From Congress to the Pentagon, from federal contracts to private companies, and from the battlefield to the long-term costs of war — following the financial record of twenty-five years of American warfare.
By Patrick Panteix | WAR: FOLLOW THE MONEY
The War Does Not Begin With a Contract. It Begins With an Appropriation.
When Americans think about the cost of war, they often think about weapons, aircraft, military bases, and the soldiers deployed overseas.
But before a single aircraft is purchased, a military contractor receives an order, or a reconstruction project begins, another process has already taken place.
Congress has authorized public money to be committed.
That authorization is only the beginning of a financial journey that can extend across government departments, military programs, private corporations, subcontractors, financial institutions, and ultimately the American taxpayer.
The question is not simply how much the United States has spent on war.
It is how that money was authorized, committed, paid, received, and used — and how much of that journey can be reconstructed from the public record.
That is the central investigation behind WAR: FOLLOW THE MONEY.
The project examines twenty-five years of American warfare, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Ukraine and the broader financial architecture of U.S. defense spending.
Rather than beginning with battlefield strategy, it begins with the money.
And the first step is understanding what the numbers actually mean.
1. Congress Appropriates. Agencies Commit. Payments Follow.
The American federal budget uses several financial concepts that are frequently treated as interchangeable in public discussions.
They are not.
An appropriation provides legal authority for federal agencies to incur obligations and make payments for specified purposes.
An obligation represents a binding commitment by the government, such as awarding a contract, placing an order, or making a grant.
An outlay represents a payment that liquidates an obligation.
These distinctions are essential because money appropriated in one fiscal year may not be obligated or paid during that same year.
Likewise, a contract awarded to a company does not necessarily mean that the entire contract value has already been paid.
Consider a simplified example.
Congress provides $10 billion for a military procurement program.
The responsible agency subsequently enters into contracts worth $7 billion.
By the end of the fiscal year, $4 billion has been paid.
Those figures represent three different stages of the financial process.
They cannot be added together to produce a $21 billion expenditure.
Nor can the original $10 billion appropriation be described as money already received by defense contractors.
This example is hypothetical, but the accounting distinction is fundamental to understanding actual military spending.
A financial investigation must follow the transaction from one stage to the next, rather than repeatedly counting the same money as it moves through the system.
2. The Pentagon Is Not the Final Destination
The Department of Defense manages a substantial portion of the federal resources associated with American military operations.
But the Pentagon is not necessarily the final economic recipient of the money.
Military expenditures encompass personnel compensation, equipment, maintenance, fuel, transportation, construction, research, healthcare, and other activities.
Some payments remain within federal government operations.
Others flow to private companies through procurement contracts.
Still others support organizations and individuals through grants, assistance programs, or other payment mechanisms.
The federal government's USAspending.gov database distinguishes spending associated with individual awards from broader spending recorded through federal accounts.
This distinction matters because contract and assistance awards represent only part of total federal expenditure.
For a financial investigator, identifying the department that receives an appropriation is therefore not the end of the research.
It is the starting point.
The next questions concern the programs that receive the funds, the organizations awarded contracts, and the goods or services ultimately purchased.
In some cases, the public record allows an investigator to identify a prime contractor and the value of a federal award.
In others, additional information is needed to establish what was actually paid, which subcontractors participated, or where the resulting economic activity took place.
A contractor's federal award value is not the same thing as its revenue, and neither figure automatically establishes its profit.
The distinction becomes particularly important when examining the economic beneficiaries of prolonged military activity.
3. Ukraine: A Financial Record That Illustrates the Problem
American assistance associated with the war in Ukraine provides a concrete example of why financial terminology matters.
In a report published in April 2024, the U.S. Government Accountability Office examined the status of funding provided through four supplemental appropriations acts.
Those acts had made approximately $113.4 billion available during fiscal years 2022 and 2023.
As of December 31, 2023, federal agencies had obligated approximately $101.2 billion and disbursed approximately $67.5 billion.
