Numbers that hit different

A single F-35A costs $82.5 million — and that's before lifetime sustainment costs of ~$8M per year per aircraft.

That's enough to pay an E-4 with 2 years of service for 1,755 full years of service. Or put another way: the plane costs more than the entire lifetime earnings of the crew it's supposed to protect.

TRICARE — the health insurance program for active-duty and military family members — costs the DoD approximately $56 billion per year.

By comparison, the VA pays approximately $118 billion per year in disability compensation to veterans — twice what TRICARE costs, serving a population that was promised care and earned it through service. The gap between what's budgeted for active duty vs. what's paid to veterans reveals where priorities actually lie.

The DoD spends approximately $48 billion per year on information technology — much of it on legacy systems that have failed multiple audits.

There are roughly 800,000 veterans using GI Bill benefits in any given year. The DoD's annual IT budget would cover the full tuition and housing allowance for every single one of them — with $8 billion to spare.

The three Zumwalt-class destroyers cost approximately $7.5 billion total — about $2.5B each — making them the most expensive destroyers ever built.

The Post-9/11 GI Bill pays roughly $25,000–$30,000 per year in tuition and fees. The cost of one Zumwalt destroyer would fully fund four years of GI Bill benefits for approximately 75,000 veterans.

The Navy's Littoral Combat Ship was supposed to cost $220M each. They cost $600M each and are riddled with mechanical failures.

The Navy is now decommissioning LCS ships before their planned service life — some less than 10 years old. Total program cost: $14.5 billion. Congress keeps funding it because the shipyards are in swing districts.

The F-35 program is $183 billion over its original budget estimate.

The cost overrun — the amount over what was promised — exceeds the entire GDP of New Zealand. The original program was already the most expensive weapons acquisition in history. The overrun is its own record.

The DoD's own analysis found it has approximately 19% excess base infrastructure that serves no current operational need.

Maintaining these empty or underused bases costs an estimated $2 billion per year. Congress has blocked every Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) round since 2005 — because closing a base means losing jobs in someone's district.

DoD spent $6.8 billion on contractors to perform work at Pentagon headquarters in a single fiscal year — not deployed, not in a war zone, at the building.

The entire active-duty Marine Corps payroll for 170,000 Marines is roughly $8.7 billion. We spend nearly as much on contractors in one building as we spend paying every Marine who has the EGA.

The Army spent approximately $32 million developing the XM8 assault rifle to replace the M16/M4 family — then cancelled the program in 2005.

Soldiers are still carrying the M4/M16 platform, first adopted in 1964. The HK416, which the Marines and SOCOM adopted, costs $2,500 more per unit. DoD's logic: it's not cost-effective to upgrade the rifle. The $200B F-35 was green-lit the same year.

The Defense Travel System (DTS) cost over $1 billion to build and has been criticized by IG auditors for years. Its replacement has already cost hundreds of millions more.

Soldiers and airmen still file paper travel vouchers, use personal credit cards, and wait months for reimbursement. The system that was supposed to fix this remains in perpetual upgrade. The travel continues.

The DoD's FY2024 budget is $886 billion — $2.43 billion per day, $101 million per hour, $1.68 million per minute.

An E-1 earns $22,752/year. Their entire annual salary funds 13.5 minutes of DoD operations. They are asked to be ready to die for a system that allocates their entire life's salary to less time than a lunch break.

The F-35 program's estimated lifetime cost is $1.7 trillion — making it the most expensive weapons system in human history.

That's $5,100 for every American alive today. More than most E-4s earn in a month. The program was originally sold to Congress as an affordable alternative.

The B-21 Raider stealth bomber costs an estimated $700 million per aircraft. The Air Force plans to buy at least 100.

An E-7 (SFC/GySgt/TSgt) with 12 years earns $63,576/year. One B-21 costs 11,009 years of that sergeant's pay. The 100-plane fleet: over a million years of service.

The Department of Defense failed its sixth consecutive audit attempt in 2023. It controls $3.8 trillion in assets.

Every other major federal agency passes annual audits. The DoD has been legally required to audit since 1990. 33 years of non-compliance. Zero consequences.

The U.S. left $7.12 billion in military equipment behind when it withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021: 208 aircraft, 42,604 vehicles, 350,000+ weapons.

None of it came home. Most was eventually captured by the Taliban. The soldiers who were issued some of this equipment didn't get to keep their boots when they ETS'd.

The Army spent $18.1 billion on the Future Combat Systems program over 8 years — then cancelled it entirely in 2009.

Zero vehicles delivered. Zero aircraft delivered. Zero accountability. The primary contractor, Boeing/SAIC, received no financial penalty. The program managers were promoted.

The DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer was designed around an advanced 155mm gun. The ammo cost $1 million per round.

The Navy cancelled the gun ammunition program. Three $4.4B ships now sail with permanently empty gun mounts. A rifle round for an infantryman costs $0.30.

A Tomahawk cruise missile costs approximately $1.87 million per unit (FY2024 pricing).

The average E-5 (Sergeant) earns $35,172/year in base pay. One Tomahawk = 53 years of that sergeant's life. The U.S. has fired thousands of them.

DoD spent $374 billion on private contractors in FY2022.

