Military Personnel
- Interactive
CBO’s Interactive Force Structure Tool
This tool allows the user to see the effects on the Department of Defense's total operation and support costs and on the size of the military of adding or subtracting tanks, ships, aircraft, and other units.
- Report
The U.S. Military’s Force Structure: Fiscal Year 2025 Update to Personnel Numbers and Costs
This spreadsheet provides the data that underlie CBO’s interactive force structure tool.
- Cost Estimate
Reconciliation Recommendations of the House Committee on Armed Services
As ordered reported on April 29, 2025
- Presentation
Trends in Spending for Military Compensation
Presentation by F. M. Woodward, an analyst in CBO's National Security Division, at the Defense Manpower Roundtable.
- Graphic
Atlas of Military Compensation, 2024
In the President’s 2025 budget request, total military compensation is $600 billion, including veterans' benefits. That amount represents an increase of 162 percent since 1980 (and 151 percent since 1999) after removing inflation’s effects.
- Report
Options for Reducing the Deficit: 2025 to 2034
CBO periodically issues a compendium of policy options and their estimated effects on the federal budget. This report presents 76 options for altering spending or revenues to reduce federal budget deficits over the next decade.
- Report
How CBO Projects the Long-Term Costs of the Department of Defense’s Future Years Defense Program
Since 2003, CBO has projected the Department of Defense’s costs for the 10 to 15 years beyond those covered in the Future Years Defense Program’s five-year plan. This report describes some of the methods CBO uses to make those projections.
- Report
Long-Term Implications of the 2025 Future Years Defense Program
CBO analyzes the Department of Defense’s plans for 2025 to 2029 as presented in the 2025 Future Years Defense Program. Under those plans, CBO projects, defense costs would increase by 11 percent between 2029 and 2039.
- Presentation
How the Military’s Basic Allowance for Housing Compares With Civilian Housing Costs
Presentation by David Mosher, CBO’s Director of National Security, at the 2024 Conference of the Western Economic Association International.
- Cost Estimate
H.R. 8070, Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025
As reported by the House Committee on Armed Services on
May 31, 2024