Down the Rabbit Hole of the Pentagon Graphics Machine.

In my research for the Death and Taxes poster I come across all sorts of charts and graphs.  The are graphics produced by people in the pentagon, a half trillion dollar enterprise.  While some are simple and too the point, others have gone off the deep end of visualization methods.

Next week I will be interviewing someone from the “Engine Room”, which is a initiative started two years ago from the Department of Defenses’ comptrollers office that deals specifically with analyzing budgetary information and briefing creation.  Basically they make charts and graphs from large amounts of information that members of congress and the president can understand.

The Engine Room is a very welcome program for anyone who has seen what Major Generals can do with PowerPoint and some clip-art. But just to put into perspective some of the good work the Engine Room is doing, let us take a trip down the rabbit hole of the pentagon graphics machine.

First I would like to mention that the graphics coming out of each branch of the military are vastly different.  The Army’s are all quite uniform sticking to bar graphs and pie charts and all with a matching color scheme.  The Navy’s graphics are less polished with a focus on line charts and the occasional concept map.  The Air Force however that really goes over the top in their visualization methods, from baffling to well, more baffling, their graphics really show off what can be accomplished when you lose sight of your audience and forget that sometimes the best way to convey information with with a paragraph or two of text.

Let’s start off with the Army.  Here is what 75% of their charts have looked like for the past 5 years.

It’s simple and stright forward.  Their pie graphs are also well done.

Clear and functional with a break out box for those sub %5 items.  Occasional you will get a graph that really didn’t need to be visualized.  This bar graph - table hybrid below shows how unexciting two nearly identical sets of data can be.

The Navy uses a variety of visualization methods with some more effective than others.  Their standard method is the line chart as seen below.

Not very polished, but useful, although a legend could have been included with this one.  Sometimes they will mix in a bar chart as well.

One chart they use a lot is the 3D area chart.

Again not very polished, but effective.

Here is where it get’s a little tricky.  The Navy uses a table to chart the porduction of various planes and ships, except they use a strikeout to denote changes.  It can end up looking a bit like a bowling score card.

Here is a more complex one.

The Navy also dabbles in concept visualization too.  Here is one that looks simpler than it really is.

And here is one that looks as complicated as it really is.

At least there is some production value there, with gradients ansd such.  There was one graph in the Navy documentation that looked like it really did not belong there.  This one below, drawn with MS Paint, was inserted into some paragraph text.

Now on to the Air Force when things really start to get out of hand.  First to prepare you for the craziness of the Air Force documentation, let me show you what a typical document cover looks like.

This one is from a few years ago but it’s really got everything Air Force in there as if there was a requirement to depict all aspects of the branch in clipart form.

The Air Force graphics are not all over-the-top.  Here are a few that have little flare but are none the less, odd.

This one is easy to understand, but at first glance it looks a bit like a graph depicting the flight of boomerang.

Now the lines charts get a bit more complicated.

I am sure there could have been a better way to represent this data than weaving multiple lines together like a sloppily knit scarf.

It get’s worse.

This area chart seems to be crossed with some metaphor visualization methods as well as a magnetic poetry set - Air Force Jargon Edition.  I must note that these image0s are not cropped, if they lack legends, keys, or explinations it is because they were not included.

Occasionally you will see a bar graph in the mix.

Considering that most of this chart is about future projections which are flat, I am not too sure as this really needed to be visualized.

Where the Air Force really goes the extra mile is in the non-traditional methods of data visualization.

This one looks pretty snazzy at first, but I suspect that this image existed indepentantly and the document creator just added labels on top of it.  Does this really tell us anything?

Here is one of the most useful charts I have come across.

It’s simple and shows just what’s involved in the ‘budget’ aspect of the Air Force.  It doesn’t really show how they are in volved, but that may be asking too much.

Not to say there isn’t an attempt to convery complex themes and information…

…there is.  The above chart may not make a lot of sense to the layman, or even the any-man, but to the creator of the chart it means something.  Perhaps the chart is an accurate depiction of a very complex organizational strategy.  Or the chart depcits something of less complexity in an obfuscating way.  Or the chart depicts something that doesn’t need to be depicted.  I can’t say for certain, but its totally baffling to me.

It doesn’t have to be complex to be confusing.

This looks like it should be straight forward.  But is the diagonal line on some type of axis?  Just what is going on here?  Even with all the acronyms explained, I suspect this chart is still confusing.