The figures refer to the funding provided through those four acts, some of which was designated for purposes other than the direct U.S. response to the Ukraine crisis. They do not represent the total cost of the war or the current status of all subsequent U.S. assistance.
Three figures.
Three different financial meanings.
The difference between the amounts appropriated and disbursed did not, by itself, represent missing money.
It reflected the distinction between budget authority, government commitments, and actual payments at a particular reporting date.
The next question concerns where those payments went.
For example, funding used to replace American military equipment transferred to Ukraine may finance procurement from manufacturers supplying the U.S. military.
Other appropriations may support humanitarian programs, economic assistance, or government operations.
These different categories cannot simply be combined and described as cash transferred directly to the Ukrainian government.
The destination depends on the specific program and the transaction being examined.
This is why following the money requires more than identifying a large figure in a congressional announcement.
It requires examining the underlying accounts, the agencies responsible for implementation, the recipients of payments, and the purpose of each transaction.
4. The Companies Behind the Contracts
Once federal money enters the procurement system, the investigation moves from government budgets to corporate financial records.
A defense contract may involve a prime contractor, multiple subcontractors, specialized suppliers, and services performed across several states or countries.
The initial federal award identifies an important part of that financial relationship.
It does not necessarily reveal every participant in the supply chain or the ultimate distribution of the money.
For WAR: FOLLOW THE MONEY, the research therefore proceeds through several documentary layers.
Federal procurement records establish the government agency, the award recipient, the contractual activity, and the reported financial commitment.
Corporate disclosures and financial statements provide additional information about companies' operations, revenue, business segments, and financial performance.
Government audits and oversight reports help identify questions about program management, documentation, compliance, and the use of public funds.
The objective is to connect these records without making assumptions that the documents themselves cannot support.
A major federal contract can be documented.
A company's reported earnings can be documented.
But a direct causal relationship between a particular military operation and a specific amount of corporate profit must be established through evidence, not inferred from the proximity of two large numbers.
The same principle applies when examining the financial relationships between public institutions, defense companies, consultants, and other participants in the defense economy.
The existence of a contractual or professional relationship does not, by itself, establish improper conduct.
It establishes a relationship that can be examined.
5. The Financial Consequences Continue After the Fighting
A military operation may end before all of its associated financial obligations have been fulfilled.
Equipment requires maintenance or replacement.
Veterans may require medical care, rehabilitation, disability compensation, and other forms of assistance for decades.
Public borrowing associated with military expenditure may also generate interest costs beyond the period of active combat.
The Costs of War project at Brown University examines these longer-term dimensions of the post-September 11 wars, including veterans' obligations and the financing costs associated with war-related borrowing.
These costs raise an important accounting question.
Should the financial consequences of a war be measured only through the military appropriations enacted while combat operations are taking place?
Or should a broader assessment also identify future obligations arising from those operations?
The answer depends on the purpose and scope of the analysis.
An examination of annual military outlays measures something different from an assessment that incorporates long-term veterans' care and the estimated interest attributable to borrowing.
Both approaches can provide useful information, but their figures should not be presented as though they describe identical categories of expenditure.
Interest calculations require particular care because federal borrowing finances the government's overall budget rather than maintaining a separate debt account for each military operation.
Attributing interest to particular wars therefore involves analytical assumptions that must be explained.
Similarly, future veterans' expenditures are projections, not payments that have already occurred.
For WAR: FOLLOW THE MONEY, these distinctions are essential.
The investigation examines both the money already spent and the financial commitments that can continue long after a military operation has ended.
6. Where the Public Record Ends
Following federal money is not always a straightforward process.
Some transactions can be reconstructed through congressional appropriations, agency financial records, contract databases, and published audits.
Others become more difficult to trace as funds move through additional organizations, contractual relationships, and accounting systems.
The limitations of financial reporting are themselves documented.
In a 2025 report examining the Department of Defense's fiscal year 2024 financial statements, the Government Accountability Office reported that DOD had received a disclaimer of opinion on its department-wide financial statement audit.
GAO also identified material weaknesses in the department's financial reporting controls.
