I’ve heard claims that the United States spends more money on the military and intelligence gathering organizations than all other countries in the world put together?
I would also like to know what percentage of the federal budget defense and intelligence take up?
This site should tell you all you need to know.
2003 defense spending is expected to be about $380 billion in 2002 dollars, which is a bit less than 1/5 of the federal budget. This actually is NOT particularly high relative to recent history; adjusted for inflation, it’s substantially less than it was during the late Carter years to the Reagan peak or during the height of Vietnam or Korea, and is not even close to WWII levels. However, it’s a very big jump from 2002 and is being planned to increase more for a few years thereafter.
As you can probably imagine, the bloated U.S. defense budget is primarily due to two things:
#2 should be obvious; the USA has a large standing army and in a wealthy nation with a volunteer army, you have to pay your soldiers a lot of dough to keep them around. American soldiers make more than soldiers from, say, China. If you pay each of 1.4 million servicepeople $40,000 each, that right there is $56 billion, plus you have to pay benefits. And clothe them.
#1 is a real killer. The U.S. acts as the primary weapons and platform developer for the Western world, and the bill is pretty astounding. Development and production of the Joint Strike Fighter - which isn’t yet even ready to use - is going to end up being at least $250 BILLION dollars over the lifetime of the program. The F-22 Raptor fighter - again, not yet in use - is $75 billion more. National missile defense ranges anywhere from $150 to $250 billion, depending who you talk to. the Super Hornet program is another $50 billion. The C-17 program, $40 billion. The B-2 program is going to cost ANOTHER $20 billion. $50 billion for Comanche choppers, $20 billion for Osprey deathtraps… and so far I’ve only been talking about planes. Throw in new submarines, the AEGIS program, the new Trident missiles - it adds up.
You are not going to see any real numbers for the intelligence agencies listed in the public federal budget. Intelligence is hidden in the budget in a number of ways. This has long a been a point of contention, both because it makes it impossible to know how much really goes to intelligence and whether it is being well spent and because it falsifies the numbers for those agencies it’s hidden in.
Military intelligence is an oxymoron.
That is the most original thing I have ever…No, wait. Just another stupid cliche. :rolleyes:
As a percentage of GDP, the US is 10th highest., and only about .4% higher then our mortal enemy, France. As a dollar amount, we spend more than the next dozen or so countries combined. Cool!