Here is one that looks promising.

We have a quadrant overlapped with some area data.  What I don’t quite understand is if this is a concept driven chart, is there any data to support it.  Usually quadrant charts involve axises.  Here there are not axises making the shapes and sizes oi the various items rather arbitrary.

Here is another one that looks simple, but the arrows seem to raise more questions then provide answers.

It certainly doesn’t help that it’s titled, “Air Force Budget Quadrants” when there are no quadrants, unless I am missing something.

This one may look really busy, and it is, but there is plenty of information in there without being overly confusing.

The key could use some help deciphering the red, blue, and aqua colored radar coverage though.

There is a particular document that uses mostly PowerPoint created charts, and it can get a little out of control.

What is generally lacking in these charts is some uniformity.  Providing a clear path will help the reader absorb the information.  Generally these particulary graphs are chock full of bits of clip art and different colored boxes and arrows.  It really obstructs the informational aspect.

Occasionally, it literally obstructs the chart, like this one where a plan wing is covering the graph.  Don’t ask why, this is a half trillion dollar operation here.

This ‘chart’ looks like a fun time.

But is it telling us anything?

And just who is doing these graphics anyways?

Are these informational?

Or is it just fun and games?

I won’t rant about how our tax dollars pay for these images and how we deserve better.  But What I do find a bit alarming is that these documents are used to breif major decision makers.  These decision makers may know a thing or two about policy and politics, but if decoding and understanding the armed forces budget is the goal of these documents, then there is a huge failure here.

Not only are these graphs of limited use and poor quality, but they are terribly inconsistant across the branches.  Is the Air Force’s budget any more difficult to understand than the Army’s?  Only the largest of corporations deal with budgets this big; over a  hundred billions dollars annually.  You can only imagine the quality and caliber of the charts and graphics comming out of their reports which themselvs cost millions to produce.  Why does the Department of Defense, which is an economy the size of Turkey, put out such inconsistant and poor visualizations?

Well fortunately there is an effort to improve this front.  As I mentioned earlier, the Department of Defense Comptroller, Tina Jones has started an effort call the Engine Room which is quickly turning militarty budget reports into a standardized art form.  Next week we will be interviewing a member of their team to try to get some answers to these questions and learn about their process.  Stay tuned to the feed.

Down the Rabbit Hole of the Pentagon Graphics Machine. has one response Add your thoughts.

U.S. Troop Stength in Iraq, and other data.

So I was researching the U.S. troops strength in Iraq since there was all this talk of surging and pulling out.  Turns out there isn’t really any good visuals of it, and the raw data leaves alot to be desired.  So I went about creating my own chart.

I would first like to thank the Statistical Information Analysis Division(SIAD) of the Office of the Secretary of Defense for the raw data.  As is often the case when the Pentagon and the Internet mingle, the SIAD website looks like it was done by the lone DOD IT guy in between bites of a chicken sandwich

Regardless, here is the data when its cleaned up a bit. (click it to make it bigger)

I have added in major dates related to the Iraq war.  The Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force are depicted and labeled.  If you see any trends let me know; I am not analyzing this data, just throwing it out there.

For reasons unknown to me, the SIAD does not list troop levels later than December of 2007.  The unofficial end of July projection is 140,000 and the unofficial goal expressed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates for December is 100,000.  I will leave the plausibility of that up to you.  Whats also missing in the numbers for Operation Enduring Freedom which is for Afghanistan.  The data is available for this but not prior to 2005 for some reason so I didn’t include it.  There are 20-25,000 troops in Afghanistan at any given time, about 95% Army.

So now that we have a nice clean chart, its time to complicate it with extraneous data sets.  Below is the same chart only I overlaid the Dow Jones Index, Halliburtons stock aswell as the Homeland Security’s terror alert indication.  See any correlation?

Of course there is no set vertical scale for the economic data but there doesn’t need to be to spot trends.  I experiment with other indicators such as the price of oil but the chart became a little overwhelming.  I will try more overlays in the future and you’re more than welcome to use the images to your own devices.

Enjoy.

U.S. Troop Stength in Iraq, and other data. has 2 responses Add your thoughts.

Bush’s new Alternative Energy is powered by smoke and mirrors.

Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology. Since 2001, we have spent nearly $10 billion to develop cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable alternative energy sources — and we are on the threshold of incredible advances.

So tonight, I announce the Advanced Energy Initiative — a 22-percent increase in clean-energy research — at the Department of Energy, to push for breakthroughs in two vital areas. To change how we power our homes and offices, we will invest more in zero-emission coal-fired plants, revolutionary solar and wind technologies, and clean, safe nuclear energy.

(Applause.)

Huzzah! The administration finally (2006) acknowledges that we need to do something about this oil habit.  Clean energy here we come!

Of course the State of the Union address is like the worlds fair of spin and political cover.  A time to take note of all your achievements however slight and fleeting and spin them up into a whirling tornado of progress.  The more out-of-context your point is, the more magical it becomes.  And don’t worry, Congress will duly applaud and cheer as if they were auditioning for the role of the laugh track on Save By The Bell.

Two years ago Bush acknowledged your addiction to oil.  Last year here echoed his commitment to altenative energy.

“It’s in our vital interest to diversify America’s energy supply — the way forward is through technology. We must continue changing the way America generates electric power, by even greater use of clean coal technology, solar and wind energy, and clean, safe nuclear power.”

(Applause.)

The 2008 State of the Union address called for more the same, “increase the use of renewable power” and “a new generation of clean energy technology”. It looks like greener pastures are ahead.

Two weeks later the Bush administration released its proposed budget for 2009.  This is where the Death and Taxes poster comes in.  Words are easier to spin than numbers. Ok numbers are just as easy to spin.  But the data doesn’t lie.  The President’s budget and the Death and Taxes poster give a more accurate look at our priorities.

Here is an overview of the Department of Energy as imaged in the poster.

So lets examine further.

First of all, Energy Efficiency and Renewables is being cut by 27%.  Energy Conservation which provides the most benefit per dollar invested is cut 25%.  Solar, which has a potential output of 22-69% of the total US power gets shelved as does Hydrogen.  Does anyone remember that much touted photo op of President Bush filling up a Hydrogen car in California?  It was his magic bullet to make us all forget about pesky fuel efficiency.  Well that experiment didn’t last long.  In fact the only alternative energy that the administration is actually pushing (when the spot light isn’t on) is biomass, or more precisely, corn based ethanol.  Which is unfortunate since ethanol fuel is a disaster in the making.

Are you on the ethanol bandwagon? Well consider this; If we distilled every corn plant in the US, it would only displace 1/6 of our gasoline consumption.  A box of Corn Flakes would then cost hundreds of dollars.  To replace all of our gasoline we would need to plant 71% of our farmland with fuel crops.  The more ethanol, the less food. Not very viable.  It’s also inefficient to produce (costs 7 barrels of oil to make 8 barrels of ethanol), reduces millage per gallon (thanks to the high octane), produces more smog than oil, and would strain water supplies.

Bush keeps pushing it with tax incentives and handouts thanks to the Corn Lobby and the fact that its a useful distraction from other effective methods of reducing gasoline use, like increasing mileage standards.

Ok so if renewable energy isn’t in the budget, then what is?

The largest upswing in funding comes from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).  This a large 727 million barrel capacity store of petroleum reserves housed in salt domes along the Gulf of Mexico.  It’s almost full too, you can check the capacity here.  There is enough oil in there to run the country for a month, should there be a world wide embargo as well as disruption of all domestic oil production facilities.

Fossil Energy R&D is on the rise too, mainly a result of Bush’s “clean coal” initiatives.  When large energy companies announce with great fanfare they were are spending billions of dollars funding “alternative energy”, they are not talking about wind and solar.  They are talking about synthetic gas, liquidfied natural gas, and clean coal.  As if burning coal could be a “clean” process, proponents are hoping to just bury all the toxic emissions in the ground.  Coal is responsible for 48% of our power supply and U.S reserves could last 250 years, so when the coal lobby outspends the solar lobby 25 to 1, their voice is heard in the White House.

But you probably thought the Department of Energy was in the energy business.

They are actually in the nuclear weapons business as a majority of the departments funding is used to maintain our nuclear stock pile and turning old nukes into glass.  A new MOX Fuel facility is in the works at just under a half billion dollars.  This place will make uranium and plutonium cocktails to power nuclear plants around the U.S.  With 19% of the power supply, the Nuclear Lobby has some serious clout.

