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Buyers are already diversifying their arms suppliers. The industry has no name for it.

The public volume data shows importers moving off single-bloc dependence. The vetoes, sanctions and re-export bans that push them there are documented. What is missing is a buyer-side measure of how exposed each importer still is.

August 2026 edition

All share figures drawn from SIPRI are trend-indicator value volume shares, a proxy for the volume of military capability transferred, not dollar sales value. SIPRI re-based its dataset on 11 March 2024, so figures from before and after that date are not spliced together.

The problem

Most coverage of the arms trade reads from the seller's side. It ranks the biggest exporters, tallies the largest deals, and treats the buyer as a destination rather than a decision-maker. That framing hides the thing a defence-procurement officer actually has to manage: how many independent suppliers a country can reach, and how much political risk sits inside each of those relationships.

The public data already shows the shift. Read from the buyer's side, the last decade is a story of importers moving off single-bloc dependence, sometimes by choice and sometimes because a supplier government pulled a deal. There is a documented record of vetoes, sanctions exposure and re-export bans that reshaped who could buy what. There is not, anywhere, a buyer-centric measure that scores an importer on how concentrated and how politically exposed its supplier mix has become. This review sets out the evidence for that measure and what it would take to build one from public data alone.

Key findings

India's Russian share fell from 72 percent to 55 percent to 36 percent across three five-year windows.

SIPRI records India's share of arms imports from Russia at 72 percent in 2010 to 2014, 55 percent in 2015 to 2019, and 36 percent in 2020 to 2024. This is the clearest single case of a large buyer diversifying away from one dominant supplier. The figures are SIPRI trend-indicator value volume shares, not dollar sales.

SIPRI TIV volume share. Source: SIPRI, 10 March 2025

Ukraine became the largest arms importer in 2020 to 2024 by buying from more than 30 states.

SIPRI reports Ukraine received major arms from more than 30 states in 2022 to 2023 and became the world's largest arms importer in 2020 to 2024, at 8.8 percent of global imports. That is a multi-supplier procurement model running at scale under wartime pressure. The share is a SIPRI TIV volume figure.

SIPRI TIV volume share. Source: SIPRI, March 2024, SIPRI, 10 March 2025

The United States supplied major arms to 107 states; France to 65; Russia to 33.

SIPRI counts the number of recipients each major exporter reached in 2020 to 2024. Supplier reach is concentrated among a small number of primes, which is exactly why a buyer's independent-supplier count matters.

SIPRI TIV volume share. Source: SIPRI, 10 March 2025

The US share of global arms exports rose from 35 percent to 43 percent; Russia's exports fell 64 percent.

SIPRI puts the US share of global exports at 43 percent in 2020 to 2024, up from 35 percent in 2015 to 2019, more than four times the next-largest exporter, France, at 9.6 percent. Over the same comparison SIPRI records Russia's exports down 64 percent, attributing part of the fall to the United States and its allies pressuring states not to buy Russian arms, and to sanctions. Concentration on the supply side is increasing, not diluting. All figures are SIPRI TIV volume shares.

SIPRI TIV volume share. Source: SIPRI, 10 March 2025

China was the fourth-largest exporter, yet many large importers do not buy Chinese arms for political reasons.

SIPRI records China at 5.9 percent of global exports in 2020 to 2024 and states plainly that many large importers avoid Chinese arms for political reasons. The alignment barrier is not inferred here; the dataset names it. The share is a SIPRI TIV volume figure.

SIPRI TIV volume share. Source: SIPRI, 10 March 2025

Four of the five largest exporters are UN Security Council permanent members.

SIPRI's 2019 to 2023 fact sheet lists the five largest exporters as the United States, France, Russia, China and Germany. Only Germany sits outside the Security Council permanent five. That makes a non-permanent-member supplier share a measurable, meaningful headline for any buyer that wants to reduce permanent-member leverage over its supply.

SIPRI TIV volume share. Source: SIPRI, March 2024

What the volume data says when you read it from the buyer's side

SIPRI's trend-indicator value is a proxy for the volume of military capability transferred. It is not a price. A large TIV share means a lot of capability moved, not a lot of money changed hands. Every figure in this review that comes from SIPRI is a volume share, and it is labelled as such wherever it is read.

One more caution governs how the numbers can be used. SIPRI re-based its entire dataset on 11 March 2024. Figures published before that rebasing and figures published after it are not directly comparable across releases. Where this review shows a trend across five-year windows, the windows come from within a single consistent series, and the report does not splice a pre-rebasing figure onto a post-rebasing one.

