The Department of Defense
Summary
The executive department the National Security Act of 1947 created: a $831.3 billion FY2025 budget funding 2,047,871 active-duty troops and civilians -- about $2,432 per U.S. resident -- even as the civilian side of that workforce alone fell by 78,375 positions in a single year.
What is this organization?
What does it do?
DoD organizes, trains, and equips the country's armed forces: 1,276,700 active-duty service members⧉ enacted for September 30, 2025 -- 442,300 Army, 332,300 Navy, 320,000 Air Force, 172,300 Marine Corps, 9,800 Space Force -- plus 771,171 civilian employees⧉ as of September 2025, doing everything from logistics to weapons maintenance. Both are organized under the military departments and, per GAO's own count⧉, all 11 unified combatant commands.
What does it cost to run — money and people?
Congress enacted $831.3 billion in FY2025 base discretionary budget authority for DoD⧉, $63.9 billion under the $895.2 billion cap⧉ the Fiscal Responsibility Act set for FY2025 national-defense spending. That funds the active-duty force and civilian workforce above -- 2,047,871 people combined -- and against the Census Bureau's 341.8 million U.S. residents⧉ as of July 2025, works out to about $2,432 per person.
View data as table
| Operation & Maintenance | 290.3 | readiness, training, base operations, Defense Health Program |
|---|---|---|
| Military Personnel | 182.4 | pay and benefits for the active-duty force |
| Procurement | 167.5 | weapons systems, vehicles, equipment |
| RDT&E | 141.2 | research, development, test and evaluation |
| Other DoD Programs | 42.8 | incl. Defense Health Program, counter-drug activities, DoD OIG |
| Revolving & Management Funds | 1.8 | Defense Working Capital Fund, National Defense Stockpile |
| Related Agencies (discretionary) | 0.6 | Intelligence Community Management Account |
Why is it good for society?
DoD is the machinery that turns Congress's power to raise and maintain armed forces, and the President's role as commander in chief, into an operating force rather than paper authority -- the coordination the National Security Act's own 1947 purpose clause⧉ was written to force onto what had been rival, uncoordinated Army and Navy departments. That coordination runs on people: DoD's civilian workforce fell by 78,375 positions (9.9%) between January 2025 and January 2026⧉ through resignations, a hiring freeze, and terminations that, GAO found⧉, the department has not fully assessed for their effect on readiness, workload, or lethality -- the very functions that workforce exists to perform.
- DoD's FY2025 $831.3 billion enacted budget and 2,047,871 combined active-duty and civilian personnel work out to about $2,432 per U.S. resident -- while its civilian workforce alone fell by 78,375 positions (9.9%) in a single year through resignations, a hiring freeze, and terminations.
- found DoD does not have a plan to assess what those 2025 civilian-workforce reductions did to readiness, workload, or lethality -- the seven elements the law (10 U.S.C. § 129a(b)) requires the department to weigh before cutting programmed civilian staffing.
Your handles.* DoD's personnel levels and force structure are set every year in the National Defense Authorization Act -- track the current edition, H.R. 8800 for FY2027, and write to your member of Congress on the Armed Services Committees while it's pending. For DoD records not otherwise public, file a Freedom of Information Act request through FOIA.gov's agency search (search "Department of Defense" for the correct component's office).
