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National Defense

$1.2 trillion of gross federal outlays were reported under the National Defense heading in fiscal year 2026, the 4 largest of 18 budget functions. Department of Defense accounts for 95.8% of it.

American Factbook Research

Identifiers

Budget function
National Defense

The record

Reported figures for National Defense, each linked to its source
Outlays · FY2026Gross outlays, not net. At this grain they are routinely negative for some agencies, which is why nothing here calls them money spent.$1,174,220,949,606USD, gross
Obligations · FY2026$1,337,947,725,765USD
Rank among budget functions · FY20264 of 18by outlays
Share of all budget functions · FY202613.4%percent of outlays under every heading
Agencies reporting under it · FY20262 of them report this function and are not in the award table, so they appear below by their top-tier code with no name.10agencies

Agencies reporting under this heading

1 more column on a wider screen

Agencies reporting outlays under National Defense, fiscal year 2026
RankAgencyOutlays
1Department of Defense$1,124,706,818,529
2Department of Energy$32,765,538,168
3Department of Justice$12,031,773,356
4Department of Labor$2,934,916,342
5Department of Transportation$1,049,812,119
6Department of Homeland Security$368,532,477
7096$293,684,566
8Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board$33,621,674
9Selective Service System$25,741,688
10535$10,510,684

An agency with a top-tier code and no name reports this function to the account data and does not appear in the award table the names come from. Its figure is the publisher’s; the missing name is ours.

What this data cannot show

  • A budget function is reported per agency and never nationally. The figure at the top of this page is a sum over the rows in the table below, not a total the publisher published.
  • Gross outlays are not net outlays and neither is money spent in the sense a reader means. An agency’s figure can be negative when it recovers more than it pays out under a heading in the period.
  • The fiscal year is not over. These are the figures reported so far.
  • Budget functions describe purpose, not programme. Money under one heading can pay for work a reader would file under several, and one programme can appear under more than one heading in different agencies.

Sources

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