The global weapons and military equipment (WME) markets are the place of fierce competition between the main players. The ideological confrontation of the two systems had ended at the beginning of the 1990(s). However, the battle of the chief weapons exporters for this very profitable field of the global trade is hardly over. The yearly foreign sales of the arms producing industries are counted in tens of billions dollars. The global economic recession of the last few years only serves to exacerbate the competition within these markets. The advantage in the WME production acquired by the US and Russia in the course of the 40-years long arms race of the 20th century gave them the position of the main players in the global WME markets. As a result, for almost a quarter of a century the US and Russia has been the chief exporters of the WME. This article is devoted to the analysis of the state and behavior of the military expenses of the two countries the US and Russia. The amount of the military expenses directly corresponds to the scale of the military production and the volumes of the arms sales in the global market. This topic of research has long and truly held an important place within the scientific interests of the author of this article (2005, Tulyakova, 2015). Using the vast statistical data of the international and national analytical centers, the article analyses the export behavior of the US and Russia in value terms at the beginning of the new century, as well as the physical flow of weapons, the commodity structure of the sales of both countries, and compares the groups of their partner-countries in regards of the WME sales. The completed research leads to the conclusion that the export positions of both countries are comparable, despite the notable difference in GDP and GDP per capita.