Please don't compare the entirety of the US education system against an incremental fragment of military spending as though that isn't a completely bogus evaluation. We spend just as much on the war machine if not more.

We're talking about an incremental fragment of the US military budget. It's fair to compare it to an incremental fragment of public wellness that would cost less and have profound impact.

> and a large component of this funding request is for capital expenditures, not ongoing operational expenditure

Oh, of course. You're right. I forgot that drones have zero operational costs and that military spending will decrease next year instead of increasing again and again and again like always.

Put real numbers to this. We spend well over a trillion dollars on education.

Also recognize the falsity of attributing the entire defense budget to "the war machine". There are policy debates that could take you lower or (like this request) higher, but it's not like an order-of-magnitude thing.

> We spend well over a trillion dollars on education.

And we spend well over a trillion dollars on defense. And yet the straight of hormuz is still closed, just like there are still children who don't have enough food and suffer for it. Comparing the total budget of one thing against a budget delta of another thing is wrong. Compare deltas of each and compare their benefits.

>"And we spend well over a trillion dollars on defense."

That's just not true; the US Military Budget for 2025 was (USD) $768 BB. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...

It is true. The number you're looking at doesn't include all military spending. For example, it doesn't include the nuclear weapons programs, intelligence programs, veterans affairs, ...

https://www.defensebudget.org/en/country/united-states

The VA budget alone is over $400B, and the intelligence budget is _classified_.

They're asking for 1.5B right now

So when we consider school spending it's important to count every penny but when we consider military spending we can just neglect vast swathes of spending?

If we’re putting numbers on things, what’s the number you’re putting on “pure, non-war-machine” defense spending?

The rough cost to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students in the US is $30b - so as the go says, less than $55b.

School meal funding would not cost more than $55bn or even close to $55bn. California’s program, subtracting initial implementation cost, was close to $1bn to feed ~10% of U.S. public school students 2 free meals per day. $55bn couldn’t fund a free school meal program indefinitely but I am sure the ongoing costs of the drone program could, this $55bn isn’t a one time cost.

Capex becomes opex if the enemy is shooting your drones down or if you're using disposable drones to deliver fatal payloads.