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 deve

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...