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Curious. What percentage of the US industry is weapons manufacturing? Where can I find that information?

by Garvi 3y ago

colechristensen 3y ago
How do you define the boundary of what is and is not weapons?
adventured 3y ago
A small portion. The US is the world's #2 manufacturer. The US military spends less than $100 billion per year on purchasing military hardware (and the US exports less than that annually in an average year). Lockheed's sales are smaller than Tesla's. The military industrial complex would fit into Apple's pocket. Granted, the war in Ukraine has temporarily bumped up some export/trade numbers (2022 saw a big spike, around 50%+).
- sokoloff 3y ago
  Procurement of weapons and systems cost $136 billion in 2022 and $107 billion was spent on research and development of weapons and equipment. [1] - https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/budget-explainer-national-defense https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/budget-explainer-national...
- Garvi 3y ago
  Wikipedia contradicts everything you just stated. Pentagons budged has been exceeding 700bil yearly : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_... US is the top exporter of weapons. Bigger than all the others combined in fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry The information on current percentage of the US industry being utilized to produce weapons seems heavily censored and unavailable.
  - jandrewrogers 3y ago
    > Wikipedia contradicts everything you just stated. Your "refutation" is does not address any point that was made by the person you are responding to. For example, the vast majority of the $700B military budget is not spent on weapons, something which is easily verified. Most of it is spent on administrative costs, logistics, medical research, etc. US weapons manufacturing is a rounding error in the US economy, easily <1%.
    - Garvi 3y ago
      You are correct. The 700B is mostly wages and R&D, I take it. The 100bil throws me off because knowing Germany just spent 100bil on just one order of F-35s, that are being discussed here. Not being contrarian, just making a point, I believe US weapons manufacturing being 50% of the US industry. The point being the heavy redaction of all data on this topic. "Prove me wrong"
      - dmoy 3y ago
        > Germany just spent 100bil on just one order of F-35s, that are being discussed here. Wasn't it $10b, not $100b? Also that cost is not consistent - it'll be spread out over many years, it's likely they won't even get ten planes delivered in the next four years.
jandrewrogers 3y ago
It depends on how you define it, but the number is small. The combined global revenue of Lockheed, Raytheon, and General Dynamics is only ~$170B. A significant fraction of that revenue isn't weapon related e.g. General Dynamics owns Gulfstream and other commercial aviation businesses. No matter how you slice it, the answer is going to be a fraction of a percent i.e. quite small.
dmoy 3y ago
That's gonna be hard to piece out. Defense industry spending is usually grouped with aerospace, and furthermore defense industry contracts include a loooot of stuff that isn't weapons manufacturing - maintenance, random near academic style research, stuff that isn't even weapons (like... furniture and random supplies and shit), as well as labor or even pmc stuff. So you can probably figure out hard upper boundaries, but determining the percentage that is weapons even of just that industry will be difficult. If I had to WAG it, I'd say easily it's less than 10% of a single individual large industry (like gasoline or cars or whatever), so probably well under 2-3% of total industry.
HeWhoLurksLate 3y ago
so ya nerd sniped me- military budget, at least requested for 2023: total requested is $773B [0] "FY 2023 budget request for procurement and research and development totaling $276 billion is the largest in the history of the Department and ensures combat-credible forces across all domains" so if I understand that, R&D is $276 billion, plus a bunch of extra money for more ammunition and stuff like that. The 2021 US GDP is $23,315.08B [1], which means that the military budget is ~$4.28% of the GDP. Turns out that the 5% number is about right, or at least it was in 2015 [2]. So general military procurement (so food, bombs, and probably 401k's & pensions) is about 5% of the US economy, but that doesn't include non-military use, like ensuring that there are more guns than people in Texas (not actually [3]). If you want to see the breakdown of which types of guns sell the most in the US, this is a pretty good read [4] I couldn't figure out what combination of words to google to get any further - there's also research labs that get funded out of state and government grants that may not get included in that, and I know that's also probably a decent chunk of change as well. So to answer your question - probably about 5% of US industry caters to the military specifically. A decent amount of that doesn't go to weapons, but instead people and facilities (which we have a ton of). Civilians can also buy guns, and the US also sells a bunch of weapons across the world. I would guess about 7-8% of the US economy directly goes into the manufacturing or development of weapons, weapon systems, and military vehicles, but I have no idea where I should be looking for a better answer than a guess. 0 - https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/FY2023/FY2023_Budget_Request.pdf https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudg... 1 - https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-gross-domestic-product https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-... 2 - https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2015/08/19/dollars-at-work-what-defense-spending-means-for-the-u-s-economy/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2015/08/19/d... 3 - https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/guns-per-capita https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/guns-per-ca... 4 - https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/report/2021-firearms-commerce-report/download https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/report/2021-firearms-comme...