Sources(9) ▾
- U.S. House of Representatives, Office of the Law Revision Counsel (hosted via GovInfo, U.S. Government Publishing Office), National Security Act of 1947, as amended (compiled through P.L. 119-60, enacted December 18, 2025) (2026-01-16) — The Law Revision Counsel's official compiled text of Chapter 343 of the 80th Congress (61 Stat. 496, approved July 26, 1947), current as amended, hosted on GovInfo -- the founding statute that created a Secretary of Defense, the National Military Establishment, and the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and (Title II) the Department of Defense. Read directly with the Read tool's PDF extraction; archive.org's Wayback capture service returned a tool-level failure this session ("unable to fetch from web.archive.org"), so no archiveUrl -- non-blocking, per this series' standing archive.org-outage handling. govinfo.gov · original document
- U.S. House of Representatives, Office of the Law Revision Counsel (uscode.house.gov), 10 U.S.C. § 111 — Executive Department (Department of Defense) (2026-07-16) — The official U.S. Code as published by the Law Revision Counsel -- the current, operative statute establishing the Department of Defense as an executive department and listing its eleven constituent elements, including the unified and specified combatant commands. Enacted by Pub. L. 87-651 (1962) as former §131, renumbered/amended by the Goldwater-Nichols Act, Pub. L. 99-433 (1986). Cross-checked against the Cornell Legal Information Institute's mirror of the same section, which matches verbatim. archive.org unreachable this session; no archiveUrl (non-blocking). uscode.house.gov · original document
- The White House, published in the Federal Register (90 FR 43893-43894), Executive Order 14347 of September 5, 2025 — Restoring the United States Department of War (2025-09-10) — The Federal Register's official GovInfo-hosted copy of the executive order authorizing 'Department of War' and 'Secretary of War' as secondary titles. Read directly with the Read tool's PDF extraction, verbatim, both pages. archive.org unreachable this session; no archiveUrl (non-blocking). govinfo.gov · original document
- Congressional Research Service, via Congress.gov, FY2025 Defense Appropriations: Summary of Funding (CRS Insight IN12425, updated June 20, 2025) (2025-06-20) — 's own funding-summary table (Table 1) reconciling DoD's FY2025 discretionary appropriations across two continuing resolutions and the full-year CR (P.L. 119-4), including the statutory Fiscal Responsibility Act discretionary spending cap. Read directly with the Read tool's PDF extraction. archive.org unreachable this session; no archiveUrl (non-blocking). congress.gov · original document
- Congressional Research Service, via Congress.gov, FY2025 NDAA: Active Component End-Strength (CRS Insight IN12449, updated September 30, 2025) (2025-09-30) — 's own table (Table 1) of the FY2025 NDAA's (P.L. 118-159, signed December 23, 2024) enacted active-component end strength by service, effective September 30, 2025. Read directly with the Read tool's PDF extraction. archive.org unreachable this session; no archiveUrl (non-blocking). congress.gov · original document
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, Civilian Workforce: DOD Should Assess Lessons Learned to Better Understand Reduction Impacts (GAO-26-108100) (2026-05-29) — 's own review of DoD's FY2023-2025 programmed civilian workforce reductions and its 2025 deferred-resignation/hiring-freeze/probationary-termination actions. Table 1 (p.8) gives DoD civilian headcount by component as of September 2025; Table 4 (p.28) gives the month-by-month total from January 1, 2025 through January 1, 2026. Read directly with the Read tool's PDF page-range extraction. archive.org unreachable this session; no archiveUrl (non-blocking). gao.gov · original document
- U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Population Growth Slows Due to Historic Decline in Net International Migration (Vintage 2025 national population estimate) (2026-01-27) — The Census Bureau's own Vintage 2025 national population estimate release, giving the U.S. resident population as of July 1, 2025 -- the per-resident denominator for this entry's cost-per-person KPI, per better_metrics.md's sourced-denominator discipline (the same document and figure the good-citizen-gao and good-citizen-dod-oig entries already rely on). Independently re-fetched and re-confirmed this session rather than copied from those entries. archive.org unreachable this session; no archiveUrl (non-blocking). census.gov · original document
- U.S. Government Publishing Office, via GovInfo, H.R. 8800, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027 (reported in House, 119th Congress) (2026-06-15) — The currently pending annual defense policy bill -- the yearly law that sets DoD's personnel end strength, force structure, and management policy -- used here only for the 'Your handles' pointer to the live legislative record a reader can track and write to their member of Congress about. Congress.gov's own bill page returned HTTP 403 to automated fetches; GovInfo's copy is the reachable one-click original. archive.org unreachable this session; no archiveUrl (non-blocking). govinfo.gov · original document
- U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Information Policy (government-wide FOIA portal), FOIA.gov — How to Make a FOIA Request (2026-07-16) — The government-wide portal's own homepage, which routes requesters to each agency's office via its agency-search tool -- used here only for the 'Your handles' pointer, since DoD's own submission page (esd.whs.mil) returned HTTP 403 to automated fetches this session. archive.org unreachable this session; no archiveUrl (non-blocking). foia.gov · original document
Comments
Always open. Logged-in readers can annotate paragraphs in place.
The Department of Defense traces to the National Security Act of 1947⧉, which created a Secretary of Defense and a National Military Establishment over the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Its current legal form sits in 10 U.S.C. § 111⧉, which makes it "an executive department of the United States" built from eleven elements -- the three military departments, the Joint Staff, the defense agencies, and the unified and specified combatant commands. A September 2025 executive order authorized a "Department of War" secondary title⧉, but the order's own text says statutory references to the Department of Defense "remain controlling until changed subsequently by the law."