That's OK, just sell the rest of your defensive and offensive weapons. Once they're all gone, you shouldn't be spending hardly anything on defense. Remember though, the weapons don't disappear the instant you click "sell". They don't actually get sold until someone else BUYS them. Until then, they still cost you money to keep. If you are really desperate, you could try destroying weapons instead of selling them. That way, they will instantly stop costing you money. However, I wouldn't recommend that, because they money which you will eventually get when someone purchases your weapons will probably be far greater than the cost of maintaining those weapons in your stockpile until someone else buys them from you. What I would recommend is that you deactivate as many weapons as possible. This will reduce the cost of maintaining the weapons, without preventing you from selling them later. Also, don't purchase any defensive fortifications. They aren't very useful for defense, they require a lot of soldiers, and you can't sell them. If you deactivate as many weapons systems as possible as quickly as possible, and then sell as many weapons as possible at market price to whoever wants to buy them, this should cut your military expenses down as much as possible. Also, when you do decide to build your defensive military force, there are a lot of things you can do to get as much bang for your buck as possible:
Fist of all, I would recommend that you focus on your defensive air-force and defensive navy, rather than on your defensive land forces. You see, in order to protect all of the potential targets in your country, a defensive land force has to be divided up amongst all of said targets. In other words, if you want to protect every major city in your country, you have to station a separate, individual garrison at each of those cities. If you want to defend all of your towns, counties, factories and military bases, you must station separate garrisons at each of those as well. This means that you can only afford to station a very small number of weapons at any given target. Furthermore, in order to provide an adequate defense of any target, you need to station AT LEAST three different types of weapons there. You will need either defensive armored vehicles, defensive jeeps, light artillery or light tanks, to protect yourself from land attacks. You will also need defensive anti-aircraft batteries to protect yourself from air attacks. You will further need either missile interceptor batteries or defensive missile batteries to protect yourself from missile attacks. To defend your military bases, capital city and other major cities, you will also need nuclear defense batteries. Thus, not only can you only afford to station a very small number of weapons at each target, but also, you can only afford to station an EVEN SMALLER number of weapons of each type at any given target. If you are forced to divide your defense forces among dozens of different targets, and then to divide them again among several different weapon types to defend against several different types of attacks, this ultimately means that you will only have a very tiny number of weapons available to defend any given target against any given type of attack. This means that even if your defensive military is much larger than your attacker's offensive military, your attacker can still easily overwhelm your defenses, simply because your forces are so divided. However, let's say you focus on building your defensive navy and defensive air-force, instead of your defensive army. You will need a combination of interceptors and defensive helicopters. The interceptors will protect you from attacks from all types of aircraft, including strategic bombers, and the defensive helicopters will protect you from both land attacks and missile attacks, including attacks from nuclear, chemical and tactical missiles. Of course, you will also need defensive radar planes, in order to direct your interceptors and defensive helicopters to the proper locations. Also, although defensive helicopters are effective against land forces and land-based missile launchers, they are not very effective against navy ships, and they do nothing at all against nuclear submarines. Therefore, you should also maintain some defensive destroyers and a fleet command stationed in the waters off shore. This will protect you from navy attacks, including attacks from nuclear submarines. A combination of defensive radar planes, interceptors, defensive helicopters and defensive destroyers, will provide protection against just about any type of attack which you could face. Of course, you still have to divide your forces up amongst several different types of weapons. However, this is much more efficient than relying on a defensive land force. The reason is that interceptors, defensive helicopters and defensive destroyers, do not need to be stationed AT any particular target in order to defend it. Instead, you can simply station some interceptor wings and defensive helicopter wings at an offensive airport, and station your defensive destroyers at a fleet command off shore. This way, you don't have to divide your weapons up amongst all of the different targets. Instead, you can group your defensive air-force into a small number of comparatively large and powerful interceptor wings and defensive helicopter wings, and you can group your defensive destroyers into a single large fleet. If your enemy attacks from the air and one of your interceptor wings responds, your enemy will be faced with one-hundred-and-seventy interceptors, instead of merely twelve or thirteen defensive anti-aircraft missile batteries. Likewise, if your enemy attacks by land and one of your defensive helicopter wings responds, your enemy will be faced with one-hundred-and-seventy defensive helicopters, as opposed to merely a dozen or so defensive armored vehicles or other ground weapons. If your enemy attacks with missiles, they will again be faced with an entire wing of one-hundred-and-seventy defensive helicopters, as opposed to merely a dozen or so missile interceptor batteries