Israeli Defense Exports Hit Record $19.2 Billion in 2025, Fifth Straight Record Year

Israel’s Defense Ministry reported that Israeli defense exports surpassed $19.2 billion in 2025, according to a report from L’Orient-Le Jour. The ministry’s own statement put the figure at more than NIS 53 billion and described it as a new record. Both accounts describe 2025 as the fifth consecutive year of record defense export sales, with exports rising about 30 percent over the previous year.

The ministry said defense exports have more than doubled in five years and grown fourfold over the past decade. Government-to-government transactions reached an all-time high of approximately $10 billion in 2025, which the ministry said was more than half of total defense export volume. Mega-deals valued at no less than $100 million each made up 53 percent of the 2025 total, according to the ministry’s report.

By product category, missile, rocket, and air defense systems were the largest, accounting for 29 percent of transactions. The ministry also reported that observation and optronics systems made up 22 percent of the total, up from 6 percent the previous year. L’Orient-Le Jour reported the regional breakdown: European countries accounted for 36 percent of purchases, Asia and the Pacific Region for 32 percent, and the Middle East and North Africa for 15 percent.

Defense Minister Israel Katz linked Israel’s military successes and battlefield achievements to global demand for its defense exports, according to L’Orient-Le Jour. The ministry’s report did not attribute the growth to a single cause in the same terms, but it did cite a specific purchase: the Ministry of Defense and the U.S. Pentagon signed a deal to buy 12 advanced Apache helicopters from Boeing for the Israel Defense Forces. The report did not describe the deal’s financial terms.

In April, according to L’Orient-Le Jour, the ministry announced plans to accelerate production of Arrow missile interceptors. The same report said analysts and international media have raised concerns about possible shortages of Arrow interceptors. Those concerns point to the weight of responsibility that comes with supplying critical defense capacity to others (Luke 12:48).