The Defense Budget

The Total National Security Budget: $1.5 Trillion

The official “defense budget” of $886 billion is only the DOD portion. The true cost of America's national security apparatus spans multiple agencies and includes costs the Pentagon would prefer you not think about:

The Intelligence Community: $90+ Billion in the Shadows

The US intelligence community comprises 18 agencies with a combined budget estimated at over $90 billion per year. This includes:

• CIA: ~$15 billion — Covert operations, human intelligence (HUMINT), paramilitary
• NSA: ~$12 billion — Signals intelligence (SIGINT), mass surveillance, cyber operations
• NRO: ~$18 billion — Spy satellites and overhead reconnaissance
• NGA: ~$5 billion — Geospatial intelligence, mapping, imagery analysis
• DIA: ~$4 billion — Military intelligence analysis
• FBI (National Security): ~$3 billion — Domestic counterterrorism and counterintelligence
• 12 Other Agencies: ~$33 billion — Including service intelligence branches, Treasury intelligence, DEA intelligence, etc.

The intelligence budget was first officially disclosed in 2007 ($43.5 billion for the National Intelligence Program alone). The Snowden leaks in 2013 revealed the “black budget” in detail for the first time, showing $52.6 billion across 16 agencies. By 2024, the NIP alone exceeded $72 billion, with the Military Intelligence Program adding another $25+ billion. Combined intelligence spending has roughly doubled since 2007 — while the threats it monitors have, by most measures, not doubled.

Nuclear Weapons: The DOE's $50 Billion Shadow Military Budget

America's nuclear weapons are not maintained by the Pentagon. They are maintained by the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which operates a vast complex of weapons laboratories, production facilities, and testing sites. The NNSA budget for FY2024 is approximately $23 billion, with additional nuclear delivery system costs (missiles, submarines, bombers) in the DOD budget totaling another $27+ billion.

The US maintains approximately 5,500 nuclear warheads (1,700 deployed, 3,800 in reserve or awaiting dismantlement). The current modernization plan — replacing every leg of the nuclear triad (ICBMs, submarine-launched missiles, and bombers) simultaneously — is estimated to cost $1.5–2 trillion over 30 years. The Sentinel ICBM program alone has already exceeded its budget by 85%, triggering a Nunn-McCurdy breach review.

Veterans Affairs: $325 Billion — The Cost of Breaking People

The VA budget of $325 billion per year is the deferred cost of war — healthcare, disability compensation, and support for 18 million living veterans. This is not counted in the “defense budget” but it is unmistakably a military cost. Without wars, the VA would be a fraction of its current size.

The VA currently processes 2 million+ disability claims per year. Average wait time: 150+ days. The backlog periodically exceeds 500,000 pending claims. The PACT Act (2022) expanded eligibility for 3.5 million burn pit-exposed veterans, adding an estimated $280 billion in new costs over 10 years. The Brown University Costs of War Project estimates total future veteran care costs from post-9/11 wars will reach $2.5T through 2050.

Top 10 Most Expensive Weapons Programs

The defense budget is dominated by enormous weapons programs, many of which are over budget, behind schedule, and plagued by performance issues. Yet they continue because the jobs and contracts are distributed across enough congressional districts to make cancellation politically impossible.

The F-35: A Case Study in Failure

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the most expensive weapons program in human history — a projected $1.7T over its lifetime. Originally planned to cost $233 billion for development and procurement, the program has nearly tripled in cost while delivering an aircraft plagued by over 800 known deficiencies.

The F-35 cannot fly in lightning storms. Its gun doesn't shoot straight. Its stealth coating blisters in the sun. It costs $36,000 per flight hour to operate — compared to $22,000 for the F-16 it was meant to replace. Its ejection seat can kill lighter pilots. Its logistics system (ALIS/ODIN) doesn't work properly. Mission-capable rates hover around 55% — meaning nearly half the fleet is grounded at any given time.

And yet production continues, because the program supports 254,000 jobs across 45 states — making it politically untouchable. This is the genius of modern defense contracting: distribute the work across enough districts that no member of Congress can afford to vote against it.

