Military spending

The Permanent War State

Money is raining down on the US military complex in the $1.15 trillionspending bill that was unveiled on Wednesday by various leaders of Congress. Of that portion, a good $572.7 billion is set aside for Pentagon expenditure. (These figures tend to be deceptive in themselves, given the notoriously unreliable accuracy of defence accounting.)

The portions, roughly broken down, come to $58.6 billion for so-called Global War on Terror/Overseas Contingency Operations (GWOT/OCO) funds, $111 billion for procurement, which comes to $17 billion more than actual expenditures for the 2015 fiscal year, and $49.8 billion for R&D – $13.7 billion more than 2015 (Defense News, Dec 16).