2011 DoD Black Budget: $57.8 Billion

the Obama administration released it's 2011 budget request Ffor the Department of Defense yesterday, (June 29, 2010). The Black Budget of the $712 billion Department of Defense request comes to $57.8 billion, a 3% increase from last 2010's budget.

What accounts for the growth? The CSBA report says that “operations and maintenance” accounts are the fastest-growing chunk of the Black Budget.

Black Budget programs have been responsible for some of the DoD’s biggest technological strides: Stealth aircraft and spy satellites come to mind. But those kinds of programs typically fall under acquisition funding, i.e., procurement or research and development accounts.

So what does all this mean? Thoughts? Guesses? Commentary welcome.


source: Analysis of 2011 Department of Defense Budget

Wow thanks for posting this.

Believe it or not I get all my news from ATS and so far it has been one of the greatest research tools I've come across on the internet.

The pdf doc. will come in handy IMHO.

Edited to add: It will be handy for me as a piece of evidence in a court case.

I still need to read said doc. but I gave it a quick skim.

[edit on 30-6-2010 by Quickfix]

But how can this be? I thought only Republicans were war-mongering killers sucking up billions and billions of our money to kill even more people?

If this is not proof that both sides of the aisle have merged into one uncontrollable beast, I don't know what is.

On a side note, I would imagine that continuing an illegal war in Yemen would require Black Ops money, no? Perhaps that's where some of the increase came from?

They need as many TR3B's to get off while they still can.....

reply to post by intelgurl


I hope someone will be able to shed some light into this (but remain doubtful)...

What is really distressing is the incredible waste (it seems) of money and resources ( ) that could be put to more valuable use in further space exploration, and possible permanent extraterrestrial colony establishment --- this one planet is just our "cradle", and it is not sufficient to sustain our species indefinitely.

I imagine this 58 billion is in addition to the roughly 1 trillion dollars that the CIA makes annually from its global drug and human trafficking trade. If you can even consider the CIA a branch of the US anymore, they are basically a sovereign entity unto themselves.

I thought the black budget was off the books. If this is the case how can someone know the actual funds dedicated to such a budget?

Just wondering...anyone know the answer?

Originally posted by Son of Will
I imagine this 58 billion is in addition to the roughly 1 trillion dollars that the CIA makes annually from its global drug and human trafficking trade. If you can even consider the CIA a branch of the US anymore, they are basically a sovereign entity unto themselves.

Much applause my friend. As if this rogue state really needs any more of our money.

Blah blah technological advancement=how to kill more people more efficiently.

Black budget is 10% to say "don't take the chance with us". We may have lasers, we have have weapons on mars (joking but catch my drift)

reply to post by GeechQuestInfo


Hah, going down that path would require a metric ton of sodium pentathol, several years and many qdoba gift cards (for the DC lackeys).

There is the official black budget and then several other hypothetical sub-black budgets.

Its where the internets came from, or so I'm told.

[edit on 30-6-2010 by tetrahedron]

reply to post by intelgurl

the Obama administration released it's 2011 budget request Ffor the Department of Defense yesterday, (June 29, 2010). The Black Budget of the $712 billion Department of Defense request comes to $57.8 billion, a 3% increase from last 2010's budget. What accounts for the growth? The CSBA report says that “operations and maintenance” accounts are the fastest-growing chunk of the Black Budget. Black Budget programs have been responsible for some of the DoD’s biggest technological strides: Stealth aircraft and spy satellites come to mind. But those kinds of programs typically fall under acquisition funding, i.e., procurement or research and development accounts. So what does all this mean? Thoughts? Guesses? Commentary welcome.

3% is the current inflation rate and would correlate with the budget increase.


The agenda of the CIA and MI6 and the worlds oldest drug cartel , namely The British Crown, marches on.

With the recent release of the Pentagon recently announcing the vast natural resources located in Afghanistan. They always seem to forget the most profitable one.....which is Opium.

