How Big is the US Military?

America spends over $700 billion on the US Military. But where does that money go? And as long as Will and Mango are talking about the military, they try to figure out: Does a golf course count as a military base? What’s the most fun night on a submarine? And is Bob Ross’ calm demeanor all thanks to his military training?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what, mango, what's that? Well? Alright, so I was
reading this article from the Guardian. This was back in
two thousand twelve, I think, and it was about the
Swiss Air Force. So there was this emergency with this
hijack plane over Swiss territory, so like no small deal,
something they really needed to deal with. But instead of
the Swiss Air Force escorting the troubled plane back to
Geneva and that would be typical, it was actually handled

(00:22):
by the French and Italian air forces. So, um, why
is that? Well, because it was six oh two am
and apparently that was two hours before the Swiss Air
Force came to work on and that can't be true. Yeah,
they at least it wasn't two thousand fourteen. So here's
a quote I found from the Guardian. It says, um,
there's something almost too civilized about a country whose fighter
jet stick to office hours. I mean, this is crazy.

(00:45):
So they supposedly keep this eight to five schedule, they'll
break for an hour and a half for lunch, and
until two thousand seventeen there was no service on weekends.
It's pretty crazy. And I know this all sounds crazy,
but it was also because the Swiss didn't feel the
need for it, and they're military budget and so they
just they'd make arrangements when neighboring air forces to you know,
be on call whenever they were off. And it's an

(01:07):
interesting way to spend military money. I don't think this
is how it's done in the U. S. If I'm
not mistaken, but it did make me wonder like, how
much does our country spend on the military and where
exactly does that money go? And that's what today's episode
is all about. Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part

(01:44):
Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined
by my good friend man gues Ticketer, and the man
on the other side of the soundproof glass wearing camo
in honor of today's topic is our friend and producer
Tristan McNeil. He's always so prepared noticed this. Oh wait,
he's saluting us, thinking, good job, Kristen. All right, so
today we're answering the question how big is the U. S. Military?

(02:05):
And we're gonna be answering that from a few different angles.
You know, how much money has been how many people
are employed by the military, how many bases does the
US have and then other questions like how many countries
are we obligated to protect based on treaties and you
know things like this. Yeah, and our goal with this
episode is to answer these questions out of pure curiosity,
not to make any sort of political point. It's kind

(02:26):
of funny when you cover a topic like these, people
are always a little on edge and so ready to
pounce if they sense any bias. It always makes me
think about that time in Mental Floss and the year
we published a cover of the magazine with the headline
Wildest Rides to the White House. Yeah, and keep in
mind this was about a decade ago. Anyway. The cover
showed to roller coaster ride and in the roller coaster

(02:46):
was I think Nixon and Teddy Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter and
of course Hillary Clinton. Well, and if you remember, you
could see Lincoln's hat flying off in the background. And
now again, we we always tried to stay pretty free
of politics Mental Flaws because we saw ourselves as kind
of this break from the news and all of that.
But that issue generated so much angry male like more

(03:08):
than any other issue did from both sides of the
political spectrum, and those on the left were angry that
we used the photo of Hillary looking like she was screaming,
and and those on the right, we're angry because Hillary
didn't belong in that car, having never been a president.
But the reality is we felt we had no other
choice but to use that photo because there were no
fewer than like a hundred photos online of Hillary doing

(03:29):
the roller coaster face at least there are so many
to choose from it. But you're right, I mean, it
looked so real And you can actually google image search
this cover today. Just type in mental Flaws, Wildest Rise
to the White House and you'll see the cover that
we're talking about. That's a great example of what we're
dealing with here, And so as you listen to the episode,
try to keep in mind what our goal is, and

(03:49):
that's to answer this question. All right, So let's get started.
You know, the timing on this topic is pretty interesting
because while we're watching all of the fighting going on
over healthcare and a new tax plan and things like
the National Anthem, it almost went unnoticed that a couple
of weeks ago, the Senate passed their version of the
National Defense Authorization Act, and unlike so many other votes

(04:10):
these days, this one wasn't even close. The vote was
I think like eighty nine to eight, and they passed
this authorization of a seven hundred billion dollar funding for
the military for the upcoming fiscal year. And that happens
to be even more than the Trump administration had proposed,
which is crazy. And I thought it was a bill
of over twelve hundred pages, and you know, well, one

