Choosing Weapons

Abstract

Since the close of World War II, the United States has spent some $1.3 trillion on military R&D (equivalent to $2 trillion in year 2000 dollars). Procurement outlays—expenditures for equipment and systems based on that R&D—added another $2.3 trillion (about $3.4 trillion in 2000 dollars). Defense acquisition—the term encompasses both R&D and procurement—has thus consumed about $3.6 trillion, more than one-third of postwar U.S. defense spending. And over the first decade of the twenty-first century, the United States will spend nearly $1.5 trillion on new weapons systems.¹