Five companies will eat one-sixth of next year’s military budget
Speaking Security Newsletter | Note n°215 | 22 September 2023
*Thank you Kenny S. for pledging support to this newsletter!
So far, the main storyline around the military spending bill stuck in the House is the fact that it’s stuck: Democrats are uniformly against it and Republican leaders can’t corral enough of the party’s rank-and-file to advance the legislation.
What’s fallen through the cracks as far as public/media scrutiny goes is the main thing the bill does, which is provide an $826 billion Pentagon budget. The main finding of my new article in Sludge is that we should expect one-sixth of it—$140 billion—to go to just five companies.
This projection is based on a decade’s worth of military spending and contract data.1 From 2013 to 2022, 55% of military spending2 went to contractors and 30% of those contract dollars went to five companies. This translates to 17% of all military spending.
Read the full article here. As an amuse-bouche, here’s one of its charts:
^Alt text for screen readers: A sixth of the military budget goes to five companies. This column chart shows the top five contractors’ share of overall military spending from fiscal years 2013 to 2022. In 2013, the top five contractors received $91 billion out of $577 billion in overall military spending. In 2014, it was 78 out of 581; 2015, 78 out of 560; 2016, 97 out of 580; 2017, 107 out of 606; 2018, 110 out of 671; 2019, 120 out of 688; 2020, 159 out of 723; 2021, 113 out of 705; 2022, 122 out of 777. Figures refer to nominal 051 spending and Department of Defense contract obligations. Data came from the Office of Management and Budget and System for Award Management. Chart and analysis by Stephen Semler (@stephensemler) for Sludge (@Sludge).
-Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org)
Find this note useful? Please consider becoming a supporter of SPRI. Unlike establishment think tanks, we rely exclusively on small donations.
And about a week’s worth of Stephen.
Military spending can be measured in different ways. This refers to DOD funding only (budget function 051 spending), and excludes stuff like nuclear weapons spending/contracting out of DOE. Once all the military-related programs nominally outside the DOD budget are accounted for, we’re looking at an $886 billion topline. Any Ukraine aid will stacked on top of that.