(04:31):
of these days I want to do an episode entirely
on how bills of that length are actually drafted, because
that's a lot of pages. Kidding, I wonder if anybody
read all twelve hundred pages. But yeah, that's seven hundred
billion included six hundred forty billion for basic Pentagon operations
and then another sixty billion for ongoing war operations. So
we're talking places like Iraq and Syria, Afghanistan, you know,

(04:52):
those are the biggies in the group. Yeah, and so
most of that funding goes to the Department of Defense,
but there are additional funds to the Department of Energy,
which is is uh, you know, responsible for the US
nuclear program, the Department of Homeland Security, the Veterans Administration,
the Military Retirement Trust Fund, and also health care for
retired military members as well. As allocations for intelligence agencies

(05:15):
because they have specific defense assignments. Yeah, and and and
those also have money authorized separately. So there are some
estimates you know that when you look at all the
agencies involved in our national security and military it it
may actually be closer to a trillion dollars annually. So
if we go with that seven billion dollar figure, the
military comes in second in terms of the largest federal expenditures.

(05:36):
You know what's first? What's that Social Security that comes
in around one trillion dollars? But where does that put
us in comparison to other countries? Well, you can look
at this in a few ways, but I think maybe
we should look at it into So first you can
look at it as total dollar amounts spent um, and
then you can also look at it as a percentage
of GDP. Now, in terms of total dollar amounts, the

(05:56):
US spends more each year than the next eight countries combined.
So what I want to tell me what those eight
countries are? No, I want you to guess. All right,
I'm looking at the two thousand sixteen figures here and
and the estimates on the US spending from that year
were about six hundred billion. Actually a little bit more
than six hundred billion. So I mean, I probably have
to guess the first two or past the US are

(06:19):
China and Russia. Maybe yeah, you'd be right to guess
them in exactly that order, but they're not as close
as you might think. So the estimates I was looking
at have China spending about two hundred and fifteen billion
on their military and Russia only spending about sixty nine billion.
So that's less than a third of what China spent.
That's crazy, Um, But I mean I guess it kind
of makes sense when you think about the population, because

(06:39):
I think China's population is about like ten times that
of Russia and they have something like one point four
billion people. I think, yeah, that's a good point. But
I feel like you're just kind of stalling. Here are
you looking at your phone? I'm just texting with my mom. Okay,
all right, Well what's your next guest? Um? Germany? I
guess yeah, they coming at number nine at forty one

(07:00):
billion dollars, And uh, what you know, North Korea is
in the news. How where where do they fit into this? Well,
you know, they spend a massive amount on their military.
We all know that. But because they're so secretive we
actually really can't know, so they're not included in the
list that I'm looking at here, So we're gonna put
them aside for now. But alright, one more guests and
then I'll just go ahead and tell you the rest

(07:20):
of the list. How about the UK, Yeah, they coming
at number six at about forty eight billions. So let's
go back to the top ones here at fourth is
Saudi Arabia sixty yeah, and then India at fifty five billion.
And one of the things surprised me the most in
terms of just how high they ranked is France at
fifty six billion dollars. Then you've got the UK as

(07:41):
we mentioned, Japan, Germany as we also mentioned, and then
South Korea rounding at the top ten at about thirty
seven billion dollars. So I think you're saying it's a
slightly different picture if you look at the spending as
a percentage of the g d P. Yeah, it's you know,
it's interesting, not just to look at it in terms
of how much other countries spend and comparing it to that,
but even looking at it, you know, it's compared to

(08:01):
previous decades. So the US spends a smaller percentage of
its GDP on military now than it did in the
mid twentieth century. And that's also the case for most
countries in Europe and the Americas. So let's go back
to nineteen sixty and we were talking about in the
neighborhood of like eight point four percent of our GDP
being spent on the military at that time here in
the US at least, and in two thousand and sixteen

(08:23):
that was only three point three percent. So it's a
significant decline when you're looking at it in those terms.
And according to the World Bank, the world average in
nineteen sixty was around six percent. Today it's around two
point two percent. So you've seen a decline really across
the globe in terms of percent of GDP. But last year,
the country that spent the most on their military as
a percentage of GDP was Oman at thirteen point seven

(08:46):
uh Saudi Arabia being a close a second there, let's
see they were at just under ten percent, and then
the Democratic Republic of the Congo at a little over
seven percent. Now, again keep in mind that because North
Korea is so secretive about all this, we really don't
know exactly what they spend. But I've seen some reports
that were guessing around thirty of their GDP being spent
on the military, which I clearly that that isn't that surprising.

