[RFEngineer]

“Yes, everyone is “misleading” you.”

As you know charting percentage changes is designed to mislead the reader by depriving them of context from which to judge the overall picture.

It creates hysteria where there should be none.

The US military budget exceeds $600B. How much bigger does it need to be? $700B $1T?

I submit that $600B ought to be enough to fund our nations defense for a year. If it’s not enough, why not?

Will you give a straight answer, or will you post more pictures?

[SkyPilot]

You have all the answers, you tell me. $100 billion? $0.5 billion? $300 billion. What’s that? Oh, it’s a pretty complex question? You bet it is. That is why we have budgets, hearings, and expert testimony. I’ll give you my opinion: DoD spending should never fall below 5% GDP.

[kabar]

The baseline budget is much lower than $600 billion, The chart below breaks down the baseline costs and the Overseas Contingency Operations (Afghanistan and previously Iraq) costs. We should not be structuring our military on the basis of costs. First, we need to do a threat assessment based on current and potential foes, then develop the force to deal with it. Trade-offs will have to made in terms of costs and risks, but we should not try to start with a specific dollar figure and then develop a force based on that budget number.