The SIPRI Yearbook is known worldwide as an authoritative and independent source for politicians, diplomats, journalists, scholars, students and citizens on armaments, disarmament and international security. It provides an overview of developments in international security, weapons and technology, military expenditure, the arms trade and arms production, and armed conflicts, along with efforts to control conventional, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
The first edition of the SIPRI Yearbook was released in 1969, with the aim of producing ‘a factual and balanced account of a controversial subject-the arms race and attempts to stop it’. Subsequent editions of the Yearbook have gathered important data on world military spending, the arms trade and nuclear forces, among other topics.
Over the years these data sets have been refined and new data sets added, thereby improving the accuracy of key source materials. Together with SIPRI’s rigorous editorial standards, this continual qualitative improvement in the data makes the SIPRI Yearbook a unique and indispensable reference work.