U.S. Military Spending vs. The World

[Jcrowley]

U.S. Military Spending

The United States, being the most formidable military power, it is worth looking at their spending.

The U.S. military budget request by the Bush Administration for Fiscal Year 2007 is $462.7 billion. (This includes the Defense Department budget, funding for the Department of Energy (which includes nuclear weapons) and “other” which the source does not define. It does not include other items such as money for the Afghan and Iraq wars—$50 billion for Fiscal Year 2007 and an extra $70 billion for FY 2006, on top of the $50 billion approved by Congress.)

* For Fiscal Year 2006 it was $441.6 billion
* For Fiscal Year 2005 it was $420.7 billion
* For Fiscal Year 2004 it was $399.1 billion PDF formatted document.
* For Fiscal Year 2003 it was $396.1 billion.
* For Fiscal Year 2002 it was $343.2 billion.
* For Fiscal Year 2001 it was $305 billion. And Congress had increased that budget request to $310 billion.
* This was up from approximately $288.8 billion, in 2000.

These figures typically do not include combat figures, so 2001 onwards, the Afghan war, and 2003 onwards, the Iraq war costs are not in this budget. As of early 2006, Congress had already approved an additional funding total of $300 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As Chris Hellman, researcher of many of these statistics, also notes, when adjusted for inflation the request for 2007 together with that needed for nuclear weapons the 2007 spending request exceeds the average amount spent by the Pentagon during the Cold War, for a military that is one-third smaller than it was just over a decade ago. PDF formatted document

Compared to the rest of the world, these numbers are indeed staggering.

http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/Spending.asp#USMilitarySpending