The article is dedicated to a prominent military figure, a scientist, a future reformer of the armed forces of the Russian Empire, who laid the theoretical foundations of a new military science – military statistics. This science contained a variety of information about states, their territories, population, political structure, industrial potential and armed forces. According to the author of the fundamental two-volume work “First Attempts at Military Statistics” only a systemic and critical analysis of state armed forces could constitute the aim and subject of military statistics, its instruction in the Imperial Military Academy as only then Russian military higher educational establishment found in the first half of the 19th century. The work “First Attempts at Military Statistics” became one of the main research works at the Imperial Military Academy, a theoretical basis for the methodology of military statistical research. D. A. Miliutin made a significant contribution to the fourth edition of the seventeen-volume “Military Statistical Review of the Russian Empire” and “Yearbook of the Russian Army”, which had a significant impact on the formation of Russian military statistics and on the formation of Russian geostrategy.