A defense contractor is a business organization or individual that provides products or services to a military or intelligence department of a government.
[1] Contractors have assumed a much larger on-the-ground presence during American conflicts: during the 1991 Gulf War the ratio of uniformed military to contractors was about 50 to 1, while during the first four years of the Iraq War the U.S. hired over 190,000 contractors, surpassing the total American military presence even during the 2007 Iraq surge and 23 times greater than other allied military personnel numbers.
[1] The surge in spending on defense services contractors that began in 2001 came to a halt in 2009, leading to the Better Buying Power initiative of 2010.
[2][3] This is a list of the world's largest arms manufacturers and other military service companies, along with their countries of origin.
The information is based on a list published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute for 2022.