(09:11):
But so, so back to the u S. How is
that money divvied up? All? Right? Well, since the vast
majority goes to the Department of Defenses budget, so let's
let's look at that right now. The biggest percentage of
that at about goes to their general day to day
operation and maintenance. So you know, this includes things like
equipment maintenance and training and healthcare program. And you know,

(09:33):
it's also where civilian employees and contractors go, which I
feel like we should talk about in a bit, But
this isn't where the members of the military go. Now,
that's a separate category of its own, and that makes
up about twenty seven or twenty eight percent, And that
includes not just the pay for those in uniform, but
things like housing and subsistence allowances and other costs like
those moving you know, military families to new locations stuff

(09:56):
like that. So I'm scribbling these numbers down fort Okay, so,
speaking of military families living on bases around the world,
I just wanted to do this quick Tangent. Do you
know that stores on military basis don't accept pennies and nickels?
Apparently they're not worth their costs and shipping because they
way too much. But back to your Matthew, I scribbled

(10:16):
it down and it looks like it's at about sixty
seven or sixty eight percent between those two. So what
else is on there? Well, first of all, I enjoyed
that Tangent. I did not know that. Well, the other
big category, about thirty one percent, combines all the investment
in new technologies, you know, R and D, as well
as testing an evaluation of that R and D work,
and this is some really fascinating stuff and it's no

(10:38):
surprise that it would require a ton of money to
stay on top of the latest technologies, really in many
ways to create the latest technologies, when you think about
how important that is for the military. So let me
just give an example of this. And as a side note,
it's super interesting to look through the various budget allowances
for specific R and D projects, and you can do
this through the Department of Defense Investment budgets search. Alright,

(11:01):
So so the example here the armies zero six zero
three seven one zero A night Vision Advanced Technology. I
have no idea what those numbers stand for, but I
kind of like saying that to just make me sound official.
I know, I was gonna ask if you're sequence in
the army Army reserves. Yeah, I'm not at liberty to
say a mango, so but but but anyway, the cost
for the fiscal year two thousand and seventeen is just

(11:23):
shy of forty five billion dollars. And here's the description
of that project. Project Case seven zero pursues technologies that
improve the soldiers ability to see at night and provide
rapid wide area search to enable passive long range target identification.
Evaluate sensors and algorithms designed to detect targets, you know,
whether that's vehicles or personnel, and in camouflage or concealment

(11:47):
and deception from airborne platforms. So this is some super
sophisticated stuff. Yeah, and and I mean they're spending four
million dollars on it, so it's got to be pretty incredible.
But uh so, according to my map based on your number,
is I think that all adds up to about eight
or of my calculations are correct. Yeah, there's a few
other things there, so that the remaining like two ish

(12:08):
person is a combination of smaller things like military construction
or family housing, just a few odds and ends that
all add up right there. So this is the thing
that just like baffles me with with such a huge
budget and so many people involved in making these spending decisions, like,
how is all of that managed? Well, it's definitely not easy,
and they've actually had some issues with this, and so

(12:30):
they brought in some people from Mackenzie to even consult
on this and and just to make sure they could
wrap their heads around how all the money was being spent.
So this was back in two thousand, fourteen and fifteen,
and the Department of Defense found that it was spending
about a fourth of its budget on overhead and administrative matters.
So that's a ton of people in it, and you
can imagine that it's difficult to really keep a handle

(12:51):
on that and easy to see how that could swell
out of control in some ways, or at least do
so in a way that they don't know exactly how
it's being spent. So, in fact, the Pentagon's back office
bureaucracy employed over a million people, so that's about three
hundred thousand of those being in the military, almost four
hundred and fifty thousand of those being civilians, and then
another two hundred sixty eight thousand I think it was