and/or defensive missile batteries. Likewise, if your enemy attacks from the sea with navy fighters and navy helicopters, your enemy will again be faced with a very large number of interceptors rather than merely a tiny handful of anti-aircraft missile batteries. If your enemy attacks from the sea using missiles, your enemy will again be faced with a very large number of defensive helicopters rather than merely a tiny handful of missile interceptor batteries and defensive missile batteries. Likewise, if your enemy attacks from the sea using any weapon at all, your enemy will be faced with your defensive destroyer fleet. What is more, interceptors, defensive helicopters and defensive destroyers will also work against attacks with weapons of mass destruction. If your enemy uses nuclear missiles, chemical missiles or tactical missiles, the missile launchers will be attacked by your defensive helicopters. If your enemy uses nuclear missiles launched from nuclear submarines, the nuclear submarines will be attacked by your defensive destroyers, and if your enemy uses strategic bombers, the strategic bombers will be attacked by your interceptors. Thus, a combination of interceptors and defensive helicopters, both guided by defensive radar planes, together with defensive destroyers, will protect you against just about any type of attack you can imagine. What is more, because these weapons can protect all the different targets in your country without you having to divide them among all of those different targets, you can get the same amount of protection using a much smaller force than you would need if you were to rely on your land force. This defensive strategy will give you much greater protection while at the same time costing you much less money in operating costs. This is one very good way to save money on defense Also, don't buy large quantities of weapons. Instead, buy only a small number of weapons, but make sure that both the weapons and the ammunition which they use are of the highest possible quality. A small but very high quality military is just as effective as a large but very low quality military, yet it costs less to operate because it uses fewer soldiers. Also, once you have established a decent defensive air-force, you may want to consider creating a few stealth bomber wings to augment your defense. If you have stealth bomber wings and your country is attacked, the stealth bombers will automatically bomb military units in your attacker's country. They will do this no matter what weapons your enemy uses to attack you, and this will weaken your enemy's ability to carry out future attacks. I expect that the combination of defensive radar planes, interceptors, defensive helicopters, defensive destroyers, and eventually stealth bombers, should provide you with a reasonably good defense in proportion to the cost, provided that you don't build your defense until you can afford it economically. Also, no matter what sort of defensive force you choose to build, you should always keep a small handful of LONG RANGE radar planes active at all times. You can use them to spy on other players, in order to see the size and strength of their military units, as well as the types of weapons which they are using in those units, and the quality of the weapons and ammunition in those units. This costs very little, and can help to give you some idea of the threats which you are likely to face if your are attacked by those players. Also, consider examining your neighbors' countries from time to time, to check up on their financial and economic situation. Certain things like the size of a country's population, education levels, employment levels, the number of corporations in that country, the profitability of those corporations, and other things, can give you a rough idea of how well that country is doing economically, and that in turn can give you a rough idea of how large of a military that country is likely able to sustain. Also, pay especially good attention to your neighbor's finances. A massive plunge into debt is probably the most certain indicator there is of a rapid military buildup. I don't know of much else which regularly causes countries to plunge so far into debt so fast as a large military buildup in preparation for war. If a country has no debt and one-trillion in cash one day, and the next day they have one-trillion in debt and no cash, that probably means that the president is buying a very large quantity of weapons and ammunition. There isn't much else which is likely to be that expensive. If you see something like this, it likely means that something is about to go down. Of course, just because another president is buying large quantities of weapons and ammunition, that certainly doesn't mean that they are intended to be used against your country specifically, but nonetheless, something like this is likely something you should pay attention to just in case. Lastly, you want to stop as much information about your country as possible from getting out. To do this, go to your country page, look at the menu bar at the top of the screen and go to "settings", "automation", "secrecy parameters", ensure that all five boxes are checked, and click "save changes". Now, go back to the menu bar and go to "settings", "show/hide news bar", and click on it. Now, check the box where it says "Hide News Bar". This turns off that continuously scrolling news bar at the top of your country page with all the economic information. That way, a potential attacker can't use the news bar to find out how your country is doing economically, or whether or not your country has the means to afford a decent military. By doing these things, you can help to cover your country in a cloak of secrecy which will tend to make other players a little bit more nervous about attacking you, because they won't know for certain what they are getting into. Also, when you are ready, you should consider joining a federation for protection. This doesn't cost you anything, and a large bundle of sticks together are much stronger that a single stick by itself. I hope I was helpful.
