The business of war: this is how the arms industry enriches itself with the conflict in Ukraine

In any armed conflict there is a face and a tail and the ukrainian war has shown it again. While thousands of lives are lost at the front, the arms industry grows rich: only in the United States, it will take 400,000 million dollars, almost half of the new Defense budget.

The director of the IECAH, Jesús Núñez Villaverde, points out that, from the arms industry, “every war is used on the one hand as new weapons lab and on the other hand as a showcase to try to acquire new customers“.

This war has highlighted the need for increase ammo crafting and the US has boosted its production to levels not seen since the Korean War. The North American country estimates spending 1,000 million dollars a year for 15 years to modernize the munitions factories. In figures, the country has gone from manufacturing more than 14,000 projectiles a month before the war to multiplying its production by six, reaching 90,000 in 31 days.

11 months of conflict in which the Pentagon has made an estimate of the entire weapons that it has sent to Ukraine: more than 100 million ammunition and artillery shells, 46,000 anti-tank weapons, 1,600 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and 8,500 Javelins to destroy armored vehicles, key weapons in the counteroffensive.