Trump called for the massive surge in spending days after he ordered a U.S. military operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and spirit him out of the country to face drug trafficking charges in the United States. U.S. forces continue to mass in the Caribbean Sea.

The 2026 military budget is set at $901 billion.

Trump in recent days has also called for taking over the Danish territory of Greenland for national security reasons and has suggested he’s open to carrying out military operations in Colombia. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ominously warned that longtime adversary Cuba “is in trouble.”

“This will allow us to build the ‘Dream Military’ that we have long been entitled to and, more importantly, that will keep us SAFE and SECURE, regardless of foe,” Trump said in a posting on Truth Social announcing his proposal.

The military just received a large boost of some $175 billion in the GOP’s “big, beautiful bill” of tax breaks and spending reductions that Trump signed into law last year.

Insisting on more funding for the Pentagon is almost certain to run into resistance from Democrats who work to maintain parity between changes in defense and nondefense spending. But it’s also sure to draw objections from the GOP’s deficit hawks who have pushed back against larger military spending.

But Trump said he feels comfortable surging spending on the military because of increased revenue created by his administration through tariffs imposed on friends and foes around the globe since his return to office.

The U.S. government collected gross revenues of $288.5 billion last year from tariffs and other excise taxes, up from $98.3 billion in 2024, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. That’s a meaningful increase in revenues from taxing imports. But it’s not enough to cover the various promises made by Trump, who has said the tariffs can also cover dividends to taxpayers, pay down the national debt and, now, cover increased spending on the military.

Meanwhile, Trump on Wednesday also threatened to cut off Pentagon purchases from Raytheon, one of the biggest U.S. defense contractors, if the company did not end the practice of stock buybacks and invest more profits into building out its weapons manufacturing capacity.

Trump in recent months has repeatedly complained that defense companies have been woefully behind on deliveries of critical weaponry, yet continue to mete out dividends and stock buybacks to investors and offering eye-popping salaries to top executives.

“Either Raytheon steps up, and starts investing in more upfront Investment like Plants and Equipment, or they will no longer be doing business with Department of War,” Trump said on social media. “Also, if Raytheon wants further business with the United States Government, under no circumstances will they be allowed to do any additional Stock Buybacks, where they have spent Tens of Billions of Dollars, until they are able to get their act together.”

The company is responsible for making some of the military’s most widely used and notable missiles, including the Tomahawk cruise missile, the shoulder-launched Javelin and Stinger missiles and the Sidewinder air-to-air missile.

Raytheon also owns Pratt & Whitney, a company that is responsible for manufacturing a host of jet engines that power aircraft for all the military branches, including the newest F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

On Wall Street, shares of defense contractors fell, with Northrop Grumman dropping 5.5%, Lockheed Martin declining 4.8% and RTX Corp., the parent company of Raytheon, slipping 2.5%.

Raytheon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

AP writers Josh Boak, Stephen Groves, Paul Harloff and Lisa Mascaro contributed reporting.

Chris Kastner told reporters Monday that the Navy should adopt a 2-3-4 strategy for aircraft carriers: Buy two at a time, with three years of advanced procurement funding for each, spaced four years apart.

This plan, he said, would optimize construction at the company’s Newport News Shipbuilding yard in Virginia and benefit thousands of suppliers.

The Navy in 2019 simultaneously bought its last two carriers, the Enterprise and the Doris Miller, with hull numbers 80 and 81, respectively.

The Navy’s plan for CVN-82, as explained in FY24 budget materials, was to begin its advanced procurement in FY26 and buy the carrier in FY28. That’s a longer interval between ships than the company wants, and a year less advanced procurement than it wants.

HII’s concerns grew after Defense News reported in October the Navy was considering whether to ink its next two-carrier contract in FY28, FY29 or FY30. The Navy will reveal its decision on the timing of the contract in FY25 budget materials.

A Newport News Shipbuilding executive, who spoke to reporters Jan. 8 on background, called the potential delay “extremely disappointing.”

“For several years now, CVN-82 has been projected to be a 2028 awarded ship, and the nuclear-industrial base has been planning around that timeline,” the executive said, even though it’s a year or two later than the ideal cadence would call for.

The supply base is worried that a lack of advanced procurement funding in FY25 could lead to some production lines going cold, the executive said.

But if they see further delays — if the contract is pushed back to FY29 or FY30 — “recent analysis and surveys by the Aircraft Carrier Industrial Base Coalition, or ACIBC, suggest that delaying CVN-82 would also result in supplier workforce layoffs, increased costs, and ultimately suppliers deprioritizing military shipbuilding and exploring alternative business opportunities.”

Kastner said the Navy has a chance to give the industrial base some certainty.

“We know the ships are going to be built; they have broad support. So let’s eliminate risk. Let’s get the major suppliers under contract early enough so they can plan and they can make their production schedules,” Kastner said.

“I think there’s a broad understanding of that,” he added, but “the budget is driving discussions around potential delay. One thing we should never delay is the advanced procurement of major equipment in the supply chain.”

