Aerospace & Defense Data: Airspace Performance, Safety Records, Defense Economics and Orbit Catalogs · Head-to-head
SIPRI Arms Transfers Database vs World Bank Military Expenditure Indicator API
Which aerospace & defense data: airspace performance, safety records, defense economics and orbit catalogs data fits your job: SIPRI Arms Transfers Database, or World Bank Military Expenditure Indicator API. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
SIPRI Arms Transfers Database
World Bank Military Expenditure Indicator API
Where the fields line up
No shared field names. These two answer different questions.
| Field | SIPRI Arms Transfers Database | World Bank Military Expenditure Indicator API |
|---|---|---|
supplier | State or organization delivering the arms; 'unknown' stays in the table when the delivering party cannot be reliably identified. | not in this set |
recipient | State, rebel force or international organization receiving the arms. | not in this set |
weapon_designation | Designation of the weapon system transferred. | not in this set |
weapon_description | Description and category of the system: combat aircraft, air-defence system, armoured vehicle, artillery, engine, missile, naval weapon, sensor, satellite or ship. | not in this set |
number_ordered | Quantity ordered under the agreement or manufacturing licence. | not in this set |
year_of_order | Year the order was placed or the manufacturing licence issued; the first of the record's two clocks. | not in this set |
delivery_year | Year(s) in which deliveries occurred; trend-indicator values are attributed to delivery years, so one order can spread across several. | not in this set |
number_delivered | Quantity actually delivered or locally produced in the delivery year. | not in this set |
tiv | SIPRI trend-indicator value of the transfer - an index built from known unit production costs of a core weapon set. It measures the transfer of military resources, not money, and must never be compared with GDP or export-permit values. | not in this set |
comments | Notes on deal value where disclosed, intended use, military aid status, offsets and second-hand or refurbished condition; uncertain figures appear in brackets rather than being dropped. | not in this set |
indicator.id | not in this set | Indicator code for the observation - the key that separates a GDP-share row from a dollar row. |
indicator.value | not in this set | Human-readable indicator name attached to every row. |
Coverage, side by side
| SIPRI Arms Transfers Database | World Bank Military Expenditure Indicator API | |
|---|---|---|
| Granularity | One row per major-conventional-arms transfer order, with annual delivery breakdowns | One row per country-year-indicator observation |
What each contains
They tie on 1 attribute. Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| SIPRI Arms Transfers Database | World Bank Military Expenditure Indicator API | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) | World Bank, hosting a military-spending indicator family sourced from SIPRI |
| Documented fields | 10, definitions verified | 14, definitions verified |
| Unit of analysis | One row per major-conventional-arms transfer order, with annual delivery breakdowns | One row per country-year-indicator observation |
| What a number means | Trend-indicator value (TIV): an index of military resources moved, plus hardware unit counts | Expenditure as % of GDP, current USD, local currency, share of government spending; arms imports/exports in TIVs; personnel totals and shares |
| Signature extra | Comments column: deal value, military-aid status, offsets, second-hand condition | ISO3-coded country identifiers and observation metadata on every row |
What each does better
the SIPRI Arms Transfers Database
The deal, itemized. Every record names both parties, the exact system - combat aircraft, air-defence systems, armoured vehicles, artillery of 100 mm and above, certain engines, missiles including one-way attack drones, naval weapons, sensors, reconnaissance satellites, ships - how many units were ordered and in which year, how many actually arrived and in which delivery years. The comments column carries what no budget series anywhere holds: deal value, intended use, military-aid status, offsets, second-hand condition. See the full field dictionary.
Depth to 1950. More than seven decades of supplier-to-recipient edges across roughly 260 supplier and recipient entities - including non-state armed groups and international organizations nobody else codes consistently. That is the raw material for arms-flow network models, export-control casework, and reading transfer orders as an order-book proxy for a defence exporter's future revenue. It is also why journalists and academics cite SIPRI TIVs as the standard measure in arms-trade reporting and security studies.
Honest valuation. Second-hand equipment enters the ledger at 40 percent of a new equivalent, refurbished items at 66 percent. TIVs deliberately measure resources transferred rather than money - which makes them incomparable to GDP figures by design, a discipline the spending-side indicators invite you to blur and the transfers register refuses to.
the World Bank Military Expenditure Indicator API
Money, standardized. Live rows read like this: United States, MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS, 2024, 3.419 percent of GDP - down from 3.304 in 2023; United States, MS.MIL.XPND.CD, 2024, 997,309,000,000 current dollars after 916,014,700,000 the year before. Four lenses on the same budgets - percentage of GDP, current dollars, local currency, share of general government expenditure - plus armed-forces personnel totals and population shares.
