Naval vessels function as floating bases excluded from overseas cost tallies.

Evidence

In a way, it’s strange, given the name of the Overseas Cost Summary, that it excludes (at Congress’s instruction) the costs of maintaining naval vessels overseas. After all, Navy and Marine Corps vessels are essentially floating and submersible bases used to maintain a powerful military presence across the planet’s waters. About 3.5 percent of Navy and Marine Corps personnel are afloat outside U.S. waters at a given time, so given total Navy and Marine Corps personnel and operations and maintenance costs of 108 billion, an estimate based just on that personnel percentage adds another 3.8 billion to the overseas budget. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 618

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

Related

• Naval vessels afloat overseas function as unaccounted floating military bases. (similarity 0.88)
• Every military service pays substantially more per person stationed overseas (similarity 0.83)
• The Pentagon legally must report total overseas base spending each year (similarity 0.82)
• Official base cost tallies exclude billions in classified overseas programs (similarity 0.82)
• US overseas bases cost taxpayers at least $71.8 billion annually (similarity 0.81)
• Overseas military health care and benefits add over $11.6 billion to the base bill. (similarity 0.81)
• Overseas basing costs more than domestic basing despite host-nation support (similarity 0.81)
• The cost report excludes bases in U.S. territories lacking full voting representation. (similarity 0.80)
• Congress excludes all war-funded base costs from official overseas tallies. (similarity 0.80)
• Official overseas base cost figures exclude all war-zone maintenance spending (similarity 0.80)
• Overseas base maintenance costs taxpayers over $100 billion annually (similarity 0.80)
• Overseas bases cost more to run than domestic ones despite host-nation support (similarity 0.80)
• Official overseas military cost reports omit hundreds of millions in allied spending (similarity 0.79)
• Independent estimates of overseas base costs exceed official figures tenfold (similarity 0.79)
• Overseas base spending exceeds every federal agency’s budget except Defense. (similarity 0.79)