The core work of the military expenditure project is to collect, analyse, process and publish data on military expenditure worldwide, and to monitor and analyse trends in military expenditure over time, looking at their economic, political and security drivers and their implications for global peace, security and development.

The military expenditure project is fundamentally data driven. At the heart of the project is SIPRI’s unique, freely available, military expenditure database. The database is updated annually, both with new data for the most recent year and with revisions to past data to take account of new information and ensure consistency over time.

A second key aspect of the work of the military expenditure project is to study issues relating to transparency and accountability in military budgeting, spending and procurement. Such transparency is often quite weak, which can affect the reliability of data, but which more seriously can lead to wasteful and excessive spending, often unconnected to genuine security needs, and to widespread corruption.