State Department Quits Tracking Weapons and Arms
World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers (WMEAT) is an annual report by the US State Department. The WMEAT was a required annual report of Military and Arms transfers worldwide. This requirement was instituted in a 1994 Statutory Provision that required publishing this information directly on their website.
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 repealed this. For those of you that do not know, Congress passes the budget for the Department of Defense (DOD). This budget determines how money is allocated for all government entities under the DOD. This budget includes gear, ammunition, weapons, explosives, aircraft, ships, contracting, food, and more. Interestingly, that Statutory Provision was removed during the last budgeting cycle.
The WMEAT report has been published since 1974, with little explanation why it has been discontinued. These reports remain available and publicly accessible as Adobe PDFs or Excel spreadsheets on their website, and you can access them from https://www.state.gov/world-military-expenditures-and-arms-transfers/. If you genuinely want to see the global arms trade, I would absolutely recommend researching these numbers. It is interesting to see how many products are manufactured, exported, or imported by other countries. The data is fascinating, particularly when compared to the timeline of significant world events over the years.
At First Breach, we are constantly following the defense industry’s data and trends to do our best in staying ahead of the curve.