“The F-35 is a piece of — I can't say it in public. It's a disaster. The program should have been killed years ago.”
— Dan Grazier, Project on Government Oversight, 2023

How the Defense Budget Process Works (And Why It Only Goes Up)

Understanding why the defense budget always grows requires understanding the process that produces it. The system is designed — deliberately — to produce growth:

The NDAA: 63 Years and Counting

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has been signed into law every year since 1961 — 63 consecutive years without a single miss. No other piece of legislation has this record. The NDAA authorizes (but does not appropriate) defense spending and sets policy for the DOD. It is the legislative vehicle through which Congress shapes military policy.

The NDAA also serves as a “must-pass” bill that both parties use to attach unrelated provisions. In recent years, NDAAs have included sanctions, trade provisions, construction projects, and social policy amendments. The “defense bill” has become a general-purpose legislative vehicle precisely because it is the one bill that will always pass.

Recent NDAA history shows the relentless upward trajectory:

Continuing Resolutions: Government by Autopilot

When Congress fails to pass appropriations bills by October 1 (the start of the fiscal year), the government operates under a continuing resolution (CR) — which freezes spending at the prior year's level. This happens routinely:

• Over the past 14 fiscal years, DOD operated under CRs for 1,400+ days
• CRs prevent new programs from starting and cost an estimated $5–10 billion per year in inefficiency
• Despite constant complaints about CRs, they actually benefit the defense establishment by locking in current spending levels and preventing any cuts
• The “crisis” of a CR is used to justify even larger budgets when the appropriations bill finally passes

OCO: The War Slush Fund

For years, the Pentagon maintained a separate funding stream called Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) — ostensibly for war costs that couldn't be predicted. In practice, OCO became a slush fund that allowed the Pentagon to circumvent budget caps.

Because OCO was classified as “emergency” spending, it didn't count against the Budget Control Act spending caps established in 2011. The Pentagon routinely stuffed non-war base budget items into OCO to get around the limits. At its peak, OCO added $160+ billion per year on top of the base budget — essentially a second defense budget with no caps and minimal oversight.

OCO was formally eliminated in FY2022 when the spending caps expired. The Pentagon simply absorbed those costs into the base budget — which promptly surged past $800 billion. The slush fund disappeared; the spending didn't.

The Audit Catastrophe

The Pentagon is the only federal agency that has never passed a comprehensive financial audit — despite being required by law since 1990.

The Pentagon manages $3.8 trillion in assets and cannot account for a significant portion of them. It doesn't know how many buildings it has. It doesn't know where much of its equipment is. Its financial systems are a patchwork of 2,300+ software systems, many of which cannot communicate with each other and some of which date to the 1960s.

Comparison to Other National Priorities

The $886B defense budget dwarfs every other discretionary investment the federal government makes:

• Education: $79B (11× less than defense)
• Veterans Affairs: $325B (healthcare for the people defense breaks)
• Transportation: $27B (32× less)
• EPA: $12.1B (73× less)
• NASA: $25.4B (35× less)
• NIH (medical research): $47B (19× less)
• FEMA: $29B (31× less)
• State Department: $58B (15× less)
• National Science Foundation: $9.5B (93× less)
• CDC: $9.2B (96× less)

America spends 73 times more on weapons than on protecting the environment. 19 times more on the military than on curing disease. 96 times more on war than on the CDC. 11 times more on the Pentagon than on education. These are not accidents — they are choices. And they are made every year, by both parties, with overwhelming majorities.

The Black Budget: What We Can't See

An estimated $79+ billion of the defense budget goes to classified programs that are invisible to the public and to most members of Congress. Only members of the intelligence and armed services committees are briefed on these programs — and even they may not know the full scope.

Classified programs include:

• Special Access Programs (SAPs): The most secret military programs, accessible to only a handful of people. The B-21 Raider was a SAP before its existence was acknowledged.
• Waived SAPs: Programs so secret that even congressional oversight committees are not fully briefed. Their existence is known to perhaps 20 people in the entire government.
• Intelligence programs: The National Intelligence Program ($72B+) and Military Intelligence Program ($25B+) are partially classified.
• Cyber operations: Offensive cyber capabilities, which the US has acknowledged using but whose budgets remain classified.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

“The Pentagon cannot account for trillions. If any private company failed an audit this badly, its executives would be in prison.”
— Senator Bernie Sanders

“Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes.”
— James Madison, 1795