How about that empire eh?

Nearly 70 percent of all federal expenditures in 1954 went to buy rockets, rifles, radar, and nuclear warheads and to pay the salaries of Americans in uniform.

If you measure it another way, military spending in 1954 accounted for 13 percent of the total U.S. economic output (gross domestic product, or GDP).

Today it accounts for about four percent of GDP, a decline of 70 percent since 1954.

In 1954, 3.3 million Americans were serving on active duty in the military. That compares to 1.4 million on active duty today, a 57 percent decline in personnel since 1954.