The United States' military budget makes up almost half of the entire world's defense spending. The base budget for the Department of Defense in 2010 was more than $500 billion US Dollars (USD), not counting overseas expenditures and emergency spending. The U.S. Army gets the biggest percentage of that money, about $250 billion USD a year, followed by the Navy and the Air Force, each of which get more than $150 billion USD each year. By these figures, the U.S. Army alone spends more than twice the entire military budget of China.
More facts about military spending:
- The U.S. spent more on defense in 2009 than it did on Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare.
- The combined total military budgets of the six next-highest spenders — China, France, Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan — still doesn't add up to the U.S. military budget. In fact, their combined budgets add up to a little more than half of the annual U.S. military budget.
- Global military expenditures have risen steadily since the mid-1990s and rose almost $600 billion USD from 1996 to 2009.