Curious. What percentage of the US industry is weapons manufacturing? Where can I find that information?

by Garvi 3y ago

Curious. What percentage of the US industry is weapons manufacturing? Where can I find that information?

colechristensen 3y ago

How do you define the boundary of what is and is not weapons?

adventured 3y ago

A small portion. The US is the world's #2 manufacturer. The US military spends less than $100 billion per year on purchasing military hardware (and the US exports less than that annually in an average year). Lockheed's sales are smaller than Tesla's. The military industrial complex would fit into Apple's pocket. Granted, the war in Ukraine has temporarily bumped up some export/trade numbers (2022 saw a big spike, around 50%+).

sokoloff 3y ago
Procurement of weapons and systems cost $136 billion in 2022 and $107 billion was spent on research and development of weapons and equipment. [1] - https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/budget-explainer-national-defense https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/budget-explainer-national...
Garvi 3y ago
Wikipedia contradicts everything you just stated. Pentagons budged has been exceeding 700bil yearly : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_... US is the top exporter of weapons. Bigger than all the others combined in fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry The information on current percentage of the US industry being utilized to produce weapons seems heavily censored and unavailable.
- jandrewrogers 3y ago
  > Wikipedia contradicts everything you just stated. Your "refutation" is does not address any point that was made by the person you are responding to. For example, the vast majority of the $700B military budget is not spent on weapons, something which is easily verified. Most of it is spent on administrative costs, logistics, medical research, etc. US weapons manufacturing is a rounding error in the US economy, easily <1%.
  - Garvi 3y ago
    You are correct. The 700B is mostly wages and R&D, I take it. The 100bil throws me off because knowing Germany just spent 100bil on just one order of F-35s, that are being discussed here. Not being contrarian, just making a point, I believe US weapons manufacturing being 50% of the US industry. The point being the heavy redaction of all data on this topic. "Prove me wrong"
    - dmoy 3y ago
      > Germany just spent 100bil on just one order of F-35s, that are being discussed here. Wasn't it $10b, not $100b? Also that cost is not consistent - it'll be spread out over many years, it's likely they won't even get ten planes delivered in the next four years.

jandrewrogers 3y ago

It depends on how you define it, but the number is small. The combined global revenue of Lockheed, Raytheon, and General Dynamics is only ~$170B. A significant fraction of that revenue isn't weapon related e.g. General Dynamics owns Gulfstream and other commercial aviation businesses. No matter how you slice it, the answer is going to be a fraction of a percent i.e. quite small.

dmoy 3y ago

That's gonna be hard to piece out. Defense industry spending is usually grouped with aerospace, and furthermore defense industry contracts include a loooot of stuff that isn't weapons manufacturing - maintenance, random near academic style research, stuff that isn't even weapons (like... furniture and random supplies and shit), as well as labor or even pmc stuff. So you can probably figure out hard upper boundaries, but determining the percentage that is weapons even of just that industry will be difficult. If I had to WAG it, I'd say easily it's less than 10% of a single individual large industry (like gasoline or cars or whatever), so probably well under 2-3% of total industry.

HeWhoLurksLate 3y ago

so ya nerd sniped me- military budget, at least requested for 2023: total requested is $773B [0] "FY 2023 budget request for procurement and research and development totaling $276 billion is the largest in the history of the Department and ensures combat-credible forces across all domains" so if I understand that, R&D is $276 billion, plus a bunch of extra money for more ammunition and stuff like that. The 2021 US GDP is $23,315.08B [1], which means that the military budget is ~$4.28% of the GDP. Turns out that the 5% number is about right, or at least it was in 2015 [2]. So general military procurement (so food, bombs, and probably 401k's & pensions) is about 5% of the US economy, but that doesn't include non-military use, like ensuring that there are more guns than people in Texas (not actually [3]). If you want to see the breakdown of which types of guns sell the most in the US, this is a pretty good read [4] I couldn't figure out what combination of words to google to get any further - there's also research labs that get funded out of state and government grants that may not get included in that, and I know that's also probably a decent chunk of change as well. So to answer your question - probably about 5% of US industry caters to the military specifically. A decent amount of that doesn't go to weapons, but instead people and facilities (which we have a ton of). Civilians can also buy guns, and the US also sells a bunch of weapons across the world. I would guess about 7-8% of the US economy directly goes into the manufacturing or development of weapons, weapon systems, and military vehicles, but I have no idea where I should be looking for a better answer than a guess. 0 - https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/FY2023/FY2023_Budget_Request.pdf https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudg... 1 - https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-gross-domestic-product https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-... 2 - https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2015/08/19/dollars-at-work-what-defense-spending-means-for-the-u-s-economy/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2015/08/19/d... 3 - https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/guns-per-capita https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/guns-per-ca... 4 - https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/report/2021-firearms-commerce-report/download https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/report/2021-firearms-comme...