(13:14):
being contractors. It's a lot of people. So Mackenzie and
this advisory board, they worked to help the Department of
Defense kind of you get a much better handle on
what they were spending. And after their analysis, they realized
the department was spending about fifty more than they'd previously
guessed on business operations alone. That's kind of crazy. So well,

(13:35):
I I definitely have a couple of other questions for
you before we get to the size of the military
from a personal perspective, which I actually looked into. But
before we tackle any of that, why don't we break
for a quick quiz? All right, mango, So it's time
to play a little quiz. And as you know, we've

(13:55):
allowed some of our listeners to write in and tell
us why they should be on the show. And one
of those wrote in. His name is Liam and he
was a nuclear trained electrician on submarines in the Navy.
How perfect an episode on How Big is the US Military?
But Liam, welcome to Part time Genius. Thank you, glad
to be here and where are you joining us from

(14:18):
Hampton Roads, Virginia? Okay, terrific? All right, well, you know,
let's let's start with that fact that you were a
nuclear trained electrician on submarines in the Navy. So, so
what exactly is a nuclear trained electrician? So? Uh? By rate?
Uh or you know, job description. When I joined the Navy,
I was an electrician. I went to school for that,

(14:40):
and then later went to school to learn how to
operate and maintain a nuclear power plant because all of
our submarines are nuclear powered and the aircraft carriers are
also nuclear powered, and that was that was the job
I got to do. Wow, well, thank you for doing
a good job with that. That's really cool. Um. And
so how long were you on submarines for? Uh? Well,

(15:00):
I was in the Navy for thirteen years. Most of
that time was was on board submarines, with a short
stint at a shore duty command and the training before that,
so I don't say about eight of those years I
was on submarines. Wow, what's the most fun thing that
happens on submarines? The most fun thing? Well, I'd probably
say halfway night, um, halfway through underway and schedule underway.

(15:23):
We have a little celebration just getting to that port
point and knowing that, you know, it's all down hail
from there. We're heading home soon. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, well, Liam,
you may have thought it was a tough job to
to be an electrician in the Navy, but but actually
we've got something even tougher for you. We've got one
of our very important quizzes. Mango. What's the name of

(15:44):
today's quiz. It's called Oh captain, my captain? All right,
So every answer is a fictional captain, and we're gonna
see how many of these eight fictional captains you can
get right in. What are we saying? Ninety seconds? So
we're gonna set the clock to ninety seconds. This is
some high press your stuff, just like summer in, just
like submarines. Are you ready, Liam, I'm ready? All right,

(16:06):
here we go. We'll get started. The captain that hung
out with Spock on the Enterprise. Also his middle name
is Tiberius Captain Kirk, that's right. This captain is featured
on cereal boxes and sales the s s Guppy Captain Crunch.
This captain considers Peter Pan his nemesis, but he's more
afraid of crocodiles. Hook Hook Hook. This captain is from

(16:30):
a kid show played by Bob Keishan was named for
a marsupial. Oh Captain, Kangaroo. That's right. This captain sits
on the label of spiced rum bottles. Oh Captain. This
captain once punched Hitler on the cover of his comic
book Captain America. This captain was featured in Moby Dick

(16:51):
Moby Dick that one my mom would would would kill
me for not knowing that she was big in the literature.
But don't remember that. Let's go to the last one
real quick. This captain slash environmental superhero used to save
the Earth on Saturday mornings. Captain Planet. He's a hero.
So Liam went seven for eight. He still had thirty

(17:13):
seconds on o'clock and he just missed Captain Ahab. That's
the only one in which which I think probably qualifies
in for a big prize. What do you think. Yeah,
we're gonna send you a big box of Captain crunch. Well, Liam,
thanks so much for all the work you did in
the U. S. Navy, and thanks so much for joining
us on part time genius. Oh thanks for having me, guys,

(17:34):
I I really enjoyed it. Thank you. Welcome back to
part time Genius now le Mango. Before the break, you
were saying you had a couple more questions and before
we dive into personnel and look at our bases around

(17:55):
the world, let's let's talk about those. Yes, something I've
seen several reporters write about only is something they referred
to as the quote black budget. Okay, can you explain
what that is? Yeah? Sure, that this is where the
funding for you know, covert military programs comes from. And
and in most recent years it appears this was something
like fifty to sixty billion dollars allocated to to this

