I would like to see some actual sources before believing the USA's claims about other country's military spending.

/\ buries head in sand...

"China has under-reported its 2014 defence spending by about 20%"

Says the country that does little accounting tricks like putting spending on nuclear weapons under the budget of the Department of Energy.

China has an aggressive space program, has gone to the Moon recently, has nuclear armed submarines on the seas now, etc.

You truly have to be an amazing dumbass to not recognize the China is spending shitloads on its military. The onyl question I have is *why* does anyone choose to be such a dumbass?

Space programs are not part of military spending, so i'm not sure why you're including it.

Ahhhhhh ha ha ha ha ha!!!! Oh boy....woooo hooo....ahhhh hah ah aha ha hah ah ah ah aha h ahahahaahhahhaaah ha ha ha....

Yes...rocket technology, satellites, etc....yeah, that has *nothing* to do with the military. No transferable technology...no cross-over tech that could be usable in either. In fact, their stellites aren't even watching us....

Ahhhhhh ha ha haaa h aha ah ha ahha hah ahaa <gurrgle...cough...sputter sputter..>

Stop it, you're killing me...

Really, Mendax, are you that naïve? If it weren't for space programs, we wouldn't have half our military tech. They are just R&D applied to "exploration" to avoid calling it military spending.

Sure, there's cross-over tech. I am not denying that. I'm not sure why you made the leap there. However, by your logic, you could call all university funding part of military spending. That wouldn't, however, be either a sensible nor a useful thing to do.

Different sectors help each other. A strong financial sector can leave you in a place where you can threaten meaningful economic sanctions, for example. That does not mean that financial policy is a subset of foreign policy, as your argument would suggest.

First, our space program doesn't really exist anymore. We don't even have a launch vehicle now. And more than just some crossover tech existed in it. How many Apollo or Mercury crew were civilians? 0 zip nadda none. They were military pilots in the early days. Even throughout the shuttle's life, the commanders and pilots were all military. The majority of unmanned space launches today put military hardware in space. NASA is an extension of the military and should report at least half or more of it's spending as military spending.

Wow... I just had an amazing brain wave. Thanks Draug for inspiring me. I might tell later what the hell I'm talking about :)

Come to think of it, it's rather far-fetched that I got this idea from your post since it's only a bit related...

@Draug, not to mention that a unbelievable amount of our high tech electronics come from the space program -> military -> civilians. You know those fancy pant smart phones the silly kids can't ever get their faces away from....thank the space program for that.

Says the guy spending most of his time on the fancy internet...

Oh, does that mean European nations could start redefining ESA spending as military spending in order to meet NATO's 2% spending requirement?

There is a story here and it is the fact that the USA spend over $450bn more than China, an incredible $600bn a year on defence spending.
Firstly why?, and secondly do US taxpayers give a damn, it sounds like an awful lot of cash when you compare it to everyone else.

Party, of course, it's because a Chinese battalion is considerably cheaper to train and maintain than an American battalion. Partly it's because nations such as Germany significantly under spend o

n their military. But mostly it's because the US is determined to have the ability to fight two major overseas fronts (or has that been reduced to one now?) and no one else has the ability to fight a single major front that isn't in their backyard.

Spending is defined to make it hidden from the voters. One of those NASA space shuttles was reserved for military payloads until the military found out how "great" they really were. I think they only made one flight and went back to rocket launches.

The only real difference between a manned rocket and missile is how much you care about its condition when it lands. A manned rocket isn't supposed to make as big an impact.

China is still playing catch up with its navy so it can intimidate it its powerhouse neighbors of Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Phillipines into giving up resource rich sea territories. Just like Russia is with buying 2 amphibious landing carriers from France.