So when the microphones are turned off, and the number crunchers take over, the federal budget becomes the ultimate insight into our national priorities.  The next time you hear a politician talk about funding alternative energy and being addicted to oil, check the numbers, because usually their green tinted glasses are paid for by lobbyists.

(applause)

Bush’s new Alternative Energy is powered by smoke and mirrors. has one response Add your thoughts.

Visualizing One Billion Dollars.

The Death and Taxes poster contains a lot of information and is great for putting federal spending in context.  However, the de-facto unit of measure is one billion dollars.  I realized that people often have a hard time grasping just what one billion dollars is.  So to provide further context to the poster, I am putting one billion dollars into perspective.

There have been other attempts around the web to imagine what a billion dollars might be, but they tend to obfuscate the problem further.  You can go here and learn that one billion credit cards weighs as much as 78 brachiosauruses or that one billion dollars in pennies would cover 14 square miles, but does that all really mean anything?

Let’s investigate what one billion dollars is and how it relates to us and our world.

Now most people will never see $1 billion themselves.  If you live in the United States, there is a 1 in 800,000 chance that you’re a billionaire, which are about the same odds as winning half a million dollars playing Powerball.  So ingenuity, hard work, and inheritance will net you a better rate of return than the lottery, but for those of us without such gifts, one billion dollars is only attainable when working in groups.

If you have a PH.D. then you already have a leg up on everyone else.  Just gather together 278 of your doctorate friends and add up all the money all of you make during the 40 or so years of your career and presto!, One billion dollars.

Of course if you don’t have a PH.D and consider yourself just an ‘average’ guy, you will have to work a little harder, a little longer, or instead, just round up an additional 312 of your ‘average’ guy friends.

If you’re female you will need another 178 doses of girl power to reach one billion dollars over the course of your collective lifetimes.

If you consider yourself black or African-American you will need almost twice the man/woman power to reach a billion.  An additional 656 lifetime contributions will do the trick.

Of course if you are in the unfortunate position of living below the poverty line, it will take an entire regiment of your unfortunate brethren to come up with one billion dollars in a lifetime.

In reality, the federal budget is an annual process, so understanding a billion dollars in terms of lifetime incomes is only of moderate use.  To bring it down to the annual level, you are going to need a lot of friends.  This is assuming you and your friends represent the mean American.  That’s mathematical mean.  I’d imagine an unearthly level of charm is required to achieve this number of friends.

When relating to federal spending, we ultimately have to relate to taxes.  So here is the amount of people required to support one billion dollars in federal spending.    To put it another way, the taxes paid by everyone living in New York City is almost half of the annual cost of the war in Iraq.  You would have to tax everyone in L.A., Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, and Detroit to come up with the rest.  Again, this is assuming everyone in New York is an ‘average’ American, which is certainly not the case considering 40 of the aforementioned billionaires live there.  But you get the idea.

Before we get too far along on a socioeconomic tangent, lets switch gears.  If you happen to be so lucky as to win the Powerball lottery jackpot, odds being 1 in 146 million, then you are well on your way to being a billionaire.  Now all you have to do is win the jackpot every time for the whole year.  Impossible?  Surely not, why the odds are only 1 in 8 septendecillion.  That’s 55 digits.  If you are a string theorist, you might find those odds attractive.

Now that you are the luckiest person ever to live, what are you going to do with your winnings?  Blow it on something totally ridiculous of course.  That’s right, with your one billion dollar bank account you could purchase every action figure in sold in the US for a year.  Or all the video games for a few weeks.  I think we know that a year long reign as Lord of the Plastic Figurine to be the awesomer option.

Now forget that pipe dream! We are relating to government spending here and the gov’ment ain’t got time fer toys.  Instead of a nations’ worth of plastic superheros, one billion dollars can buy you half a plane.  Now, if we are talking strict off-the-line unit cost, then you could fly away in a B-2 with $250 million in cash stuffed in the weapons bay.  But you would first have to find someone to foot the R&D costs for you, which isn’t likely.  So $2.2 Billion is the total get-my-money’s-worth price for a B-2.  A bit out of reach for a lowly one billionaire.

