Italian military spending appears immune to any economic crisis: according to the Milex report, in 2018 it reaches 25 billion euros.
In recent years, spending reviews have hit many sectors and activities, but there appears to be one that is not picking up the tab for the crisis. We are talking about military spending, which in Italy this year reaches 25 billion euros, equivalent to 1.4 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). An enormous figure, though perhaps an abstract one at first glance: it may be more intuitive to say that we spend 68 million euros a day on armaments and armed forces — 2.8 million an hour.
The growth amounts to 4 per cent in a single year; it reaches 26 per cent, however, if the last three parliamentary terms are taken into account. Italy thus ranks eleventh in the global league table for military expenditure, ahead of Turkey, Israel and Iran. These and other figures come from the Milex 2018 report (whose logo is Mil€x), which quite literally "goes through the pockets" of our country on everything related to weapons, military procurement and overseas missions.
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The Ministry of Defence budget for 2018 has risen to 21 billion euros, equal to 1.2 per cent of our GDP, with an increase of 3 per cent in a year and 18 per cent over the last three parliamentary terms. The 25 billion euros our country allocates to military spending can be broken down into three broad categories: 60 per cent goes to personnel, 12 per cent to operating costs, and 28 per cent to armaments. The latter amount to 5.7 billion euros, a sum increasingly borne by the Ministry of Economic Development, which has grown by 88 per cent over the last three parliamentary terms.
After two and a half years on hold, in 2017 our Defence establishment's acquisition programme for 90 American F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets resumed at full pace. Fifteen aircraft have already been purchased; in 2018 a further eight will be ordered and contracts worth 727 million euros will be signed. In 2017, Defence imposed a sharp acceleration on the programme, with an official spending commitment of around 1.3 billion euros from now until 2020, set to rise to at least 3 billion. A choice that the Corte dei conti — the national audit court — has openly called "risky," underlining in its recent investigation on the subject the countless problems encountered during the design and development phase of the aircraft. According to the most recent estimates, each aircraft will cost us around 155 million euros, a nominal increase of 40 million in less than ten years. Even US President Donald Trump, at the end of 2016, harshly attacked the "out of control" costs of the F-35 programme.
The Mil€x observatory was founded on the initiative of journalist Enrico Piovesana and Francesco Vignarca, coordinator of the Rete italiana per il disarmo. Over the years it has brought together sector experts, academic institutions, research centres and NGOs, both in Italy and abroad. The 2018 edition is the second.
Read also: The data from the 2017 edition of the Milex observatory
"Military spending" is an extremely broad and varied definition: it comes as no surprise, then, that the researchers developed a bespoke methodology, a rather complex one. First and foremost, the report takes into account the resources budgeted by the state and not the expenditure actually incurred; in the latter case, in fact, certain mechanisms would come into play that make it considerably more complicated to arrive at an exact figure.
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With regard to the Carabinieri corps, only expenses for military activities are counted (such as overseas missions and military police functions) and not those relating to policing and public order. The report also includes military pensions paid by Inps after the five years during which they fall under the remit of the Ministry of Defence (more substantial than the average for public-sector employees, as well as accrued earlier in time); funding from the Ministry of Economy and Finance for overseas military missions; and, finally, allocations by the Ministry of Economic Development for the most costly procurement and modernisation programmes for armaments.