54% Went to the Private Contractors

The Costs of War project released a report last week concluding that from fiscal year (FY) 2001-FY2020, the Pentagon spent $14 trillion, “one-third to one-half of which went to defense contractors.”

This estimate seemed too low and unnecessarily broad so I did my own analysis. I found that over half (54%) of the money Congress gave to the Pentagon since FY2001 ended up being passed along to the private sector.

Findings To the author’s credit, the report’s more precise estimate for the percentage of Department of Defense (DOD) contracts that went to the top 5 firms since FY2001—Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing, Northrop Grumman—is pretty much on the money.

The author says “one-quarter to one-third”—my analysis shows that it’s 27%.