182
The Pentagon spent $4 trillion over 5 years. Contractors got 54% of it.
(responsiblestatecraft.org)
The paper, which I co-authored with Stephen Semler, found that 54% of the Pentagon’s $4.4 trillion in discretionary spending from 2020 to 2024 went to military contractors. The top five alone — Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($81 billion) – received $771 billion in Pentagon contracts over that five year period.
...
It would be one thing if all of the hundreds of billions of dollars lavished on weapons contractors were being well spent in service of a better defense. But they are not.
This article loses credibility to me because the author cites these dollar figures spent on defense contractors, but then only talks about the weapon systems spending. "Contractors" from these companies and others (that the headline speaks to) are doing far more than building weapons. They're running logistics systems coordinating shipping of supplies, they're serving food in mess halls, and staffing lots of regular office jobs all over the military.
Contractors are hired for a couple reasons over using employees (or service members in this case). A contractor could be hired to service a general labor role or possibly a highly skilled specialty unrelated to war fighting. When staff reductions are needed, they are easy to stop that spending by firing the contractors.
I widely agree with the authors that cuts to VA benefits and many expensive weapon systems are bad use of the funds, but completely ignoring where a large chunk of the money is going and cherry picking the most decisive point to disingenuously support a headline does the good reasons for the argument a disservice.