This comprehensive report chronicles the history of women in the military and as Veterans, profiles the characteristics of women Veterans in 2009, illustrates how women Veterans in 2009 utilized some of the major benefits and services offered by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and discusses the future of women Veterans in relation to VA. The goal of this report is to gain an understanding of who our women Veterans are, how their military service affects their post-military lives, and how they can be better served based on these insights.

Military expenditure (% of GDP) in United States was reported at 3.3618 % in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. United States - Military expenditure (% of GDP) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

Throughout the 19th century, the share of military personnel employed by the United States government was below 0.2 percent of the total population in most years. There were noticeable spikes in enlistments and conscriptions during the American Civil War (1861-65), the First World War (1917-18*), and Second World War (1941-45*), as well as smaller increases during the Mexican-American War (1946-48) and the Spanish-American War (1898), but figures were generally much lower than the post-WWII era.

Following the Second World War, the United States abandoned many of its isolationist positions as it sought to become the world's leading superpower. This involved stationing millions of troops in overseas bases during the Cold War, in strategically important locations such as West Germany, Japan, and Taiwan. Additionally, involvement in conflicts such as the Korean War (1950-1953) and Vietnam War (1964-1973*) kept military employment high, usually between 1-2 percent until the 1970s. Figures remained just below the one percent mark until the 1990s, when the end of the Cold War and the growing influence of technology in conventional warfare saw a decrease in demand for many traditional combat roles. Despite U.S. involvement in a number of overseas conflicts in the 21st century, military personnel represented less than 0.5 percent of the total population in most years between 2000 and 2016.

In 2024, 61 percent of survey respondents in the United States said they had either a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the military. This is a slight increase from the previous year, when 640percent of respondents had confidence in the U.S. military. Additionally, this is an increase of six points from 1975 levels, when only 58 percent of Americans had confidence in the military.

Armed forces personnel (% of total labor force) in United States was reported at 0.83764 % in 2020, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. United States - Armed forces personnel - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

Graph and download economic data for Real Gross Domestic Product: Military in the United States (USGOVFEDMILRGSP) from 1997 to 2024 about military, GSP, federal, government, real, industry, GDP, and USA.

This dataset provides values for MILITARY EXPENDITURE PERCENT OF GDP WB DATA.HTML reported in several countries. The data includes current values, previous releases, historical highs and record lows, release frequency, reported unit and currency.

The American Civil War is the conflict with the largest number of American military fatalities in history. In fact, the Civil War's death toll is comparable to all other major wars combined, the deadliest of which were the World Wars, which have a combined death toll of more than 520,000 American fatalities. The ongoing series of conflicts and interventions in the Middle East and North Africa, collectively referred to as the War on Terror in the west, has a combined death toll of more than 7,000 for the U.S. military since 2001. Other records In terms of the number of deaths per day, the American Civil War is still at the top, with an average of 425 deaths per day, while the First and Second World Wars have averages of roughly 100 and 200 fatalities per day respectively. Technically, the costliest battle in U.S. military history was the Battle of Elsenborn Ridge, which was a part of the Battle of the Bulge in the Second World War, and saw upwards of 5,000 deaths over 10 days. However, the Battle of Gettysburg had more military fatalities of American soldiers, with almost 3,200 Union deaths and over 3,900 Confederate deaths, giving a combined total of more than 7,000. The Battle of Antietam is viewed as the bloodiest day in American military history, with over 3,600 combined fatalities and almost 23,000 total casualties on September 17, 1862. Revised Civil War figures For more than a century, the total death toll of the American Civil War was generally accepted to be around 620,000, a number which was first proposed by Union historians William F. Fox and Thomas L. Livermore in 1888. This number was calculated by using enlistment figures, battle reports, and census data, however many prominent historians since then have thought the number should be higher. In 2011, historian J. David Hacker conducted further investigations and claimed that the number was closer to 750,000 (and possibly as high as 850,000). While many Civil War historians agree that this is possible, and even likely, obtaining consistently accurate figures has proven to be impossible until now; both sides were poor at keeping detailed records throughout the war, and much of the Confederacy's records were lost by the war's end. Many Confederate widows also did not register their husbands death with the authorities, as they would have then been ineligible for benefits.

