The US spends most of its defense budget on:
* training, civilian salaries (where most veterans find jobs)
* maintenance of existing "toys" (aka money injected into local manufacturing, cleaning, painting, etc)
* Enlisted pay, benefits, housing
Then we get to procurement and R&D (which is just guaranteeing a job to people who finish college)
The whole active navy and world policing is just a side benefit.
https://www.pgpf.org/article/budget-explainer-national-defen...
Imagine if we were paying these people to improve the lives of US citizens and infrastructure instead of murder innocent people and cause massive ecological damage! Jesse Ventura had a very cool idea that the US should use its military to clean the world's oceans as reparations to the planet. Say what you will about him, but that is genuinely outside of the box thinking that can pull us out of our war culture death spiral.