ABSTRACT
The Department of Defense is the third largest planned economy in the world. Annual U.S. defense expenditures are now around $80 billion plus $10-15 billion of additional resources which are expropriated or provided by other government agencies. The Department of Defense directly employs around 5 million people and indirectly employs, through the defense contractors, around 3 million additional people. Among the planned economies, total expenditures by the Department of Defense rank behind only the total economies of the Soviet Union and, possibly, Communist China —the two nations, ironically, which are our major potential adversaries.