The black market is where the action for the warlord on a budget.  Especially in Africa where a slightly used AK-47 will cost you 1/4 the price it would if it were bought in the Middle East; around $200.  One billion dollars could corner the entire black market for firearms.  You would need substantially more if you wanted to do it legally, providing the U.S. alone with $1.2 billion.  We are talking small arms here — machine guns, pistols, rifles, grenades, etc, which is only about 20% of the total international arms trade.  Even still, there is plenty of guns to go around, approximately one for every man, woman, and child in North America.  If you include military small arms, we will have to arm up South America as well.

Edit: I tried for about 45 minutes to think of a clever segue from fire arms to breakfast cereal but failed.  If you think of one let me know and I will credit you.

If you bought up all the stock you would enjoy the benefits of General Mill’s one billion dollars in profits.  That’s a lot of Boo Berry.  Yes, to further put the figure into perspective, this food giant, whose cereal you have grown up, with can put together one billion dollars worth of profit on $11 billion in sales.  This would place them somewhere around 200 on the Fortune 500 and 250 on the global Forbes 2000 lists.

Breakfast peddlers can’t hold a candle to the sheer monetary force of international war-making.  The entire yearly profit of a sprawling Fortune 500 company could be absorbed over a weekend in Iraq.  The war in Iraq is the first war in which we have had to borrow money from foreigners since that Revolutionary one we fought 225 years ago.  Back then the movies cost a nickle and a war was only $15 million.  Even adjusted for inflation and its not more than a week’s worth of Iraq’s expenses.  In fact, as you read this post, it’s costing $6,024 per second to wage war over there.

Two days in Iraq, annual income of 25 thousand people, a years worth of lotto winnings, its all one billion dollars.  I hope the preceding images have put that dollar amount into some perspective and that the information in the Death and Taxes poster is of a bit more use.  The National Cancer Institute receives $5 billion per year; that’s 10 days in Iraq, the cost of two and a half B-2’s, the tax revenue from half a million people,  every lotto jackpot for five years, etc.

To really understand federal spending, we need to put the information in to a larger context.  That is what the poster if for.  To relate federal spending to ourselves, we need to bring this large numbers down to eye level.  Hopefully, the next time you hear that the government spent ABC billion on XYZ you will think, “That’s a lot of action figures!”

Source: People. Guns. Toys. Lotto. Planes. War. Boo Berry.

This blog and website is supported by sales of the Death and Taxes poster. Please consider supporting this project by buying one or two of the really cool posters which are all new for 2009!

Visualizing One Billion Dollars. has 11 responses Add your thoughts.

Total military and national security spending in the U.S. federal budget.

Every year people ask me, “Just what is all this military/national security spending you list?”. Well I have decided to type it all out once and for all. What qualifies spending as ‘military’ or ‘national security’ is subjective. There is strict interpretations which only includes funding with in the Department of Defense, and there are loose interpretation which include portions of the national debt and subsequent interest payments as a direct result of military spending. I try to strike a balance between loose and strict. Below is a table which includes all the military and national security spending that makes up the $799 Billion listed on the Death and Taxes poster for 2009.

The government has an official categorization of defense spending. It’s function 050.

“National Defense” (”Function 050″): Federal budget category that consists of the Department of Defense budget (”Function 051″); Department of Energy programs devoted to national defense, such as naval ship reactors and nuclear weapons (”Function 053″); and other defense-related activities including the Selective Service System and civil defense programs administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (”Function 054″).

But protecting our national borders and interests is not solely contained within function 050 spending. The table below details all the military and national security spending that make up the $799 Billion that I use for the poster. Each function and department is color coded.

