We've had some debates about this in the past, so here's an article that cropped up today.

http://www.counterpunch.com/cox04222010.html

Stan Cox describes "the Gun Belt,"

"The Southern and Western states have long been favored as sites for military bases, and those states also form what University of Minnesota professor Ann Markusen once termed the nation’s 'Gun Belt' [2]. In that region, the value of prime defense contracts swelled by 70 to 100 percent in real terms from the 1950s to the 1980s, going into the Reagan military buildup. Meanwhile, military contracts in the once-dominant mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes regions fell off sharply, and those on the Pacific coast stayed level. The Sun Belt/Gunbelt went on to become the top supplier of both troops and armaments for the wars of the 1990s and 2000"