US Foreign Military Sales

This dataset offers detailed information on FMS notifications of transfers of military equipment from the US to foreign governments.

Publishing date: 07 November 2025
Authors: Juan Mejino-López Javier Octavio Ospital Greslebin Guntram B. Wolff

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The Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Database

This dataset offers detailed information on FMS notifications of transfers of military equipment from the US to foreign governments.

It includes data on purchasing countries, main and additional equipment, quantities (when available), the contractors involved and their locations, and the overall value of the sale in current and 2024 prices. The dataset expands from April 2008 to September 2025, and it will be updated bimonthly.

We collect this data from the publicly available website of the US Department of Defence, and include year, geographical and political regions, as well as a classification of the military domain and the type of equipment being sold.

Summary

A worsening security situation around the world is increasing defence spending, and also the demand of military equipment from the US defence industrial base, main global exporter of military equipment.
The FMS is the main US instrument used to transfer major military equipment to foreign governments, with the US Government playing an intermediary role between the foreign government and the US contractors.
By compiling FMS notifications and extracting relevant information, this dataset offers insights into the US sales of major military equipment. Including the geographical location of the sales, the type of equipment and the defence companies involved.

Figure 1 shows FMS notifications at the regional level. Until 2017, the fraction of notifications toward Europe was rather low in relative terms. Since 2017, however, Europe has accounted for a larger share of FMS notifications and has become the main purchaser.

Figure 2 displays how FMS has become more important in Europe’s overall equipment spending. As European defence budgets and equipment purchases have increased, European countries have increased their demand of domestic and foreign producers.

Figure 3 shows notifications for selected European countries for the entire timespan of the database. Values are in USD billions and in 2024 prices. As before, there is a noticeable change in trend in 2017, when there was a marked increase in FMS notifications.

Figure 4 plots notifications involving Ukraine. The almost fivefold increase in FMS notifications involving Ukraine between 2024 and 2025 indicates that the military equipment transferred to Ukraine now seems to be switching from special instruments (such as the Presidential Drawdown Authority and the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative) to the standard exporting vehicles used for other allies.

The FMS database allows us to observe the distribution of FMS notifications within regions. Figure 5 plots the total value of FMS notifications for the entire period of the dataset, for countries in Europe. Within Europe, Poland has been the main customer, followed by Finland and Germany.

The Near East and South Asia is the second region in importance. Figure 6 plots the total value of FMS notifications for countries in the region. Saudi Arabia is the main partner in the region, amounting to almost a third of the total value of all notifications, notably with the sales in 2010 of several equipment like the Apache Helicopters and the F-15 aircrafts.

While smaller than both Europe and the Near East-South Asia in value, Asia and the Pacific is a strategically important region for US foreign policy. The region is the third largest FMS customer of FMS, with Japan and South Korea as the largest, followed by Australia.

References

Mejino-López, J. and G. Wolff (2025) ‘Europe’s dependence on US foreign military sales and what to do about it’ Policy Brief 27/2025, Bruegel

Mejino-López, J., J. Ospital and G. B. Wolff (2025) 'Understanding US foreign military sales globally since 2008: an analysis of a new dataset', Working Paper 27/2025, Bruegel, available at https://doi.org/10.64153/QOZC5551