(This story originally appeared in on Jan 21, 2017)

Everybody has heard of big companies with global reach ­ Microsoft and IBM, Google and Apple, Coca Cola and Pepsi, Nestle and Kraft, and many others. But how many of us can recall hearing about Northrop Grumman or Lockheed Martin or BAE Systems or Almaz-Antey?These and others like them too have annual profits running into billions of dollars, and they have customers in virtually every country . Yet, they live in a secretive netherworld about which few people have any inkling ­ and they deal in lifeand-death products.These are collectively known as the 'aerospace and defence' industry, much of which is located in the West but with important and even more secretive counterparts in Russia and China. Arms sales are truly global and cut across borders.So, these companies may supply to both sides of a conflict -India and Pakistan, Israel and surrounding Arab countries, Turkey and the Kurdish Peshmerga.Young, idealistic men and women joining up to serve their country's armed forces will probably use their weapons or technologies without realizing that what they are really becoming part of is a sprawling transnational military-industrial complex that has no friend or foe, and covets only profits. As has happened in many places, unknowing citizens may be marching off to the killing fields of a distant war that has nothing to do with defending their country and everything to do with boosting the sales of weapon manufacturers and serving as a live testing field for their new products.Lucas Berard, a US army veteran who deployed with the Marines in Fallujah in Iraq, and with the Army in Kirkuk, also in Iraq, writes in a blog that he "soaked it up like a sponge, every bit of it: the esprit de corps, the prevailing viewpoints of superiority and violence of action, a love of weaponry, and the desire to use it". But, like all human beings, the experience left him deeply disturbed by the loss of life on both sides. “I found my self becoming more isolated, divided as to how I should feel.I was angered at the deaths and injuries of our own, but it nev er detracted from the pity I felt for the local population as well.After all, we were in their country, kicking their country, kicking down the doors of, and often utterly destroying, their homes," he says.Millions around the world who join the armed services are not really aware that they are just becoming a pawn in a global game of thrones fuelled by greedy arms dealers. Back in 1935, Major General Smedley D. Butler of the US Marines, who served for over 33 years and fought wars on three continents, memorably said that war is a racket, and described it as the only one in which “the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives“. Make that billions of dollars.The top 100 arms companies (excluding China) sold $401 billion worth of deadly weaponry in 2015, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). About 20 of these companies did not reveal their profits but the remaining earned $42 billion.The total global arms trade was estimated at $94.5 billion in 2015.Apart from these heavy weapon systems and fighter aircraft, about 9.5 million pieces of small arms like pistols and rifles, and light weapons like machine guns were also sold worldwide, according to the UN's Registry of Conventional Arms. These are under-estimates because much of the small arms trade is underground.The biggest clients of these weapon makers are governments themselves, although many 'non-state actors' also patronize them probably through covert help from some interested government. Global defence spending by governments was estimated at a mind-numbing $1.57 trillion in 2016 by the authoritative industry publication Jane's. This was needed to arm and maintain 27.3 million armed forces personnel across the world. "Solutions for America's Global Partners" -this is the slogan of a little known but immensely powerful agency within the US Department of Defense. It is called the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA).The "solutions" it provides to its "partners" are -weapons systems. The DSCA buys arms from manufacturers to sell them to various countries around the world. The US is by far the biggest arms supplier with about 56 per cent of global arms supplied from its shores. Between 2008 and 2015, US entered into arms sale agreements worth over $265 billion, with Russia a distant second at about $88 billion.Who are the top buyers? Unsurprisingly, four of the top five recipients are US allies -Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq and the UAE. The fifth is India, currently moving towards a closer alliance with US. India agreed to buy weapons systems worth $34 billion in the 2008-15 period.What is unique about the arms manufacturing industry is that it works in very close ways with governments. In the US, bulk of orders received by these companies are from the US government. Conversely, the industry has a stake in increasing govt spending -the more govt spends, the more orders it gets. This is not something that's done in secret: the US weapons industry employed over 400 lobbyists to push its case with the govt, Senators and Congress members.And, they see `national priorities' as their own priorities.After Donald Trump's victory, the industry quickly regrouped and there is a sense of barely restrained joy because Trump has announced plans to up defence spending, and buy and deploy new weapons."We've called for elevating defence spending as a national priority, and early indications are this call is being heeded," said David Melcher, president of the Aerospace Indus tries Association, the defence industry body with 300 top manufac turers as its members.After the US signed the Iran nuke deal, Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hew son was asked wheth er tensions in the Middle East would go down and drag down the company's arms exports to the region. She was reported to have blithely responded that continuing "volatility" in both the Middle East and Asia would make them "growth areas" for the foreseeable future. In other words, for her company, and for all arms companies, tension and conflict are opportunities for growth.So, next time you hear the drums of war anywhere, ask this, who's really benefitting?