>>3502795The US spends less than 5% of its GDP on military, the thing is for a single nation, we have the largest GDP in the world. We should still probably only prioritize our missile defense, nukes, and Navy ships and aircraft as well as munitions, and allocate the spare money to our school and education systems imo. I'm just gonna drop a bunch of the latest statistics.
Military budget of the USA by year: (budgets calculated for fiscal year periods)
2015 - $598.5 billion (3.32% of total GDP for 2015, which was $18.04 trillion)
2016 - $585.3 billion (3.15% of total GDP for 2016, which was $18.57 trillion)
2017 - *so far, Trump has requested a 10% raise in spending* $639 billion (3.31% of projected GDP for 2017-2018, which stands at $19.3 trillion)
However, in terms of federal spending, not just total GDP, the military budget usually makes up roughly 20% of federal government spending each year. The US military budget is larger than the next 7 largest military budgets of other nations combined, China spends an estimated $250 billion a year in recent years, however with a smaller total GDP.
We spend over 5 times more per year than Russia does, and as a result our military is the only military in the world that can currently deploy (see ↓ ) during peacetime (current ongoing minor conflicts in the middle east are not large enough to effect deployment statistics by more than 1%).
- 21 aircraft carriers (11 super carriers, 10 amphibious assault carriers)
- 272 deployable military naval vessels (projected to acquire 36 additional vessels by 2021)
- 14,735 military aircraft all branches (over 3,000 are fighter jets)
- 5,884 main battle tanks and 10,722 APC's
- 2,083,100 current military personnel on payroll (2017)
- 7,280 + nuclear weapons (roughly 4,480 active including over 2,200 mounted on missiles right now, and over 2,800 in storage in northern Texas)