A disclaimer of opinion means that auditors were unable to obtain sufficient appropriate evidence to express an audit opinion on the financial statements.
That finding is significant.
But it must be interpreted correctly.
A financial reporting weakness does not automatically establish that money has disappeared.
An unsupported accounting entry is not necessarily a stolen payment.
An amount that cannot be traced through publicly available documents is not necessarily missing from the government's internal accounting systems.
These categories must remain separate.
Where the public record provides sufficient evidence, the transaction can be reconstructed.
Where documentation is incomplete, the limitation must be identified.
Where an audit establishes a specific financial irregularity, the finding should be reported within the scope and meaning assigned to it by the auditors.
And where the available evidence does not establish what happened to a particular amount, the investigation must acknowledge that uncertainty rather than manufacture an explanation.
The boundary between what the documents establish and what remains unknown is part of the investigation itself.
7. Twenty-Five Years. One Financial Question.
From Afghanistan and Iraq to Ukraine and the broader American defense economy, the financial record extends across congressional appropriations, government departments, military operations, procurement programs, private contractors, reconstruction initiatives, veterans' obligations, and public borrowing.
Each category presents a different part of the financial picture.
No single database contains every transaction.
No single headline figure explains the complete economic consequences of twenty-five years of American warfare.
And no single contractor ledger accounts for every dollar appropriated, obligated, or spent.
The investigation must therefore proceed by connecting records that were produced for different purposes and under different accounting rules.
That means identifying the relevant time period, the population of transactions being examined, the accounting measure used, and the limitations of the source.
It also means resisting the temptation to turn every financial discrepancy into an allegation of wrongdoing.
The purpose of WAR: FOLLOW THE MONEY is to reconstruct the financial architecture of twenty-five years of American warfare through the evidence available in the public record.
Not simply to ask how much the wars cost.
But to examine how public money moved through the institutions, programs, and companies involved — and to identify the financial consequences that remain.
The investigation begins with Congress.
It follows the appropriations, the obligations, the contracts, and the payments.
It examines the organizations that received the money, the goods and services purchased, and the financial commitments that extend beyond the battlefield.
And at each stage, it returns to the same question:
Where did the money go — and what can the documents actually prove?
ABOUT THE BOOK
WAR: FOLLOW THE MONEY
Where the Money Goes Before, During, and Long After the Fighting Ends
Patrick Panteix's investigative nonfiction project examines the financial record of twenty-five years of American warfare, from 2001 to 2026.
Drawing on congressional records, government audits, federal contract databases, corporate filings, and official budget documents, the book follows the financial relationships connecting public spending, military operations, private companies, and long-term obligations.
The project is currently in development, and literary representation is being sought.
Patrick Panteix — Investigative Nonfiction Author
SOURCES AND RESEARCH DOCUMENTATION
[1] U.S. Government Accountability Office — A Glossary of Terms Used in the Federal Budget Process (GAO-05-734SP).
Official definitions of federal appropriations, obligations, outlays, and other budgetary concepts.
[2] USAspending.gov — Federal Spending Guide.
Official guidance explaining federal spending, contract awards, obligations, outlays, and the differences between award spending and federal account spending.
Read the Federal Spending Guide
[3] U.S. Government Accountability Office — Ukraine: Status and Use of Supplemental U.S. Funding, as of First Quarter, Fiscal Year 2024 (GAO-24-107232).
May 2024. Examination of approximately $113.4 billion appropriated under four Ukraine supplemental appropriations acts, including obligations and disbursements reported as of December 31, 2023.
[4] U.S. Government Accountability Office — DOD Financial Management: Insights into the Auditability of DOD's Fiscal Year 2024 Balance Sheet (GAO-25-108052).
September 2025. Examination of the Department of Defense's fiscal year 2024 financial statements, audit opinions, and material weaknesses in financial reporting.
[5] Brown University — Costs of War: U.S. Federal Budget.
Research examining the federal budgetary costs of post-9/11 wars, including military expenditures, veterans' obligations, and interest associated with war-related borrowing.
