Military spending

China Outspends the U.S. on Defense? Here’s the Math.

When is $227 billion greater than $606 billion? When comparing Chinese defense spending to that of the U.S. — and if Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley is the one doing the math.

At a hearing last week, the ranking Democrat of the Senate’s defense appropriations subcommittee, Dick Durbin of Illinois, said to Milley: “You tell us that one of our biggest threats, greatest enemies, is Russia; turns out we read recently that Russia spends about $80 billion a year on its military. So let me get this straight: We’re spending 600, 700 billion dollars against an enemy that’s spending $80 billion. Why is this even a contest?”

...Fortunately, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. of Breaking Defense chose to spare us all a lot of work and crunch the numbers. Freedberg decided that there were two adjustments needed to get to oranges-to-oranges: factoring in the purchasing power parity of the three countries (necessary because Russia and China buy most of their military goods from government-owned or heavily subsidized contractors and pay using domestic currency rather than dollars) and subtracting Pentagon spending on pay and benefits from its budget.