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A few of you brought up that the US military’s size depends on the tasks it is assigned. My question assumed the military’s tasks were held to a bare minimum. So, I guess the answer is: “It depends on what Congress and the President tell it to do.” Ignore the rest of this post then.

The rest of this post assumes the US military’s job is solely to defend the 50 states, US shipping, aid in operations against terrorists and deter other (much weaker) nations from acquiring nukes.

This is a list of the top annual defense budgets. This is borrowed from
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm

[borrowed from here]
World $1100 billion 2004 est. [see Note 4]
Rest-of-World [all but USA] $500 billion 2004 est. [see Note 4]
United States $623 billion FY08 budget [see Note 6]
China $65.0 billion 2004 [see Note 1]
Russia $50.0 billion [see Note 5]
France $45.0 billion 2005
United Kingdom $42.8 billion 2005 est.
Japan $41.75 billion 2007
Germany $35.1 billion 2003
Italy $28.2 billion 2003
South Korea $21.1 billion 2003 est.
India $19.0 billion 2005 est.
Saudi Arabia $18.0 billion 2005 est.
Australia $16.9 billion 2006
Turkey $12.2 billion 2003
Brazil $9.9 billion 2005 est.
Spain $9.9 billion 2003
Canada $9.8 billion 2003
Israel $9.4 billion FY06 [see Note 7]
Netherlands $9.4 billion 2004
Taiwan $7.9 billion 2005 est.
Mexico $6.1 billion 2005 est.

Note 6 - The FY2008 budget requests $481.4 billion in discretionary authority for the Department of Defense base budget, an 11.3 percent increase over the projected enacted level for fiscal 2007, for real growth of 8.6 percent; and $141.7 billion to continue the fight in the Global War on Terror (GWOT)
[end borrowed stuff]

Of the top countries by defense spending:
China - potential threat
Russia - potential threat
France - ally (NATO)
UK - ally (NATO)
Japan - ally
Germany - ally (NATO)
Italy - ally (NATO)
South Korea - ally
India - not hostile (friendly?)
Saudi Arabia - ???
Australia - friendly
Turkey - ally (NATO)
Brazil - not hostile (friendly?)
Spain - ally (NATO)
Canada - ally (NATO)

Most of those nations are allies of the United States.

The Continental US is surrounded by thousands of miles of ocean and bordered by 2 friendly and significantly weaker nations. To attack the Continental US conventionally, requires long range bombers to reach the continental USA and bomber escorts to ward off US F22s or F15s, or a navy with sufficient AA to ward off decimation by the US air force. Those things are expensive and the only nonallied countries with that kind of income to even ATTEMPT such an attack are Russia, China, India, Saudi Arabia and Brazil.

I figured the US would get manufacturing licenses from NATO members. I would guess we could trust countries we have a military alliance with to not block sales of weapons or weapon parts. I also figured the point of an manufacturing license was to not be dependent on foreign nations to build the weapon system anyways. I don’t see why parts factories could not be set up in the USA.