Total active-duty military compensation across all branches, all ranks: $157 billion. We pay private companies 2.4x more than we pay the people who actually serve.

Lockheed Martin CEO James Taiclet received $24.7 million in total compensation in 2023.

An E-7 (SFC) with 12 years earns $63,576/year. The CEO earned 388 years of that sergeant's pay in one year, from a company whose revenue is 74% U.S. government contracts.

The DoD made $247 billion in unsupported accounting adjustments in FY2019 — entries with no documentation explaining what the money was for.

"Unsupported" is government accounting for: gone, no paperwork, don't ask. That's roughly the entire annual budget of the U.S. Army — unaccounted, in a single fiscal year.

A DoD audit found $4.6 billion in potential fraud, waste, and abuse in LOGCAP (Logistics Civil Augmentation Program) contracts in Afghanistan.

Contractors billed for meals not served, facilities not built, employees not present. KBR, the primary contractor, saw no criminal charges at the executive level. The stock recovered in 18 months.

The Air Force's Defense Enterprise Accounting and Management System (DEAMS) has been in development for over 20 years at a cost of $3.1 billion.

It still produces unreliable financial statements. Airmen use manual workarounds. The original contractor paid no financial penalty for non-delivery. The program continues.

Military suicides have outnumbered combat deaths in every year since 2012. In 2023: 149 Army suicides alone.

DoD's FY2024 suicide prevention budget: $94 million. DoD's FY2024 advertising and recruiting budget: over $600 million. The Army Is People. The spending doesn't reflect that.

Veterans wait an average of 83 days for a first mental health appointment at the VA — longer than before the 2018 MISSION Act was designed to fix it.

The law passed with bipartisan support and a $55B authorization. Six years later, mental health wait times in many VA markets are longer, not shorter. The bureaucracy absorbed the money.

A DoD IG audit found the Air Force paid $326,785 for a single aircraft toilet assembly. The same part cost $9,179 on the open market.

The contractor: TransDigm Group, a private equity-backed defense monopolist that buys sole-source parts suppliers. Their strategy is textbook: acquire the supplier, eliminate competition, charge whatever you want. It's legal.

It costs approximately $13 million per year to hold each detainee at Guantánamo Bay Naval Station.

A maximum-security federal supermax prison costs roughly $45,000/year per inmate. GTMO costs 289x more. With 30 detainees, that's $390M/year — enough to give every E-1 in the Army a $10,000 raise.

Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee collectively received $41 million in defense industry contributions in the 2022 election cycle.

The committee then approved a record $858 billion NDAA. The people who oversee defense spending are funded by the companies that receive it. This is not corruption — it's called the system.

The U.S. purchased 27,740 MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles for Afghanistan at $500K–$1M each. Over 11,000 were abandoned or destroyed at withdrawal.

MRAPs were rushed into production after the IED epidemic started killing soldiers in unarmored Humvees. After a decade of urgency, thousands were left for the Taliban. The Humvees they replaced were also left behind.

BAH is calculated to cover 95% of median rent in each market, for each pay grade. That's the official policy.

A 2022 Military Family Advisory Network survey found 53% of military families said BAH didn't cover their actual housing costs. BAH calculations use median rents, not the rents near bases, where military families actually live.

Military families pay $4,000–$8,000 in unreimbursed out-of-pocket expenses per PCS move, on top of what the government covers.

The average military family moves every 2–3 years. Over a 20-year career, that's $40,000–$80,000 in personal money spent on government-ordered moves. There is no reimbursement for this gap.

Military spouse unemployment sits at 21% — more than 5 times the national average.

Every PCS move costs the average working military spouse $20,000+ in lost income, benefits, and career continuity. There is no federal program that compensates for this. The DoD calls it "a quality of life issue."

Military childcare waitlists average 12–18 months at most installations. Congress approved 10,000 new Child Development Center slots in 2021.

Three years later, 40% of those funded spots still don't exist. The DoD IG found the money was "not optimally deployed." Meanwhile, dual-income military families are paying $2,000–$3,500/month for off-base care.

A C-17 Globemaster III costs $218 million per aircraft. The Air Force operates 222 of them — a fleet worth approximately $48 billion.

An E-1 earns $22,752/year. The C-17 fleet alone costs 2.1 million years of entry-level military pay. The planes are magnificent. The soldiers they carry are still paid below the poverty line in most HCOL cities.

DoD awarded $9 billion for cloud computing (JWCC contract).

Most barracks still have spotty WiFi. Enterprise cloud for the Pentagon, dial-up for the troops.

A single Black Hawk helicopter costs $21.3 million.

That would fund a full-time personal chef for every soldier at a 500-person dining facility for 50 years.

The Army pays $12.98 per meal at the DFAC.

That's more than the average Chipotle order ($11.25) — for food soldiers rate 1.8 out of 5.

The Army accidentally overpaid $1.1 billion in BAH over three years.

That would renovate 22,000 on-post family housing units at $50K each — the same ones with mold.

DoD spent $1.9 billion on recruiting in FY2023 — and still missed targets by 41,000.

That $1.9B would fund a $14,500 retention bonus for every E-5 who re-enlisted.

The F-35 program will cost $412 billion over its lifetime.

That's enough to rebuild every barracks room in the DoD — 27 times over.