Breadth and comparability. More than 200 countries alongside World Bank regional and income aggregates, with roughly 265 entities reporting in a given year and every row ISO3-coded for painless joins. Missing figures are explicit nulls rather than gaps - Africa Eastern and Southern shows 2025 as null, telling you the figure is unpublished, not lost.
The bridge, pre-built. Because two of its eight indicators already express arms imports and exports in trend-indicator values, the spending side and the flows side meet at country-year grain without anyone merging anything. That is exactly the shape a defence-cycle backtest wants - budgets and hardware flows on one timeline reaching back to 1960 - and how market researchers put burden percentages next to supplier shares in the same client deck.
Where they're equivalent
More than their subjects suggest. Both observe the world annually at country grain, both span the globe, and both have been maintained long enough to be citation defaults in their respective literatures.
They also share their limits. Neither follows equipment after the delivery year - contracts performed, spares, upgrades and through-life support sit outside both frames. And neither covers domestic production for own use unless it crosses a border or a budget line.
The verdict
Verdict: sample both - they are two instruments aimed at one defence question, and each is useless for the other's half of it.
Take SIPRI Arms Transfers if your question names hardware and relationships: which exporting countries are winning major-weapon orders in a category, who arms whom and since when, order-book signals ahead of a defence exporter's revenue, export-control and proliferation casework, supplier and recipient shares benchmarked on the TIV standard in client deliverables. Accept its frame: an index of resources moved, never a dollar figure.
Accept its frame: country-years only - no deals, no systems, no buyers by name.
Three quick tests settle most cases. Need the weapon? Only the transfers register travels. Only the indicator set carries it. Need flows and funding in one deliverable? That is the both-of-them case, and in defence economics it comes up constantly.
Sample both, pick by fit. See SIPRI Arms Transfers Database · See World Bank Military Expenditure Indicator API
Or take both in one feed
Yes - they stack into a flows-plus-funding pipeline neither completes alone. Screen countries on the indicator side first: burdens rising as a share of GDP, dollar budgets climbing, personnel expanding - a shortlist of markets buying capability. Then interrogate the transfers register for the deals behind the trend: which suppliers won the orders, which systems, how many units, which delivery years still have hardware inbound. The join key is country-year, and the indicator rows hand you ISO3 codes ready-made.
Two cautions before you trust the merged table. First, normalization: party names on the transfers side need cleaning before they match country codes - some suppliers record as unknown, and organizational or non-state recipients have no ISO3 at all - so match on normalized names and read the comments column before believing any deal attribution. Second, units: never add TIVs to dollars. TIV measures resources moved, the spending series measures cash; keep them as parallel columns, not sums. Filter World Bank aggregates out before averaging, or regions will double-count their members.
Browse the rest of the shelf at the aerospace & defense data hub, see how the neighbors rank in the best aerospace & defense datasets list, or start from the sister record, the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, whose series sit underneath the World Bank-hosted indicators.
Or take both in one feed. Datadory normalizes each record to its documented dictionary - ten fields on the transfers side, fourteen on the indicator side - attaches sample rows for inspection before anything ships, beside the other datasets in the aerospace & defense pool, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly, your call.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Do the two cover the same ground?
They touch twice. First, provenance: the World Bank-hosted spending series is SIPRI-sourced. Second, substance: two of the eight indicators express arms imports and exports in trend-indicator values - the same construct the transfers database records per deal, aggregated to country-years. Everything else differs by design.
Which dataset reaches further back?
The transfers register: 1950 through 2025 in the current release, more than seven decades of deal-level history. The spending indicators start at 1960 for the SIPRI-sourced series, with recent reporting years filled as of mid-2026. For Cold War-era flows questions, only the transfers register travels far enough.
Which should anchor a defence-market sizing project?
Start with the indicator set: expenditure as a percentage of GDP, in current dollars and local currency, across 200+ ISO3-coded countries gives comparable market-size inputs. Then enrich with the transfers register to see which suppliers are winning the orders behind a rising burden. Budgets pick the markets; deals pick the players.
Can Datadory deliver both datasets together?
Yes - alone or merged onto one country-year spine, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly, your call. Each arrives normalized to its documented dictionary (ten fields on the transfers side, fourteen on the indicator side) with sample rows for inspection before anything ships. Party-name normalization against ISO3 codes is handled in the merge. Or take both in one feed.