“operations and maintenance” accounts are the fastest-growing chunk of the Black Budget.

Yes, I bet that they are. Simply ask the Russians about their current Heroin epidemic ...and the abundance of Afghani Heroin which has doubled there since the US arriving in 2001.

Wasn't there an Opium War between the British and Chinese way back when ?

Hmmm ...?

I guess this Afghan war wasn't only about those towel headed, sand ****** terrorists after all !

Wow... that is 3 times the amount of money Canada spends on its entire defense budget!

I wonder what kind of projects they got cookin up behind the scenes...

I suspect most people (myself included) would be disappointed at how little cool stuff that money actually buys.

Government bureaucracy is normally wasteful even in plain sight. Take a bureaucracy and its dependents and let it play without any public oversight for half a century....oh my

I'd expect the levels of wastefulness, stupidity and outright fraud to be pretty astounding. We'll never know.

What accounts for the growth? The CSBA report says that “operations and maintenance” accounts are the fastest-growing chunk of the Black Budget.

Well, just going on assumptions here, but if the fastest growing chunk is "operations and maintenance", that would imply a covert system that was up and running. Or coming online.

And if its up and running, it should be coming out soon, going by the history of black projects like the SR-71 and F-117. Soon is relative here, anytime in the next 10 years would be soon to me.

I wonder what the percentage is of UAV systems, to manned systems. Seems to me a manned system would require more maintenance, especially if they fly at extreme altitudes/speeds.

Good find, have enjoyed your post for sometime. Has it hit the 100's yet? I've been to Phoenix, 115F. That heat is NO JOKE!

Originally posted by ErEhWoN
Good find, have enjoyed your post for sometime. Has it hit the 100's yet? I've been to Phoenix, 115F. That heat is NO JOKE!

Not yet, just low to mid 90's, but then we're at about 5,700 ft elevation...

Interesting question. What is needing such a large amount of monies to maintain and keep operational?

That alone should make people sit up and take notice. My thoughts? an operational squadron or two of as yet unknown airframes (RQ-170 pictures anyone?) be they manned or unmanned, as well as the support structures needed - and if they are smaller fledgling units with cutting edge airframes or systems they will require more monies than a run of the mill setup.

As the aviation press around the world have reported many times, there are at least three unknown unmanned air vehicles out in Afghansitan alone.

One is a large bat winged shaped airframe (presume this one is RQ-170), one is 'kite shaped', and the other airframe hunts in packs and the Taliban are said to fear these above all other systems.

These systems cost money, and the budget sure contains a whole heap of that!

When I was back in Aviation Electronics A-School for the Navy (October of 06 through June of 07), there was a recruiting drive for volunteers to go to Seal Team Six - or under that same command. I wish I could remember the Chief who was in charge of that at the time (and had written it down - still got the 'brochure' as a digital copy, though - but I don't think it had his name on it). In any case - they were looking at something crazy, like a 300% manpower surge over the next few years.

The deal was that they were looking for aviation guys at the top of their class (me - I am not above bragging on myself) and in good physical condition (again, I fit the bill) to run surveillance drones in support of SEAL teams on the ground. It was CNO priority one recruiting - if you were active duty and volunteered, they could get you if they wanted you. I, however, am a contracted reservist... oops.

I've never been sure what trees I need to bark up to see if I can get a conditional release to active duty through that program, or not.

But - that might give you all an idea of what some of that budget could be going towards. There were some other things discussed when we were there - a focus on creativity; they buy off-the-shelf stuff and work it over with pre-market technologies and solutions - a lot of one-of-a-kind systems that the world will likely never really know about, or care about so long as they get to see the big B-2 fly over at airshows.

That was my little glimpse into that end of the military. It's both as 'mundane' as any other segment of the military, but as cool as 007 - if that makes any sense.