(18:15):
black budget. And there was a really interesting Wired article
back in two thousand and twelve, and the quote from
that it says, to put it in perspective, the Pentagon
is still spending more unclassified projects than most nations spend
on their entire military forces in a year. So that
doesn't include the regular budget for intelligence funding, right. Yeah,
So when you include the funding from you know, the

(18:36):
national intelligence program, which is where agencies like the CIA
would fall, we're talking another fifty billion or so. So
when it's all added up, we're probably looking at like
a hundred and twenty billion dollars for these black accounts,
as you call them. Sure, and and these days the
US is covert and intelligence gathering operations are super important
and a big part of the way the government looks

(18:57):
to protect citizens from terrorist attacks or other dangers. Yeah,
and and the amounts have fallen in a pretty similar
range for many years now. And and during the Cold
War spending was almost certainly about the same, though it's
really difficult to pull historical data on intelligence spending for
for reasons that aren't all that surprising. But all right, well,
why don't we jump to personnel now, since this is

(19:19):
something that you looked into, So why don't you tell
me what you got. Sure, So, I've pulled a lot
of numbers, and and here's the overall sense of it.
In two thousand fifteen, the U s is total number
of active duty military personnel was a million threety seven thousand,
And that's just shy of five percent of the total
number of active duty military personnel in the entire world. So,

(19:39):
and that's if you combine all the militaries of all
the countries, and then if you include the reserve forces,
the current number of military personnel is over three point
five million. That means that about point four percent of
the US population is on active duty and a little
over one percent or either active duty or reserve personnel.
And how does that compare to previous years? I mean,

(20:00):
I feel like that total number is down a little
bit over the past couple of decades. Right, Yeah, So
if you go back to like two thousand, the total
number of active duty is a little over five percent
smaller now than it was back in two thousand. And
if you go back to all military branches except for
the Coastguard, have really seen a decrease in active duty members,
Like the current military is active duty is historically small

(20:23):
for everything post World War Two. All right, well, why
don't you tell me what the breakdown looks branch by branch.
I mean, I think the Army is the largest, right,
So I've got these numbers here. The Army has just
over four hundred sixty thousand on active duty, The Navy
has about three twenty thousand, the Air Force has about
three hundred eighteen thousand, and the Marines have about a

(20:45):
hundred eighty five thousand. And then you've got the Coast
Guard with much smaller. It's at forty thousand. Actually, I
didn't realize the Navy and the Air Force were so
close in size. I mean, I kind of always assumed
the Navy was much bigger for some reason. But speaking
of the Air Force, I know it's time for you
to go to Tangent Town. I know you would bring
up this fact, so I'm gonna go ahead and tee
you up for it. But I'm assuming you know some

(21:06):
of our listeners probably know this, but just in case,
we've got got Bob Ross to talk about. Yeah, Bob Ross,
And I suppose this one's pretty well known, kind of
like the Julia child being a spy thing, but it's
still pretty great. So you know, Bob Ross, who everyone
knows is the guy who painted happy little trees and
I could do that in his sleep and helped us
all find inner peace through his art. He was actually

(21:28):
a master sergeant in the US Air Force, and he
was apparently required to be mean and tough. He even
said he was the guy who would be forced to
yell at you to clean a latrine until it sparkled.
And after twenty years in the military he decided enough
was enough and he would never scream again, and that
was three years before he started The Joy of Painting.
I never saw him scream on that. Also, he hated

(21:49):
his perm Oh nice tangent. All right, Well, I've got
a couple of quick facts on my own here about
the Coast Guard, which often gets ignored when people talk
about the military because you know, it is pretty small,
and actually it's even smaller than the size of the
New York City Police Department. I don't know if you
do that as far as personnel goes, but they're definitely

(22:09):
an active force. I saw one stat according to military
dot Com, the Coast Guard sees is a hundred and
sixty nine pounds of marijuana and three hundred and six
pounds of cocaine, worth just shy of ten million dollars
every single day, every day. What do they do with
all those drugs? Well, I think they've got this like
massive toilet that they flush it down. Actually have no