Total Military and National Security Spending in the 2009 Federal Budget

source: 2009 Presidential Budget Request

Category	Department	Program	Budget Authority ($Billion)	Description/Justification
Function 051	Defense	Department of Defense	515.440	Where the bulk of the military spending takes place
Function 053	Energy	National Nuclear Security Administration	9.097	Maintains nuclear weapon stockpile and maintains application of nuclear energy. i.e. Naval reactors.
Function 053	Energy	Environmental and Other Defense Activities	6.857	Disposal of old nuclear weapons and cleanup of military test sites.
Function 053	Energy	Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability	.008	???
Function 053	Labor	Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Fund	.948	Compensation to employees who were injured to radiation exposure at a nuclear testing site.
Function 053	Labor	Administrative Expenses, Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Fund	.108	Administration for the above. ^
Function 053	Corps of Engineers	Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program	.130	more nuclear testing site cleanup.
Function 053	Independent Agency	Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board	.025	Congressional oversight of the nuclear weapons complexes
Function 054	Commerce	Bureau of Industry and Security Operations and Administration	.015	Ensures an effective export control and treaty compliance.
Function 054	Homeland Security	United States Coast Guard	.340	Military functions of the Coast Guard
Function 054	Homeland Security	Acquisition, Construction, and Improvements	.003	???
Function 054	Homeland Security	National Protection and Programs Directorate	.841	For Infrastructure Protection and Information Security.
Function 054	Homeland Security	Federal Emergency Management Agency	.294	For Operations, Management and Administration
Function 054	Justice	Salaries and Expenses	.020	???
Function 054	Justice	Payment to Radiation Exposure Compensation Trust Fund	.031	Compensation to people exposed to radiation during above ground nuclear tests from 1945 through 1962.
Function 054	Justice	Federal Bureau of Investigation	2.793	For Counter-terrorism and salaries and expenses related there to.
Function 054	Transportation	Maritime Security Program	.174	Privately owned fleet that can support a Department of Defense sustainment in a contingency.
Function 054	Corps of Engineers	Office of Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works)	.006	Arlington National Cemetery and the Soldiers’ and Airmen’s home National Cemetery administrative functions.
Function 054	Civil Defense	Selective Service System	.022	Administers military conscription.
Function 054	National Science Foundation	Research and Related Activities	.067	???
Function 054	Central Intelligence Agency	Payment to Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System Fund	.279	CIA retirement payments.
Function 054	Central Intelligence Agency	Intelligence Community Management Account	.665	Umbrella organization for oversight of the Intelligence community.
Function 054	Independent Agency	Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board	.002	Advises the President to ensure that concerns with respect to privacy and civil liberties are appropriately considered in the implementation of all laws, regulations, and executive branch policies related to efforts to protect the Nation against terrorism.
		Total Function 050	538.165
Function 153	State	International Peacekeeping Activities	1.497	Promotes increased involvement of regional organizations in conflict resolution and help leverage support for multinational efforts where no formal cost sharing mechanism is available.
Function 151	State	Counter-Narcotics Assistance	1.609	Provides funds for military equipment and training to overseas police and armed forces to combat the production and trafficking of illegal drugs
Function 152	State	Economic Support Fund	3.154	Promote economic and political stability in strategically important regions where the United States has special security interests, these grants allow the recipient government to free up its own money for military programs.
Function 152	State	Foreign Military Financing	4.812	Congressionally appropriated grants given to foreign governments to finance the purchase of American-made weapons, services and training.
Function 152	State	International Military Education and Training	.090	Military Education and Training grants to allied nations.
Function 152	State	Peacekeeping Operations	.247	Voluntary support for international peacekeeping activities.
Function 152	State	Nonproliferation, Antiterrorism, Demining, and Related Programs	.499	Funds go to nuclear non-proliferation programs, anti-terrorism aid, demining activities, and small arms destruction programs.
		Total function 150	11.909
Function 751	Homeland Security	Immigration and Customs Enforcement	5.364	The mission of ICE is to protect America and uphold public safety by targeting the people, money and materials that support terrorist and criminal activities. Established with the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the ICE is the largest investigative arm of DHS, and the second largest contributor to the nation €™s Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Function 751	Homeland Security	Customs and Border Protection	9.494	While one role of Customs is to regulate international trade and collect import duties, its other primary mission is consists of preventing terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States.
Function 751	Homeland Security	Domestic Nuclear Detection Office	.596	Improves the Nation €™s capability to detect and report unauthorized attempts to import, possess, store, develop, or transport nuclear or radiological material for use against the Nation
		Total Function 751	15.454
Function 703	Veterans Affairs	Entire department not including benefits which is mandatory.	44.767	The government does not consider supporting our veterans military spending. However I make no distinction between the funding of current troops and the funding of past troops. Clearly the size of the active military has a direct relationship to the size of the veteran population and subsequent funding.
Function 051 (supplemental)	Defense	Global War on Terror	189.316	The administration uses $70 billion for this figure in 2009 which is just a placeholder pending further enactment of the 2008 request. The real estimated total is $180-200 billion. $189.316 billion was used at it is the 2008 estimated total.
		Total Other	234.083
		Total Military/National Security Spending	799.611

Total military and national security spending in the U.S. federal budget. has one response Add your thoughts.