“Those who profit from war are rarely the ones who fight” is a famous quote by one of the greatest philosophers of the last century, Bertrand Russell. And nowhere is this more true than in the ongoing Ukraine war.
While both Russia and Ukraine have lost over a million soldiers each, thousands of miles away from the frontline, the brutal war has been turned into a money-minting scheme.
India and China, which have saved billions of dollars in discounted Russian oil, are often cited as examples of profiting from war.
India’s Russian oil imports helped Indian refiners save at least US$12.6 billion in a little over three years, an analysis of India’s official trade data by the Indian newspaper ‘The Indian Express‘ showed.
An analysis by Reuters showed that India has saved at least US$17 billion by increasing oil imports from Russia since early 2022. For China, this figure could be even higher, as Beijing has bought more Russian oil and reportedly received steeper discounts than New Delhi.
According to the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CERA), between December 2022 and June 2025, China absorbed 47% of all Russian crude oil exports, followed by India at 38%, the EU (6%), and Turkiye (6%).
However, the savings by India and China pale in comparison to the massive profits raked in by the US military industrial complex.
In fact, one can argue that ever since the end of the Cold War, the Ukraine War has proved to be the most profitable thing for the US defense companies.
In the last three years, their profits have surged, order books have swelled many times, and their valuations have skyrocketed. More importantly, the US defense companies will rake in the profits stemming from the Ukraine War for many years to come, even after the war has ended.
Furthermore, the Ukraine war has been profitable not only for the ‘Big Five,’ the so-called prime contractors in the US, but has also struck gold for a host of new entrants in the US military industrial complex.
‘War Is The Health Of The State’: Rising US Arms Exports
“War is the health of the state,” the radical American writer Randolph Bourne said, in the midst of the First World War. The quote highlights how war is exploited by political powers, the establishment, and big corporations to consolidate power and generate profits.
This quote, though written more than a century ago, still rings true in the context of the Ukraine War.
The three-year-old war has led to rising arms exports for the US.
According to SIPRI, the US’s share of global arms exports grew from 35 percent in 2014-19 to 43 percent in 2020-24, a rise of 21 percent, with arms exported to more than 100 countries.
Notably, while the US has always been one of the world’s top arms suppliers, this is the highest US share in global arms exports.
While a lot of these weapons went to Ukraine, other European countries have also increased their arms imports from the US since the war started in February 2022.
In 2024, the total value of transferred defence articles, services, and security cooperation activities under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) system was US$117.9 billion, a 45.7-percent increase from US$80.9 billion in 2023. In 2022, the U.S. transferred just US$50.9 billion worth of military equipment and services to other countries under the FMS component.
So in just two years, from 2022 to 2024, the US defense services and equipment sales to other countries under the FMS program have more than doubled, from US$50.9 billion in 2022 to US$117.9 billion in 2024.
Similarly, Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) rose to US$200.8 billion in 2024 from US$157.5 billion in 2023, marking a 27.6 percent increase.
Ukraine War & US Prime Contractors
An overwhelming majority of the arms export orders that the US defense contractors received under both FMS and DCS systems, understandably, went to prime US defense contractors, also known as the ‘Big Five’.
A recent research paper by William D. Hartung and Stephen N. Semler – ‘Profits of War: Top Beneficiaries of Pentagon Spending, 2020–2024’, notes that private defense contractors secured nearly US$2.4 trillion in Pentagon contracts during this period, over half of its US$4.4-trillion discretionary budget.
Of this, approximately US$771 billion, roughly one-third, went to five prime contractors: Lockheed Martin (US$313 billion), RTX (US$145 billion), General Dynamics (US$116 billion), Northrop Grumman (US$81 billion), and Boeing (US$115 billion).
However, this represents only a part of their overall earnings, as these companies also earn substantial amounts due to overseas equipment sales.
A recent paper by Jaibal Naduvath – ‘Capitol Consensus: Where War is Business,’ published in the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) notes that in 2024, overseas equipment sales by private defense contractors reached US$318.7 billion. This marked an increase of over 30 percent compared to the previous year, when total sales reached US$238.4 billion.
