Pentagon's Secret Budget Alone Would Be World's Sixth Largest Military

[kpete]

Pentagon's Secret Budget Alone Would Be World's Sixth Largest Military
Submitted by davidswanson on Thu, 2011-02-17 04:24
Tales From The Crypt
Posted by Bill Sweetman at 2/15/2011 9:33 AM CST

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The classified segments of the budget are certainly large enough to support such a program. While in the old days you had to track down tell-tale line items and add the printed budget numbers, the Pentagon is now open about its secrets, with a "classified programs" line-item in the P-1 budget book.

A rough estimate is that the Pentagon's classified programs and operations would count as the world's sixth-largest defense budget. Readily searchable line items in the budget add up to more than $57 billion, more than Germany's entire spending.

Most of this appears in three line items: Over $18.5 billion in USAF procurement, a single $17-billion plus line in the defense-wide operations and support budget, and almost $18 billion in research and development. Most of the R&D funding is in the USAF budget; in fact, two-thirds of USAF R&D is classified.

Adding up readily-identifiable secret line-items yields a USAF black budget of $33.1 billion in R&D, operations and procurement accounts. The USAF also states that its "non-blue" budget for fiscal 2012 - predominantly intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance - is $30.9 billion, leaving a clear $2.2-plus billion for non-ISR programs.

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