Read with those two constraints in place, the direction is consistent. The single strongest data point is India: a fall from 72 percent to 55 percent to 36 percent Russian dependence across three consecutive windows. Ukraine shows the same instinct under duress, sourcing major arms from more than 30 states at once. These are buyers spreading their supply.

Diversification and dependence are moving at the same time

The buyer-side picture is not uniformly one of freedom. SIPRI records European NATO members raising their US-supplied share from 52 percent in 2015 to 2019 to 64 percent in 2020 to 2024, even as it describes those same states taking steps to reduce their dependence on imports. Stated intent and measured dependence point in opposite directions in the same dataset.

China took a different route out of dependence. SIPRI records China's own arms imports down 64 percent between the two windows as it substituted imported systems, mainly Russian, with domestic production. That is the build-rather-than-buy alternative to diversification, and it is only open to a buyer with the industrial base to attempt it.

The point is not that every buyer is diversifying. It is that the strategic question every buyer now faces, spread your suppliers or deepen a single relationship, is visible in the public volume data and has no shared name or measure. That is the gap this review is written to close.

Why the buyer's exposure is not captured anywhere

SIPRI measures volume and who supplies whom. The IISS Military Balance maps force structures and procurement. Arms Trade Treaty reporting tracks compliance and transparency. The Small Arms Survey covers small arms and light weapons. Each is authoritative in its lane. None of them scores an importer on how concentrated its supplier mix is or how much of its inflow comes from suppliers with a documented history of using export vetoes, sanctions or re-export restrictions.

That is the white space. The raw material to fill it is public. The next section sets out the documented cases that would populate a supplier-leverage ledger, and the section after that sets out the measures a public-data index would compute.

When politics gated the deal

Supplier governments can restrict access to capability after price and performance have been settled. The cited cases show how.

2019

Turkey and the F-35

The United States formally removed Turkey, a NATO ally and an F-35 partner and producer, from the F-35 programme after Turkey took delivery of the Russian S-400 air-defence system. The US Department of Defense estimated around 500 million dollars to retool the supply chain around Turkey's exit.

This is the cleanest public example of a single foreign-policy dispute cancelling a buyer's access to a top-tier capability, and doing so even to a treaty ally.

Reuters, 17 July 2019 USNI News, 17 July 2019

2020 to 2021

The UAE F-35 package

A US package to the UAE that included the F-35 and the MQ-9 Reaper was contested in the Senate under veto threat in December 2020, then put at risk by US concerns over UAE ties to China in 2021. The UAE later suspended its acceptance of the package.

Access to the capability was made contingent on a buyer's geopolitical alignment, specifically its distance from China. It is the case most directly relevant to Gulf buyers.

Wall Street Journal, 25 May 2021 Breaking Defense, 14 December 2021

2018 to 2024

Germany, the Eurofighter and Saudi Arabia

After the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, Germany halted arms deals with Saudi Arabia in October 2018 and repeatedly extended the ban. Because German-made components sit inside the Eurofighter Typhoon, Germany's veto blocked British sales of Typhoons to Saudi Arabia. Germany dropped its objection to further Eurofighters for Saudi Arabia in January 2024.

A deal can be vetoed by a government that is not even the prime contractor. Component-level export-control exposure means a buyer's supply can be gated by the politics of a country it never contracted with.

The Telegraph, 29 March 2019 Reuters, 7 January 2024

2022 to 2023

Switzerland and re-export to Ukraine

Citing its War Materiel Act and its neutrality, Switzerland refused requests from Germany, Denmark, Spain and others to re-export Swiss-made ammunition to Ukraine. The Federal Council reconfirmed the position on 10 March 2023.

An end-use and re-export restriction can stop a buyer from using kit it already owns the way it wants to. The sovereignty risk does not end at the point of sale.

Reuters, 10 March 2023 Swiss Federal Council, 10 March 2023

2020 to 2022

India, the S-400 and CAATSA

India's purchase of the Russian S-400 exposed it to US sanctions under CAATSA, the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. The US House voted in July 2022 for a waiver, described as necessary to help deter China, but the exposure and uncertainty ran for years and the waiver was a drawn-out process.

Buying from one bloc created sanctions exposure from another. This is the forced-choice dilemma stated in the plainest terms: capability from one supplier, political risk imposed by a second.

The Indian Express, 8 July 2022 The New Indian Express, 15 July 2022

Measuring supplier dependence

Everything below can be computed from the free SIPRI Arms Transfers Database, using its trend-indicator value tables, plus public news and treaty records. No proprietary data is needed, and no predictive or dollar-value claim is made. The index would be descriptive, and every input would be auditable.

