American experts had argued whether the USSR was spending 9-11% of their GDP on the military or if it was closer to 11-13%. The actual figure was somewhere between 30-40%. To provide perspective, the United States was spending 35% of its GDP on the military for a brief period during the height of World War II. The Soviets were spending around that much every single year—a clearly unsustainable cost that would be almost impossible to increase.