Over the course of the Second World War approximately 127.2 million people were mobilized. The world's population in 1940 was roughly 2.3 billion, meaning that between five and six percent of the world was drafted into the military in some capacity. Approximately one in every 25 people mobilized were women, who generally served in an administrative or medical role, although hundreds of thousands of women did see active combat. Largest armies In absolute numbers, the Soviet Union mobilized the largest number of people at just under 34.5 million, and this included roughly 35 percent of the USSR's male population. By the war's end, more Soviets were mobilized than all European Axis powers combined. However, in relative terms, it was Germany who mobilized the largest share of its male population, with approximately 42 percent of men serving. The USSR was forced to find a balance between reinforcing its frontlines and maintaining agricultural and military production to supply its army (in addition to those in annexed territory after 1941), whereas a large share of soldiers taken from the German workforce were replaced by workers drafted or forcibly taken from other countries (including concentration camp prisoners and PoWs). Studying the figures The figures given in these statistics are a very simplified and rounded overview - in reality, there were many nuances in the number of people who were effectively mobilized for each country, their roles, and their status as auxiliary, collaborative, or resistance forces. The British Empire is the only power where distinctions are made between the metropole and its colonies or territories, whereas breakdowns of those who fought in other parts of Asia or Africa remains unclear. Additionally, when comparing this data with total fatalities, it is important to account for the civilian death toll, i.e. those who were not mobilized.

The graph illustrates the number of personnel in each branch of the U.S. Military for the year 2025. The x-axis lists the military branches: Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The y-axis represents the number of personnel, ranging from 41,477 to 449,265. Among the branches, the Army has the highest number of personnel with 449,265, followed by the Navy with 333,794 and the Air Force with 317,675. The Marine Corps and Coast Guard have 168,628 and 41,477 personnel, respectively. The data is displayed in a bar graph format, effectively highlighting the distribution of military personnel across the different branches.

The US Military Aviation Market is segmented by Sub Aircraft Type (Fixed-Wing Aircraft, Rotorcraft). Key Data Points observed include air passenger traffic, air transport freight, defense spending, military aircraft active fleet, revenue passenger kilometers, high-net worth individuals, and inflation rate.

The North America Satellite Data Services Market would witness market growth of 16.0% CAGR during the forecast period (2024-2031). The US market dominated the North America Satellite Data Services Market by Country in 2023, and would continue to be a dominant market till 2031; thereby, achieving a

Other research has shown (1) that civilians and the military differ in their views about when and how to use military force; (2) that the opinions of veterans track more closely with military officers than with civilians who never served in the military; and (3) that U.S. civil–military relations shaped Cold War policy debates. We assess whether this opinion gap “matters” for the actual conduct of American foreign policy. We examine the impact of the presence of veterans in the U.S. political elite on the propensity to initiate and escalate militarized interstate disputes between 1816 and 1992. As the percentage of veterans serving in the executive branch and the legislature increases, the probability that the United States will initiate militarized disputes declines. Once a dispute has been initiated, however, the higher the proportion of veterans, the greater the level of force the United States will use in the dispute.

Military expenditure as a share of central government expenditure of United States of America fell by 2.87% from 9.3 % in 2022 to 9.1 % in 2023. Since the 2.14% upward trend in 2019, military expenditure as a share of central government expenditure slumped by 5.18% in 2023. Military expenditures data from SIPRI are derived from the NATO definition, which includes all current and capital expenditures on the armed forces, including peacekeeping forces; defense ministries and other government agencies engaged in defense projects; paramilitary forces, if these are judged to be trained and equipped for military operations; and military space activities. Such expenditures include military and civil personnel, including retirement pensions of military personnel and social services for personnel; operation and maintenance; procurement; military research and development; and military aid (in the military expenditures of the donor country). Excluded are civil defense and current expenditures for previous military activities, such as for veterans' benefits, demobilization, conversion, and destruction of weapons. This definition cannot be applied for all countries, however, since that would require much more detailed information than is available about what is included in military budgets and off-budget military expenditure items. (For example, military budgets might or might not cover civil defense, reserves and auxiliary forces, police and paramilitary forces, dual-purpose forces such as military and civilian police, military grants in kind, pensions for military personnel, and social security contributions paid by one part of government to another.)

