Content Type: Data
Explore D360’s data analytics tools to gain a better understanding of U.S. force structure, acquisitions, and the defense budget.
Data / Acquisition, Budget, Forces, Strategy
The Defense Futures Simulator
The Defense Futures Simulator (DFS) is an interactive online tool designed to empower scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to create and analyze defense strategies and budgets. DFS allows users to quickly iterate and explore alternative approaches, evaluating their impact on the budget and military force structure in real-time. DFS is freely available to the public, allowing anyone to make an account and start creating scenarios.
U.S. Federal Budget Interactive
This interactive tool from the Defense Budget Analysis program provides a breakdown of the inflation-adjusted federal budget from FY 1976 to FY 2025 by agency and by budget function.
Counting Dollars or Measuring Value: Defense Expenditure as a Share of GDP
The official 2 percent threshold, while mandated at the 2014 Wales Summit, has long been understood as an unofficial spending target for NATO members. According to 2017 estimates illustrated in the graphic, only four of the 28 NATO member states meet the 2 percent spending level while 15 are expected to meet it by 2024..
Counting Dollars or Measuring Value: Distribution of Defense Expenditure by Main Category
NATO breaks defense expenditure into four main categories: equipment, personnel, infrastructure, and other. In addition to the commitment to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense, NATO heads of state pledged at the 2014 Wales Summit to spend 20 percent of their defense budgets on major equipment.
Counting Dollars or Measuring Value: Security Assistance as a Share of GDP
As some allies and partners call for a broader view of the investments that contribute to collective defense, the CSIS study team examined security assistance spending by NATO member states and its select subset of European partners.
Counting Dollars or Measuring Value: Troop Contribution as a Share of Total Active Duty Force
The CSIS report compiles NATO member and partner countries’ troop contributions across a range of military operations. Where data was publicly available and reliable, it measures troop contribution as a percentage of the total active duty force to normalize and compare between countries with militaries of different size.
Counting Dollars or Measuring Value: Trade with Sanctioned Competitors
Most measures of security contribution focus on investment. But states also forego economic gains in support of common security. The effect of enforcing agreed upon sanctions against a potential adversary is one metric that could be used to measure this sacrifice.