Many scholars have sought to determine the relative weight of economic and political factors in the decision-making calculus of military leaders, particularly in the context of the Arab Spring. And although political factors such as ‘sectarian stacking’ and the solidarity of the officer corps have been opened up and treated with closer analytical scrutiny, our understanding of the military’s economic resource base still lacks nuance. How do different configurations of material resources influence elite decision-making within the military – notably their decision to intervene (or not) in the political system? The most puzzling case remains that of Egypt, where theoretical explanations of the military’s behavior before and after the uprising are often based on contradictory evaluations of the institution’s economic resource base. Some scholars claim the military suffered under Mubarak, who instead lavished state largesse on favored business elites while the army’s budget shrank and its once grand image evaporated. Others cite the significant resources the military was able to mobilize during the rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and subsequently during the anti-Morsi protests to demonstrate the organization’s substantial coffers. Like many large and influential institutions, the military’s economic foundation is nebulous and its usefulness as an instrument of politics is highly situational. This paper is an effort to systematically unpack the various forms of military economic activity taking place in Egypt. These will be examined along a continuum ranging from individual activities (ie, military officers sitting on the boards of private companies, retired military officers hired as suppliers or subcontractors, etc.) to institutional ones (enterprises formally owned by military bodies, such as the Arab Organization for Industrialization). The ultimate aim of the paper will be to gauge what kind of economic resource is generated by these different types of activities and to determine whether or not this particular form of economic activity empowers the military as an institution and so should be included in our measures of the organization’s economic strength.