China Moves to Number One Spot in Combat Drone Export: SIPRI

China has seen an overall increase of 1430 percent growth in combat drone sales pushing it to the number one spot in exports, according to a report by Stockholm based Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published on Monday.

According to the report, from 2014 to 2018, China exported some 153 Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAV) to 13 nations that include Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE).

In comparison to the previous arms data collected from 2009 to 2013, China scored over 1430 percent in drone sales, the report stated.

China also managed to export major arms, besides drones to 12 new countries bringing the number of countries buying their defense goods to 53 from 2014 to 2018.

China is at number five behind US, Russia, France and Germany in the list of top largest exporters of major arms from 2014 to 2018. Pakistan is China’s top arms buyer at 37 percent of its arms followed by Bangladesh and Algeria with 16 percent and 11 percent of their weaponry.

The five largest importers from 2014 to 2018 were Saudi Arabia, India, Egypt, Australia and Algeria, which together took home 35 percent of all arms imports.

Asia and Oceania accounted for 40 percent of global imports, followed by the Middle East (35 percent), Europe (11 percent), Africa (7.8 percent) and the Americas (6.2 percent).