Naval Arms Exports - How Europe & Asia overtook the US & Russia

With the next update on the Ukraine war delayed on account of the the Kharkiv counter-offensive, I thought it would be good to return to some defence economics with a study of global military ship and submarine exports.

When we think of major naval powers, we usually think of the big players. The USA, the USSR/Russia & the PRC - but surprisingly enough, in recent times all of them have sold relatively few of their ships and submarines abroad.

How can it be that major naval powers, with significant military shipbuilding capacity, find themselves in this position? Well thanks to the results of the recent topic votes here and on my Patreon, you get to spend the next 56 minutes finding out.

Maximum possible credit to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute for making their data freely and publicly available in easy to manipulate formats - it makes covering topics like these much, much easier by providing good, open-source data.

Next week we'll return to Ukraine, but for now, enjoy another dive into defence economics and the arms market.

Caveats:
As always - this video includes only my own personal opinions and does not represent financial advice.

SIPRI data is used as the basis for identifying trends in arms exports, and specific trade register data is also used. As discussed, tracking arms sales, and valuing them all in terms of Trend Indicator Value (TIV) to allow more like-for-like comparisons is difficult. SIPRI data may not be complete (not capturing all transactions) and valuations and national attributions may be made more complicated or difficult based on the structure of a particular deal. As such, it should be treated as informative, but not unambiguously authoritative.

Sources:
Primary data analysis based on Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Export TIV Registers:
https://www.sipri.org/databases/armstransfers

US fleet figures sourced from Navy History and Heritage Command:
https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/us-ship-force-levels.html

Commentary on US shipyard capacity
https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2021/03/19/the-us-navys-shaky-plan-to-save-its-shipyards-is-getting-overhauled/

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/02/07/the-us-navys-vaunted-deployment-plan-is-showing-cracks-everywhere/

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/10/10/us-navy-shipbuilding-sea-power-failure-decline-competition-china/

Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/PerunAU

Timestamps:
00:00 -- Opening Words
02:28 -- What Am I Covering?
04:09 -- Congratulations Mr. President!
05:24 -- Military Ship/Submarine Exports
06:15 -- What is a Competitive Advantage?
08:10 -- The Competitors
08:16 -- The Soviet Union
10:45 -- Meet Sergey
11:33 -- Ship & Submarine Arms Exports - USSR & USA 1970-89
12:10 -- Collapse of the USSR
13:27 -- Renaissance
14:33 -- The Golden Years
15:24 -- Re-collapse & Modern Offering
16:37 -- What do the Russians offer?
18:16 -- What about the Americans?
20:15 -- Market Decline?
20:38 -- Product Problem
23:30 -- The Shipbuilding Challenge
26:31 -- Détente, Not Decay
28:21 -- Second-Hand Dealer
30:53 -- What do the Americans offer?
31:58 -- Made in Europe?
33:24 -- The EU 5
34:54 -- Germany
36:30 -- France
39:36 -- Spain
40:14 -- Italy
41:55 -- The Netherlands
43:25 -- Integrated Offerings
45:09 -- What do the Europeans offer?
46:47 -- Let's Travel to Asia
46:55 -- Korea's Rise
48:01 -- Naval Tradition in Korea
49:26 -- Meet the Big 3
50:54 -- Growing Export Provider
52:54 -- Conclusions
54:42 -- Channel Update