State Cluster
US Military Spending by State 2026
US military spending by state in 2026. Compare all 50 states and DC by tax-share contribution, per-capita burden, DoD contracts, installations, and Iran war cost.
This hub takes one national question and forces it down to the state level: who actually carries the fiscal burden of a $1.045 trillion US defense budget once federal revenue is apportioned back across the map? The answer is not just a population story. High-income states pull much more weight under a tax-share lens, while population-share tells a different story about where the baseline burden would land if every resident carried an equal slice.
The top tax-share contributors in this snapshot are California, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois. The top per-capita states differ, led by District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey. That divergence is the editorial point of the cluster: military spending is both a national budget story and a geography story, and the ranking changes depending on which lens you use.
Every state page combines six public-source signals: IRS federal income-tax receipts, Census population, USAspending prime contracts, DoD base structure, DMDC active-duty counts, and BLS industrial employment. That gives each page more than enough unique, state-specific data to avoid thin-template problems while still keeping the reader-facing structure consistent across the full 51-page cluster.
Interactive Map · 50 states + DC
Per-capita defense burden by state
Each state shaded by per capita. Hover to inspect, click to open the full profile.
Methodology
Two allocation methods, shown together
Every state page leads with an IRS tax-share estimate because that is the cleanest state-attributable public proxy for who funds federal discretionary spending. But those pages also show a population-share benchmark so readers can see how much the headline changes when revenue concentration is stripped out.
Primary
FY2026 defense budget × state federal income-tax share
Secondary
FY2026 defense budget × state population share
Federal individual income tax funds general revenue, which funds discretionary spending including defense alongside corporate tax, payroll tax, and deficit financing. Individual income tax is the clearest state-attributable proxy, but it overweights high-income states. Population share is shown alongside it as a second benchmark.
All 51 Jurisdictions
State military-spending ranking
Sort the table to compare tax-share contribution, per-capita burden, and FY2025 defense contracts. The highlighted row marks the current profile.
| #1 | California | $4K | $40.4B | 15.0% |
| #2 | New York | $5K | $10.4B | 9.0% |
| #3 | Texas | $2K | $67B | 7.5% |
| #4 | Florida | $3K | $27B | 6.8% |
| #5 | Illinois | $3K | $7.7B | 4.1% |
| #6 | New Jersey | $4K | $7.3B | 4.0% |
| #7 | Pennsylvania | $3K | $19.5B | 3.9% |
| #8 | Massachusetts | $6K | $16.9B | 3.8% |
| #9 | Virginia | $4K | $68.5B | 3.1% |
| #10 | Washington | $4K | $8.9B | 3.0% |
| #11 | Ohio | $2K | $7.6B | 2.8% |
| #12 | Georgia | $3K | $7.3B | 2.7% |
| #13 | North Carolina | $2K | $2.8B | 2.6% |
| #14 | Michigan | $2K | $6.9B | 2.4% |
| #15 | Connecticut | $5K | $34.8B | 1.9% |
| #16 | Colorado | $3K | $12.1B | 1.9% |
| #17 | Maryland | $3K | $18.7B | 1.8% |
| #18 | Arizona | $2K | $19.5B | 1.8% |
| #19 | Minnesota | $3K | $2B | 1.8% |
| #20 | Tennessee | $2K | $2.8B | 1.6% |
| #21 | Indiana | $2K | $5.3B | 1.4% |
| #22 | Wisconsin | $2K | $3.7B | 1.4% |
| #23 | Missouri | $2K | $13.1B | 1.3% |
| #24 | Oregon | $3K | $1.1B | 1.1% |
| #25 | South Carolina | $2K | $4B | 1.0% |
| #26 | Utah | $3K | $3.3B | 0.9% |
| #27 | Alabama | $2K | $12.1B | 0.9% |
| #28 | Nevada | $3K | $1.9B | 0.9% |
| #29 | Kentucky | $2K | $8.9B | 0.8% |
| #30 | Louisiana | $2K | $3.5B | 0.8% |
| #31 | Oklahoma | $2K | $4.8B | 0.7% |
| #32 | Iowa | $2K | $2.5B | 0.7% |
| #33 | District of Columbia | $9K | $2.7B | 0.6% |
| #34 | Kansas | $2K | $1.3B | 0.6% |
| #35 | Arkansas | $2K | $359M | 0.5% |
| #36 | Nebraska | $2K | $1.3B | 0.4% |
| #37 | New Hampshire | $3K | $2.6B | 0.4% |
| #38 | Hawaii | $3K | $4B | 0.4% |
| #39 | Idaho | $2K | $479M | 0.4% |
| #40 | New Mexico | $1K | $1B | 0.3% |
| #41 | Maine | $2K | $3.1B | 0.3% |
| #42 | Mississippi | $1K | $7.3B | 0.3% |
| #43 | Delaware | $3K | $139M | 0.3% |
| #44 | Rhode Island | $3K | $425M | 0.3% |
| #45 | West Virginia | $2K | $637M | 0.3% |
| #46 | South Dakota | $3K | $427M | 0.3% |
| #47 | North Dakota | $3K | -$250M | 0.2% |
| #48 | Alaska | $3K | $5.3B | 0.2% |
| #49 | Montana | $2K | $597M | 0.2% |
| #50 | Wyoming | $3K | $83M | 0.2% |
| #51 | Vermont | $2K | $1.3B | 0.1% |
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All 50 states and DC
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