decommissioned vessels and vehicles on order. For warring nations like Russia and Ukraine, we used the best estimates from reputable research firms and recent news reports. > Please note that the total number of vehicles and troops doesn’t equate to military power, as it doesn’t account for the quality of training and technology in each country. |
