Annual global military space spending jumps 18% to $57B in 2023: Space Foundation

WASHINGTON — The Space Foundation’s annual assessment shows that the global space economy hit $570 billion in 2023, a 7.4 percent increase over 2022’s $531 billion — with worldwide military space spending jumping a whopping 18 percent to $57 billion.

That total “is nearly double the size of the space economy a decade ago,” largely due to the booming commercial market, the foundation said in a press release today. “Governments also are increasingly recognizing the space domain’s importance to national security.”

“Our annual global space economy analysis highlights the increasing importance of the space industry across both public and private sectors,” said Heather Pringle, CEO of Space Foundation.

The Space Foundation’s assessment this year, to be published in full at the end of the month, covered 54 nations and international organizations looking at “11 space sectors and government spending,” the release explains.

While commercial growth remains the driving economic factor in the market, the Space Foundation assessment says that global government spending also is on the rise — growing by 11 percent in 2023 to $125 billion.

“Nine of the top-spending governments increased their budgets by double-digits last year: the United States, China, Japan, Russia, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, and South Korea,” the release explained.

Military spending made up 46 percent of that $125 billion ($57.5 million) in 2023. “The majority (80%) of defense spending comes from the United States, but other nations, including Japan and Poland, increased space defense spending sharply last year,” the release said.

The assessment shows US military space spending in 2023 at estimated $46 billion, a Space Foundation spokesperson told Breaking Defense.

Japan’s Ministry of Defense had the second-highest growth in 2023, increasing its spending 32 percent to ¥128 billion ($810 million), the spokesperson added.

While Space Foundation researchers could not find enough data to separate military spending from Warsaw’s total space spending, the spokesperson noted that the country forked out an estimated $59 million in 2023 — a 54 percent year-over-year increase from the 2022 total of $38 million. Further, the spokesperson said that based on open source reports “space defense is a higher priority” for Poland’s military than it has been in the past.

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On the commercial side, the study finds that “space revenues totaled $445 billion in 2023,” a 5.4 percent increase over 2022.

“Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) remained the largest commercial subsector with $209 billion in revenues, $11 billion more than 2022. Ground Stations and Equipment, the next largest category, grew $17 billion (19%) last year. Commercial satellite manufacturing and launch revenues, while comparatively smaller in magnitude, doubled in the two years as the global launch pace quickened,” the release elaborated.