The Pentagon's Blank Check

The Department of Defense spent $501 billion in FY2025 on contracts, grants, and direct spending — up from $328 billion in FY2017. That's a 52.8% increase in eight years. And that's just DOD's slice. Total national defense spending, including nuclear weapons (DOE), veterans benefits, and intelligence agencies, pushes past $886 billion — more than the next nine countries spend on their militaries combined.

1. 52.8% Growth in 8 Years

From FY2017 to FY2025, DOD spending grew by $173 billion. To put that in perspective: that increase alone is larger than the entire budget of every federal agency except HHS, SSA, Treasury, and DOD itself.

What drove the increase? Not a new war. Not a specific threat assessment. Just the steady, bipartisan consensus that the Pentagon budget should go up every year — and the political impossibility of voting against a defense bill.

2. More Than the Next 9 Countries Combined

The scale of U.S. military spending is hard to comprehend without comparison:

The U.S. spends 3x more than China and 8x more than Russia. You can add up positions 2 through 10 and still not match the Pentagon. The question isn't whether America has the strongest military — it's whether we're getting $886 billion worth of security, or whether much of it is just inertia, pork, and institutional self-preservation.

3. The Five Companies That Own the Pentagon

Five defense contractors receive over $97 billion per year from the Pentagon. They are, in effect, the permanent government of American defense:

Lockheed Martin alone receives more federal money than the entire budget of the EPA, NASA, and the Department of Education combined. These companies aren't just contractors — they're the only companies capable of building the weapons systems the military depends on. Switching suppliers is often literally impossible.

4. Seven Audits, Seven Failures

In 1990, Congress required all federal agencies to produce auditable financial statements. Most complied within a few years. The Pentagon — the largest — still hasn't. Its first comprehensive audit was in 2018. It failed. It has failed every single year since:

“The department that spends more than any other cannot tell you where the money went. Seven audits, seven failures, zero consequences.”

To be fair: failing an audit doesn't mean $500 billion was stolen. It means the Pentagon's financial systems are so fragmented — thousands of incompatible databases, assets that can't be tracked, transactions that can't be reconciled — that auditors simply cannot verify the numbers. But “we can't even track it” isn't much more reassuring than “it's missing.”

5. The Cost-Plus Scam

Most Pentagon weapons contracts use cost-plus pricing: the contractor bills actual costs plus a guaranteed profit margin. The incentive structure is perverse: the more you spend, the more you earn.

This is why the F-35 went from $233 billion to $400+ billion. It's why almost every major weapons program exceeds its original estimate by 50-100%. The contractors face no downside for overruns — they profit from them.

6. The Revolving Door

Pentagon officials who oversee weapons programs regularly retire and join the contractors they were supposed to be overseeing. Defense contractors hire former generals and admirals to lobby their former colleagues. The line between regulator and regulated barely exists.

A 2021 GAO report found that 1,718 senior DOD officials went to work for defense contractors within two years of leaving the Pentagon. That's not a revolving door — it's a conveyor belt.

The result is a system where the people writing the requirements, the people fulfilling the contracts, and the people overseeing them are — over the course of their careers — the same people.

7. What Would Accountability Look Like?

Criticizing Pentagon spending isn't anti-military. The men and women in uniform deserve a department that spends their budget wisely, not one that funnels it to contractors who profit from waste. Real accountability would include:

• Pass the damn audit. No more funding increases until DOD can account for what it already has.
• End cost-plus for major programs. Fixed-price contracts work everywhere else in the economy.
• Revolving door reform. Five-year cooling period before DOD officials can work for defense contractors.
• Competition requirements. Break up sole-source monopolies where alternatives exist.
• Sunset clauses. Every weapons program over $10B gets mandatory reauthorization every 5 years.

Will any of this happen? Probably not. The defense lobby spends $130 million per year on lobbying. Members of Congress with military bases and defense factories in their districts won't vote for reform. Both parties reliably increase the defense budget while arguing about whether school lunch programs are too expensive.

“We debate whether food stamps cost too much while writing blank checks to companies that have never delivered a major weapons program on time or on budget.”

See our Pentagon spending overview →