(22:31):
idea what they do with all of it. I mean,
if that's every single day, that's an enormous amount. But
it's crazy. Alright. So, so you mentioned the active duty forces,
but but we've also got the reserve forces, and that's
not a small number. Of people. Yeah, the various divisions
of the U S Military serve Forces are are where
you'll find another eight hundred twenty six thousand people in
the selected reserves. So this would include members of the

(22:53):
National Guard and those in the reserves that be called
into active duty. About two thirds of these come from
the Army National art and the Army Reserves. But in addition,
you've got you know, the Navy Reserve, of the Marine Corps, Reserve,
of the Air National Guard, the Air Force Reserve, and
also the Coastguard Reserve. Wow. That's a lot to keep
up with. But all right, well, let's get to our

(23:13):
presence around the world. And I'm guessing you're talking about
the hundred seventy golf courses around the world that the
military is responsible for. No. I mean, but somebody's got
to keep those greens green and those sand traps trappy. Right,
that's an old saying, I think, Are you serious A
hundred and seventy golf courses. Yes, these are on militaries
or it's their recreation spots in various places around the world.

(23:35):
But let's back up a little and talk about those numbers.
If you count the small installations the US military currently
has about eight hundred bases abroad and in about eighty countries,
and all other countries combined have about thirty bases outside
their own borders. Oh wow, So that's eight hundred bases
around the world for the US and just thirty for
all other countries combined. Is way more than thirty. I'm

(23:59):
pretty sure where we went on that, and that's incredible.
All right, Well, I'm hoping you can walk us through
how this came to be, but but actually, first, can
you just explain like how a base is defined? Yeah, so,
so the definition can vary a bit based on who
you ask, But according to David Vine, the author of
Base Nation Quote, bases come in all sizes and shapes,
from massive sides in Germany and Japan to small radar

(24:22):
facilities in Peru and Puerto Rico. Other bases include posts
and air fields, repair facilities, nuclear weapon installations, warehouses, military schools,
drone bases, military hospitals. It's all that type of thing.
And even military resorts and recreation areas in places like
Tuscany and Soul those are also kind of bases. And
that's where we get the hundred seventy golf courses that

(24:44):
is a lot. Actually, I was reading about one of
these bases. I've never heard about this before, but in
nineteen sixty have you have you heard of Camp Century.
So it was this top secret US military base and
they were looking for a place to house certain missiles,
and so they built this base under the ice sheets
in Greenland. Was just unbelievable, and it was, you know,
they pretended that this place was there for climate research,

(25:07):
and so there was something like two people there and
it was actually powered by the world's first portable nuclear reactors.
So it's a pretty fascinating place. And it went without
anyone knowing about it until Denmark uncovered this base. I
think it was in like nine so we're talking like
thirty years or so before anybody realized this thing was there.
That's crazy, all right, But but I guess what may

(25:29):
be more surprising to me, since we, you know, we
grew up knowing that our military head bases all over
the world, is that other really big countries have so few. Yeah. So,
according to a couple counts, I saw, the US has
somewhere around of the world's foreign basis, and yet China
just opened its first military base abroad in Djibouty last month.
That really is surprising. So as far as our presence

(25:52):
around the world, I mean, how did this come to be?
I'm assuming like World War Two was a big part
of this. Yeah, the U. S. Began building military bases abroad,
and by the end of World War Two we had
over two thousand, and now about half of those were
abandoned after the war. And and then you see this
up and down as we built more during the Korean
and Vietnam Wars and then declined after each and then

(26:14):
back up again during the Cold War. During the nineties,
the military abandoned a little more than half of those,
and and today we have about half as many bases,
but in twice as many countries as we did in Yeah,
it's just looking back that number you mentioned at the
end of World War two, so two thousand bases around
the world. Yeah, and if you consider how quickly they
were built, it's also really wild. So according to mine,

(26:37):
by ninety five, the U. S. Military was building base
facilities at a rate of a hundred twelve a month,
and in only five years, the US had developed history's
first truly global network of bases. And he says it
vastly overshadowed out of the British Empire upon which the
sun never set. It's definitely an impressive accomplishment for sure.
And you know, it makes more sense when I look

(26:58):
back at the annual budget and see that the maintenance
of bases costs somewhere like five ninety billion dollars each year. Well,
there's one other piece of this that I think we
need to know, and that's the obligation the US has
to provide military to others. What do you mean by that? Well,
this political science professor from Tufts his his name's Michael Beckley.