In either case - I'm surprised to see the budget go up under this administration at all, considering a number of the communities seeing that budget increase would just as soon vote the administration and party out of office (or otherwise remove them).

But I guess the budget doesn't really matter much when you print money like it's going out of style. It's not like they have to take money away from another program to fund their favored ones.

If I had to guess at what is being researched under some of these programs, though, I would have to place my bets on:

- room temperature superconductors
The reasoning for this should be fairly obvious.

- diamond-substrate electronic lithography
Silicon-based semiconductors are only going to take us so far, as demand for efficiency, processing power, switching extremes, etc push the boundaries of silicon based methods, we need to expand into another segment that the market cannot yet take advantage of.

- data encryption/security methods
Secure transmission of data in today's large combat networks is essential, making sure we always have the latest and greatest in data and information security is a must, failure to realize and maintain that advantage would cost us a war with any country that understood that principle.

- materials and applications related to transatmospheric airframes
If for no other reason than a bomb dropped from orbit would be particularly devastating. There are many advantages to materials and designs that could withstand the extremes of transatmospheric operations - both in research/intel and in combat roles.

- projected/directed energy weapons
Lasers, Masers, Phasers - whatever, developing them and utilizing them, even if only as a detection method (LADAR) will bring many advantages. This would likely be related to diamond-substrate research - a diamond-substrate laser diode could have much tighter emission spectra as well as tolerate much higher temperatures and power.

- chemical and/or electromagnetic propulsion systems
Simply put, rockets are a rather ineffective means of propulsion - whether you are putting a warhead into a target or a ship/payload into orbit. Developing better chemical or other propulsion systems to make longer ranged missiles and space travel more practical (as well as potential improvements to aircraft) is a worthwhile investment.

- Genetic/biological engineering
Not necessarily "super soldier" type of stuff, but why should you kill the enemy when a virus or bacteria can? Why should you use a bunch of chemicals and expensive processes to refine minerals or split molecules when you can do that with genetically modified bacteria/algae/plants/etc? Or - here's another interesting idea - why should you have to administer an antibiotic to soldiers with infections (or against a bio-weapon) when you can simply introduce them to modified forms of Staph and various digestive bacteria that will, literally, kill a wide range of bacteria destructive to the human body?

When you consider there are more bacteria in/on our body than our own body's cells, the idea of genetic modification of bacteria and the possibilities take on an entirely new meaning.

High-tech state-of-the-art technology will always have a high price tag.The ultra high-tech machines and highly-trained personnel required to design,build,test it all adds to that.

Originally posted by PARALYZ
High-tech state-of-the-art technology will always have a high price tag.The ultra high-tech machines and highly-trained personnel required to design,build,test it all adds to that.

Well... there's a trick to it, too.

Remember what I said about how they buy off-the-shelf technology? Well, there are just as many contractors (civilians) who work with those programs as military.

Raytheon may have some ideas for some new radar solutions, but is having trouble subsidizing out of their own budget the necessary production lines - it's a "pre market" technology that is something that is just not cost-effective or tested well enough to place onto the open market (civilian or to more restricted markets such as various authorized military purchases).

But Boeing may also want to get in on the radar technology to improve the maintainability of its civilian and military aircraft - so they chip in some money, and that all goes in with part of the DOD funding for development of the radars with the understanding that it will help, over the next five or so years, to bring cost-effective production and distributing into reality.

You also have 'experimental' or 'research' technologies that are, really, first-time/proof-of-concept demonstrators (Have Blue, Tacit Blue, several of the UAV projects, etc) that may or may not see combat service (chances are, if they are developed out of the special forces budgets, they do - and will later be re-worked into marketable solutions).

Just remember that corporations are just as involved in a lot of this as the government is - it's not only the government that tosses chunks of money into developing these projects - many of the companies do that on their own (or to each other).

well yeah, mw2 had the second sun, and alien greys. this new one is going to be something else.

i can't wait to see what they have hidden