The Fiscal Year Has Ended

What Did the U.S. Military Purchase?

Year after year, the Executive and Legislative branches work together to divert most discretionary spending away from beneficial domestic programs and into militarism. Corporations absorb over half of the ensuing military budget. What does the federal government buy from these corporations?

I’ve sorted and simplified U.S. military contracting announcements from the most recent fiscal year, which ended on 30 September 2023.

These summaries are available at https://WarIndustryMuster.com/distillations/.

Trends within fiscal 2023 contracting included:

• sizeable research & development expenditures,

• extensive foreign military sales (FMS),

• relentless spending on the F-35 program, including the aircraft’s software and RTX engine,

• corporate influence on military strategy, planning, and policy,

• and worldwide construction, with an emphasis on the Pacific—part of broad U.S. military operations against Beijing.

Dive into these summaries. They are a resource for education, writing, and journalism.

Christian Sorensen is a researcher focused on the business of war. He is the foremost authority on the bundling of military and big business. A U.S. Air Force veteran, he is the author of the book Understanding the War Industry (Clarity Press, 2020). His work is available at warindustrymuster.com. Sorensen is a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), an organization of independent veteran military and national security experts who understand that U.S. foreign policy is not making them, or the world, safer.