The current (2005) United States military budget is larger than the military budgets of the next fourteen biggest spenders combined, and nearly seven times larger than China's, which places second. The United States and its close allies are responsible for approximately two-thirds of all military spending on Earth (of which, in turn, the U.S. is responsible for the majority), and spend 57 times more than the seven so-called "rogue" nations combined (Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria). Military spending accounts for more than half of the United States' federal discretionary spending, which is all of the U.S. government's money not spoken for by pre-existing obligations.•

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in 2003 the United States spent approximately 47% of the world's total military spending of US$956 billion.

While the overall U.S. military budget has risen over time,
as a percentage of its GDP, the United states spends 4% on military. This compares higher than France's 2.6%, and lower than Saudi Arabia's 10%.• This is historically fairly low for the United States. While the spending budget has been slowly rising, the spending rate has been in a slow decline since peaking in 1944 at 37.8% of GDP. Even during the peak of the Vietnam War the percentage reached a high of 9.4% in 1968.•

Yet some say that to compare government spending on the military to the total sum of all goods and services produced by the national economy in a year (the GDP) is to mislead, since the U.S. GDP has dramatically risen over time, and therefore the military budget can still go up, while simultaneously demanding a smaller percentage of the GDP. For example, according to the Center for Defense Information, the US outlays for defense as a percentage of federal discretionary spending, has from Fiscal Year 2003 consumed more than half (50.5%) of all such funding and is steadily rising.•

Finally, it must be stressed that the recent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are funded outside the Federal Budget (i.e. are paid for through supplementary spending bills) and are therefore external to the military budget figures listed above . In addition, the United States has long had a history of black budget military spending which is not listed as Federal spending and is not included in published military spending figures. Thus, the true amount spent by the United States on military spending is higher (to an extent) than the figures.