Ukraine As A Catalyst For US Military Sales
Wars have always acted as catalysts for boosting military spending. According to SIPRI, in 2024, the global defense spending reached US$2.72 trillion, marking a 9.4 percent increase, the steepest annual rise since the end of the Cold War.
Between 2020 and 2024, 45 percent of Ukraine’s arms came from the US (constituting 9.3 percent of America’s total arms exports during this period), peaking after the conflict began in 2022.
For instance, the US sold weapons worth US$9.8 million to Ukraine in 2019; however, in 2024, the US sold weapons worth US$312.6 million to Ukraine under the FMS system, rising by more than 31 times.
Furthermore, Jaibal Naduvath notes in his ORF paper that the war in Ukraine has catalysed higher production rates and expanded capacity within the US defense-industrial base.
Also, since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, the US is increasingly shifting to direct sales rather than military aid financing for providing weapons to Ukraine.
In August 2025, for instance, the US approved a US$825-million sale of 3,350 Extended Range Attack Munitions (ERAM) missiles with associated equipment to Ukraine. Funding for these sales comes from NATO allies (Denmark, Norway, Netherlands) and US Foreign Military Financing (FMF) programmes, which are loan/grant mechanisms that may involve repayment but are sales.
In July 2025, the European countries agreed to purchase weapons worth nearly US$10 billion from the US to supply them to Ukraine under the NATO Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative.
Additionally, during the White House meeting with Trump in August, the Ukrainian President Zelenskyy tried to push for a deal under which European countries would buy weapons worth nearly US$90 billion from the US to supply Ukraine.
From Europe’s ‘Peace Dividend’ To ‘Economic Dividend’ To US Defense Cos
European countries will not only buy US weapons to supply Ukraine, but they themselves will buy US weapons worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
At the 2025 NATO Summit at The Hague, member states committed to raising annual defense and security spending to 5 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2035. This represents a 150-percent jump from the 2-percent target first agreed by NATO Defence Ministers in 2006.
Notably, the US accounted for 64 percent of NATO allies’ arms imports in 2020-24, up from 52 percent in 2015-19, underscoring that enhanced military spending by NATO countries will automatically lead to increasing weapons sales by US companies.
Rising Capitalizations For Defense Companies
Since the beginning of the war, Jaibal Naduvath notes, the S&P Aerospace & Defense index has surged almost 90 percent, far outpacing its 22-percent gain over a comparable pre-war period.
However, over the same two windows, the S&P 500 Index rose around 50 percent, implying a similar pace of growth for the broader market pre-war and after the start of the conflict.
This pattern clearly reflects that investors are overtly bullish on defense firms since the Ukraine War started, pushing valuations of the defense companies.
More importantly, even new entrants in the US military industrial complex, such as Anduril and Palantir, are also seeing their valuations jump manifold.
For instance, Anduril Industries, an AI-enabled autonomous systems developer, saw its valuation soar from US$14 billion in 2024 to US$30.5 billion in 2025.
Similarly, Palantir’s market capitalisation grew from a little over US$13 billion at the end of 2022 to reach a peak of over US$443 billion in early August 2025, a jump of around 3,200 percent.
Shield AI’s valuation jumped from over a billion dollars in late 2021 to US$5.3 billion. All these companies are active in Ukraine.
The valuations of the ‘Big Five’ or the prime defense contractors are also increasing. For instance, General Dynamics was valued at US$57.87 billion in 2021 and around US$73.18 billion in 2024.
These figures clearly establish that US defense contractors have been the single biggest beneficiaries of the Ukraine War.
Furthermore, the commitments by the European countries to significantly enhance military spending, the NATO countries’ consensus to increase defense funding to 5% of the GDP, and the need to arm and secure Ukraine, mean that the profits of the US defense firms will continue to rise for many years even after the Ukraine war has ended.
Clearly, more than India or China, it is the US that has benefited the most from the Ukraine War.
- Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of experience in news media. He has worked with Press Trust of India, Times Now, Zee News, Economic Times, and Microsoft News. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Media and Modern History from the University of Sheffield, UK.
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- He can be reached at ahlawat.sumit85 (at) gmail.com