U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2022 was 876.94 billion US dollars, a 8.77% increase from 2021.

<ul style='margin-top:20px;'>

<li>U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2021 was <strong>806.23 billion US dollars</strong>, a <strong>3.58% increase</strong> from 2020.</li>
<li>U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2020 was <strong>778.40 billion US dollars</strong>, a <strong>6% increase</strong> from 2019.</li>
<li>U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2019 was <strong>734.34 billion US dollars</strong>, a <strong>7.6% increase</strong> from 2018.</li>
</ul>Military expenditures data from SIPRI are derived from the NATO definition, which includes all current and capital expenditures on the armed forces, including peacekeeping forces; defense ministries and other government agencies engaged in defense projects; paramilitary forces, if these are judged to be trained and equipped for military operations; and military space activities. Such expenditures include military and civil personnel, including retirement pensions of military personnel and social services for personnel; operation and maintenance; procurement; military research and development; and military aid (in the military expenditures of the donor country).

N Summaries are means and percentage frequency tabulations for stations around the world. There are approximately 2674 worldwide stations with five or more years data for which the N Summary was prepared. The summaries were calculated using surface weather observations collated by the United States Air Force. The parameters in an N Summary are one or more of the following monthly, seasonal, and annual tabulations: 1. Percentage frequency of surface winds (kts) by day, hour and month, to 16 points of the compass, 2. Percentage frequency of surface winds (kts) (seasonal and annual) to 16 points of the compass, 3. Precipitation amounts (in.), 4. Mean frequency of daily maximum temperature (Deg. F), mean maximum, and extreme maximum temperature (Deg. F), 5. Mean frequency of daily minimum temperature (Deg. F), mean minimum and extreme minimum temperature (Deg. F), and mean daily temperature range (Deg. F), 6. Mean number of days favorable for indicated military operations, 7. Miscellaneous data; mean number of days of occurrence of various weather phenomena, 8. Mean number of days with indicated total and low cloud amounts (oktas), 9. Percentage frequency of observations with low clouds (amount in 8ths, height in feet) and visibility (miles) reported, 10. Relative humidity means, 11. Percentage frequency distribution of wind speed (kts) and temperature (Deg. F), 12. Percentage frequency of visibility (miles) and various atmospheric phenomena, 13. Mean number of days with specified phenomena, 14. Mean cloudiness (%), 15. Snow depth (in.), 16. Percentage frequency of surface winds (kts) to 8 points of the compass (monthly), 17. Percentage frequency of surface winds (kts) to 8 points of the compass/ seasonal, 18. Sea level pressure (mb), means, and standard deviations. Some of the tabulations are for all hours of the day while others may be for each 3-hourly, 6-hourly, or 12-hourly segment of the day, and in some cases, for only one observation a day.

The average for 2022 based on 145 countries was 1.98 percent. The highest value was in Ukraine: 33.55 percent and the lowest value was in Haiti: 0.07 percent. The indicator is available from 1960 to 2022. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

Military expenditure (% of general government expenditure) in United States was reported at 9.0553 % in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. United States - Military expenditure (% of central government expenditure) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

United States - Contributions to Percent Change in National Defense Consumption Expenditures and Gross Investment: Consumption expenditures: Gross output of general government: Value added: Compensation of general government employees: Military was -0.33000 Percentage Points at Annual Rate in January of 2024, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Contributions to Percent Change in National Defense Consumption Expenditures and Gross Investment: Consumption expenditures: Gross output of general government: Value added: Compensation of general government employees: Military reached a record high of 1.46000 in January of 2009 and a record low of -1.73000 in January of 1992. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Contributions to Percent Change in National Defense Consumption Expenditures and Gross Investment: Consumption expenditures: Gross output of general government: Value added: Compensation of general government employees: Military - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on July of 2025.

Graph and download economic data for Contributions to Percent Change in National Defense Consumption Expenditures and Gross Investment: Consumption expenditures: Gross output of general government: Value added: Compensation of general government employees: Military (B408RN2A224NBEA) from 1973 to 2024 about military, defense, value added, contributions, output, compensation, investment, gross, consumption expenditures, consumption, percent, government, employment, GDP, and USA.