US, Iran are biggest military drone exporters globally. Check data
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Military drones hovering in air Photograph: (AFP)
While releasing the world's biggest military drone exporters data, SIPRI took into consideration drones weighing at least 150 kilograms, along with one-way attack drones.
Drones have become an important and integral part of modern warfare. The Russia-Ukraine war, Gaza and Iran wars are witnessing extensive use of drones. This can be gauged from the fact that between 2022 and 2025, global military drone exports totalled 16,822 according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) compiled by Visual Capitalist.
The United States led global exports with 7,593 drones, followed by Iran with 6,800, which is 45.1% and 40.4% of the global total, respectively. Together they account for about 86% of all military drones exported worldwide during the period.
While Germany, Poland and Turkey fall in the third, fourth and fifth positions with 1,000, 690 and 381 units of drone exports worldwide.
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Israel with 205 and China with 64 were sixth and seventh in the list of world's biggest military drone exporters.
Other exporters included Czechia (32), the United Kingdom (20), Belarus (20), Portugal (7), Austria (5), Italy (3) and Sweden (2).
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While releasing the data, SIPRI took into consideration drones weighing at least 150 kilograms, along with one-way attack drones and loitering munitions, which are capable of striking just once. Commercial drones were largely excluded while making the list.
Notably Single-use drones make up 97% of the global total.
US, Iran drone exports in numbers
For Iran, nearly all its exports were Shahed-136 drones, including units produced in Russia under Iranian license, which SIPRI considers as Iranian transfers.
US exported maximum number of drones, 3,219 in 2024. The numbers dropped to 402 in 2025, the year new US military aid to Ukraine came to a halt. In comparison, Iran exported 2,002 drones in 2025, five times the US total for the same year.
Most of the US drones shipped in 2025 were exported to Taiwan, while Ukraine received 100 US-made loitering munitions that year, paid for by Britain.