Supplier count per importer

Count the distinct suppliers delivering major arms to each importer over a rolling five-year window, straight from the SIPRI importer-to-supplier tables. Simple and transparent.

Supplier concentration

Compute a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index over each importer's supplier volume shares. A high index means single-supplier dependence; a low index means a diversified mix. A standard, non-proprietary measure applied to volume shares, not prices.

Top-supplier dependence ratio

The share of an importer's volume coming from its single largest supplier, for example India at 36 percent Russia in 2020 to 2024. Directly comparable across countries and across windows.

Non-permanent-member supplier share

The share of each importer's volume sourced from suppliers outside the UN Security Council permanent five of the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom. Pure arithmetic on SIPRI shares, published with a clear definition footnote.

Veto and sanctions exposure overlay

Tag each supplier with a documented public record of export vetoes, sanctions leverage or re-export restrictions, drawn from cases like the ones in this review, then compute the share of an importer's inflow coming from high-leverage suppliers. This is a curated, cited ledger, kept editable and open, not a black box.

Trend deltas

Because SIPRI publishes five-year rolling averages, the change between windows, for example 2015 to 2019 against 2020 to 2024, can be shown as a diversification trajectory, always within one consistent series.

Limits

  • Trend-indicator value is a volume and capability proxy, not sales value or price. Every SIPRI-derived figure is labelled as a volume share.
  • SIPRI re-based its dataset on 11 March 2024. Pre-rebasing and post-rebasing figures are not spliced together.
  • Rolling five-year averages smooth single-year spikes. The window used is named on every figure.
  • The veto and sanctions overlay is a curated, cited and inherently interpretive ledger. Its source list is published so it can be audited, and it is never presented as being as objective as the volume arithmetic.
  • No proprietary or predictive claims are made from public data. The index is descriptive only.

Next edition

This edition sets out the argument and the evidence. It is not yet the index. The following are planned for later editions, listed here so readers know what is coming and what is not yet published.

A supplier-diversification score for the top importers

The supplier count, concentration index and top-supplier dependence ratio, computed per importer from the public SIPRI volume tables, for a defined set of buyers.

A non-permanent-member supplier share, ranked

The share of each importer's volume sourced outside the Security Council permanent five, with the permanent-five definition stated in full.

An open veto and sanctions ledger

A cited, editable record of the export vetoes, sanctions regimes and re-export restrictions used against buyers, with each entry backed by a named source, so the exposure overlay stays auditable.

The scope and definitions the owner must fix first

Which importers to cover, which definition of non-aligned to score against, and which time windows to headline. These editorial choices are owner decisions and are logged in Admin, Info Needed, before any index is published.

Sources

  1. SIPRI: Press release: Ukraine the world's biggest arms importer, United States dominance of global arms exports grows, Russian exports fall
    10 March 2025 . SIPRI TIV volume data, not dollars
  2. SIPRI: Fact Sheet: Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2023 (PDF)
    March 2024 . SIPRI TIV volume data, not dollars
  3. Reuters: US removing Turkey from F-35 programme after its Russian missile defence purchase
    17 July 2019
  4. USNI News: Turkey Formally Dropped From F-35 Program, DoD Estimates $500M to Retool Supply Chain
    17 July 2019
  5. Wall Street Journal: F-35 Sale to U.A.E. Imperiled Over U.S. Concerns About Ties to China
    25 May 2021
  6. Breaking Defense: UAE F-35 deal on life support after Emiratis cancel acceptance of weapons package
    14 December 2021
  7. The Telegraph: Germany lifts export ban blocking British arms sales to Saudi Arabia
    29 March 2019
  8. Reuters: Germany will not oppose further Eurofighters to Saudi Arabia
    7 January 2024
  9. Reuters: Swiss government refuses re-export of arms to Ukraine
    10 March 2023
  10. Swiss Federal Council: Federal Council reconfirms position on re-export of war materiel
    10 March 2023
  11. The Indian Express: Explained: US CAATSA, India, Russia and the S-400 weapons system
    8 July 2022
  12. The New Indian Express: Necessary to help deter China: US House votes for India sanctions waiver over Russian S-400 missile deal
    15 July 2022
  13. SIPRI: Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2024 (fact sheet landing page)
    10 March 2025 . SIPRI TIV volume data, not dollars
August 2026 edition

The briefing edition covers what a diversification and exposure index would show for a named country, under review before release.

Request the briefing edition of this review