Global Weapons Tracker 🕊️

Global Weapons Tracker surfaces defense industry data: countries and regional entities, their weapons producers, supply chains, and trade flows. By tracking who builds weapons, who buys them, and where the money flows, this project seeks to provide the data infrastructure needed to hold these exploitative and violent systems accountable. See motivation for stats on the human and environmental toll of warfare.

Quick Start 📝

First, clone this repository onto your computer of choice. Then, run the following commands from within the global-weapons-tracker/ directory. After this, global-weapons-tracker will be installed on your system as a CLI tool.

make install
source .venv/bin/activate
gwt --help
# OR
global-weapons-tracker --help

Usage 🧑‍💻

To access the CLI, you can use either global-weapons-tracker or gwt. gwt is configured by some zsh plugins and other programs to be an alias for git worktree.

Look up a country or entity's weapons producers

gwt entity usa
gwt entity russia
gwt entity india

Look up a company and its supply chain

gwt company "Lockheed Martin"
gwt company "Rheinmetall"
gwt company "Hindustan Aeronautics"

Query weapons trade flows

gwt trade --from "usa"
gwt trade --to "india"
gwt trade --from "russia" --to "china"

List available data

gwt list entities
gwt list companies

Data Format 📊

• Entities: data/countries-and-entities/<slug>.yaml — per-entity files with producers, exports, imports, and cited sources
• Companies: data/companies/<slug>.yaml — per-company files with key programs, suppliers, subsidiaries, and sources
• Trade flows: data/trade/trade_flows.csv — bilateral transfer records with estimated values and category

All data points include a sources field with URLs to the original source (primarily SIPRI, company annual reports, government publications).

Adding Data ❇️

1. Create a new YAML file in data/countries-and-entities/ or data/companies/
2. Follow the schema of existing files
3. Always include a sources array with verifiable citations
4. For trade flows, append rows to data/trade/trade_flows.csv

Data Sources ℹ️

• SIPRI Arms Transfers Database
• SIPRI Top 100
• Company annual reports and investor relations pages
• National defense ministry / export reports

Roadmap 🗺️

• Web-based map visualization of trade flows
• Supply chain graph rendering
• Historical time-series data
• More countries and companies

Motivation 🌍

The global weapons industry is a major driver of human suffering, environmental destruction, and wealth extraction — three interconnected crises that this project aims to make visible through open data.

Human Cost ☠️

Armed conflict is a leading contributor to the global burden of disease. Beyond direct battlefield deaths, conflicts kill indirectly through the collapse of healthcare infrastructure, displacement, famine, and epidemic outbreaks. A study by Imperial College London found that wars were associated with 29.4 million indirect civilian deaths globally between 1990 and 2017, with indirect mortality often exceeding direct combat fatalities by ratios of 3:1 to 15:1 [1]. Brown University's Costs of War project estimates that post-9/11 conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan have caused 4.5–4.7 million deaths (direct and indirect) as of 2023, with indirect deaths accounting for 3.6–3.8 million of that total [2, 3]. Every day, explosive remnants of war, ranging from landmines to cluster munition duds, continue to kill and maim civilians long after active fighting ends [4].

Environmental Cost 🧯

Militaries are among the world's largest institutional emitters of greenhouse gases, yet they are exempt from mandatory emissions reporting under the Kyoto and Paris agreements [5, 6]. The U.S. Department of Defense is the single largest institutional consumer of hydrocarbons on Earth, emitting an estimated 636 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalent between 2010 and 2019 — more than the entire national emissions of Sweden or Portugal [7, 8]. If all the world's militaries were a country, they would rank as the fourth-largest greenhouse gas emitter globally [5]. Explosive weapons deposit heavy metals, depleted uranium, white phosphorus, and other toxic substances into soil and water, contaminating ecosystems for generations [9, 10]. The United Nations recognizes that "armed conflicts use large quantities of munitions containing heavy metals and depleted uranium, and explosive chemicals, all toxic even in modest quantities, with devastating impacts on the environment" [11].

Profit Motive 🪎

The weapons industry is a $679 billion-a-year business. In 2024, the SIPRI Top 100 arms-producing companies posted their highest combined arms revenues ever, a 26% increase over the prior decade [12]. Global military expenditure reached $2.7 trillion in 2024 and $2.9 trillion in 2025 — the steepest growth since the Cold War [13, 14]. The industry is dominated by a handful of publicly traded corporations that exist primarily to enrich shareholders: Lockheed Martin returned $3.0 billion in share buybacks alone in FY2025, alongside $13.35 per share in dividends, while maintaining a net profit margin above 6% [15]. SIPRI notes that rising military expenditure "diverts resources from social expenditure" and comes at the direct expense of progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals [16].

By tracking who builds weapons, who buys them, and where the money flows, this project seeks to provide the data infrastructure needed to hold these systems accountable.

References

1. Jawad, M., et al. (2020). "Estimating indirect mortality impacts of armed conflict in civilian populations." BMC Medicine. PMC7487992
2. Savell, S. (2023). "How Death Outlives War: The Reverberating Impact of the Post-9/11 Wars on Human Health." Costs of War, Brown University. how-death-outlives-war
3. Costs of War, Brown University. "Human Costs." costs/human
4. UNICEF. "Conflict-related deaths per 100,000 population." CME_CNFLCT
5. American Academy of Arts and Sciences. (2025). "The Environmental Impacts of Modern Wars." amacad.org
6. Crawford, N. C. (2019). "Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War." Costs of War, Brown University. PDF
7. Thombs, R. (2025). "US military carbon footprint." PLOS Climate. Via BBC Science Focus
8. Earth.org. "The Environmental Impact of the US Military." earth.org
9. Costs of War, Brown University. "Environmental Costs." costs/environmental
10. United Nations. "How conflict impacts our environment." un.org
11. United Nations. Ibid.
12. Scarazzato, L., et al. (2025). "The SIPRI Top 100 Arms-producing and Military Services Companies, 2024." SIPRI. DOI: 10.55163/XPGD6816
13. Liang, X., et al. (2025). "Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2024." SIPRI. DOI: 10.55163/AVEC8366
14. SIPRI. (2026). "Global military spending rise continues." Press release, 27 April 2026. sipri.org
15. Lockheed Martin financial data via Stock Titan and Macrotrends
16. Tian, N. & Liang, X. (2025). "Rebalancing Military Spending Towards Achieving Sustainable Development." SIPRI. DOI: 10.55163/ZCIE5196