(27:19):
He looked at the network of treaties and all the
defensive packs we've entered into since World War Two, and
through those we're actually bound to protect sixty nine nations
comprising of the world's population. But you know that there's
an economic and economic stability aspect to these nations also
represent of the global economy in terms of output. Wow,

(27:40):
so t of the world's population, and I have to
assume some of these came about from these like big
multi nation agreements that we've entered in over the years. Yeah, definitely,
So you've got the big ease like the Organization of
American States, the os or NATO UM, the Australian New
Zealand and U. S. Security Treaty, and and then there's
several like by Lateral Defensive fact so um, most of

(28:02):
these we signed in the fifties and early sixties, but
there were places like Israel, Japan, Pakistan, Philippine and South Korea, Taiwan.
I mean there's just a few of them. Yeah, and
I mean I guess I would add it to a
significant percentage of the world's population. So well, I don't
know about you, but I definitely learned a lot about
how big the US military is today. But we're not
done yet because there's one more really important thing to

(28:25):
take care of, the PGG fact off. That's right, ye,
all right, so I'll kick us off here. So we've
been talking about how much larger the U. S. Military
is than all other countries. So it's not a surprise
that the U. S. Air Force is the largest air

(28:47):
force in the world. But you know what the second
largest air force in the world is. It's the U. S. Navy.
It's a true question. Got you on that one. Well,
speaking of lots of planes, I I laughed when I
saw a fact that after off Gun came out in
six the Navy saw this huge increase in the number
of men who wanted to become naval aviators, reportedly by

(29:07):
as much as five. Apparently they're just low high five.
And all right, Well, I guess we're just gonna keep
talking about big records here. So take a guess who
the largest employer in America is the Army. No, it's
another trick question. It's Walmart whatever, two million employees. I
think it's actually like two point two million. About one

(29:27):
point three million of those are actually based in the US.
But the Army comes in second with about a million
and active duty or the reserves. Okay, so I'm going
to go back to the Air Force for another fact. Apparently,
after researchers looked into how bumblebees fly, the Air Force
was so inspired to use the air dynamics discovered from
the research that they developed the F one seventeen fighter.

(29:47):
Oh wow, that's pretty crazy. Well, there's this really interesting
article for Atlas Obscure that's definitely worth looking up, and
it's about how the US government spent more than twenty
million dollars over the course of a couple of decades,
and they did is to train telepaths to help the military.
Curious how that all turned out. Um, So you may

(30:07):
remember from a few years ago a few people try
to make a big deal online about a marine holding
this umbrella over President Obama and the rain. Everyone was
up in arms because while female Marines are allowed to
carry umbrella, as male marines are instructed early on that
they're not to hold an umbrella no matter how hard
it's raining. However, as Marine spokesman Captain Eric Flanagan told

(30:29):
The Washington Post, according to the US Code, marines are
to quote perform such other duties as the President may direct.
So that means if the President says he wants an
umbrella held over him, he's gonna get an umbrella held
over him. I vaguely remember this, but that's some serious
controversy there, And you know, I feel like a fact
about an umbrella controversy is worthy of the PTG Trophy.

(30:51):
So I'm going to give you today's prize. So congratulations.
But before we go, what episodes that we have coming
up manga? We've got some good ones, right, Yeah, We've
got two really good ones in works. We've got the
incredibly important history of Breakfast Cereal. I know we're both
huge fans of Cereals, so that should be a good one.
And and then next week we're looking at the worst
jobs in America. Yeah, both of those are going to
be really fun. And thank you again to all our

(31:13):
listeners who are writing to us at Part Time Genius
and How Stuff Works dot com or calling seven Fact hotline.
It is still seven magas one eight four four pt Genius,
and I hope you've all noticed we're trying really hard
to respond to everyone who writes or calls or hits
us up on Facebook or Twitter, So we look forward
to hearing from you guys. And if you like this episode,

(31:33):
please do us a big favor and share it with
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Thanks so much for listening, Thanks again for listening. Part

(31:55):
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