Kastner also discussed ongoing uncertainty about the production line for the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock. The Pentagon tried to halt the production line in its FY24 budget plans and called for a “strategic pause” to consider the future need for amphibs, how many the Navy should have, if there was a cheaper design industry could build, and other factors.

Pentagon leaders still not released the results of any of these studies.

Congress, which has already passed a 31-amphib ship requirement into law, rejected the pause and included the next ship in the program, LPD-33, in the FY24 National Defense Authorization Act. Kastner said he is optimistic funding for the ship will come in a spending bill currently being hashed out by lawmakers.

Kastner told Defense News he has not been briefed on the results of the amphib study and is awaiting details, expected to be revealed in FY25 budget materials.

Kastner also said he is confident that, even if the Pentagon determines it must move to another design, HII will continue to play a role in building some kind of amphibious ship. Its Ingalls Shipbuilding yard in Mississippi is the sole builder of amphibs.

He noted the Navy had threatened to end the program several times and that many recent LPD ships were excluded from formal budget plans, only to be added in by lawmakers after advocacy from industry, the Marine Corps and other supporters.

“We’ve been in the position of supporting [the next LPD’s addition to the budget] every year. And now it’s really broadly supported by the Navy, by the Marines, by the Congress,” Kastner said. “So we understand the process and the realities of supporting every year. It’s something we’ve been able to do, and we’ll continue to do that.

While the most recent projections from the agency for delivering a Glide Phase Interceptor, or GPI — capable of intercepting a hypersonic missile in its glide phase of flight — have been rough estimates around the early 2030s, Congress is mandating the program reach initial operational capability by the end of 2029.

This means MDA must not only prove the capability can counter hypersonic weapons in tests, but deliver and field “not fewer than 12″ GPIs by the deadline, according to the NDAA.

Moreover, the legislation notes the program is required to reach full operational capability by the end of 2032, and adds that the Pentagon must field “not fewer than 24″ GPIs by the end of 2040.

Establishing full operational capability also would include the ability for the GPI “to be operated collaboratively with space-based or terrestrial sensors that the Department of Defense expects to be deployed before the end of 2032,” according to the legislation.

To boost the effort, Congress authorized $225 million in additional funding beyond the agency’s FY24 ask of $209 million for hypersonic defense development efforts.

Lawmakers also authorized MDA’s director to enter a cooperative development agreement “with one or more international partners” to develop the capability.

MDA and Japan have been in talks regarding a co-development arrangement for GPI, much like the program to develop and procure the Navy’s SM-3 Block IIA program.

Raytheon Technologies — an RTX company — and Northrop Grumman are each developing hypersonic weapons interceptors in an MDA-led competition. Each company has received roughly $61 million to date.

Developing interceptors capable of defeating a hypersonic missile that can travel more than five times the speed of sound and can maneuver in the glide phase of flight is expected to be challenging.

The interceptors will be designed to fit into the U.S. Navy’s current Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense destroyers. It will be fired from its standard vertical launching system and integrated with the modified Baseline 9 Aegis Weapon System that detects, tracks, controls and engages hypersonic threats.

There is pressure on the United States to develop an interceptor to counter hypersonic weapons as its adversaries like Russia and China sprint ahead.

“Russia and China are making a lot of headway; they might be slightly ahead of us. But we’re spending $4 billion a year to catch up in offensive hypersonics,” Mark Montgomery, a defense expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Defense News in a recent interview.

“We would have no defense against that,” he said, and “you would expect that we would be taking risks, pushing fast to get hypersonic defense done, but we’re only spending about $250 million … a year on hypersonic defense, so less than 10% of hypersonic offense.”

State Department and Pentagon officials said in letters to Capitol Hill on Monday that cuts floated by Republicans would harm efforts to deter and compete with China and “effectively zero out” aid to Ukraine.

House Republicans have reportedly pledged to cut federal spending for fiscal 2024 back to their fiscal 2022 levels as part of a January deal to elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as speaker. However, Republicans have also since come out against cuts to defense, which makes them less likely but leaves nondefense programs vulnerable.

The House Appropriations Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, sent a letter in January to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the leaders of all other federal agencies seeking more details on the impact of fiscal cuts by House Republicans. On Monday, she posted the replies.

Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord, in his March 17 letter, stuck up for the nondefense side, saying that even if the department was exempt from cuts, those cuts would be “just as harmful.” The federal government’s response to the Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine shows the value of integrating all forms of assistance, he added.

“No one agency could achieve the effects we are producing as a team, and deep cuts to any one of the agencies would undermine the effort as a whole,” McCord’s letter read.

The State Department ― which requested billions of dollars for Indo-Pacific missions and to counter Chinese influence though security, infrastructure and economic support to U.S. allies and partners around the globe ― said those efforts would be hurt.

A rollback to FY22 levels would include a $2 billion cut to the State Department’s security sector assistance budget, according to the seven-page letter from Naz Durakoğlu and Jodi Herman, the respective legislative affairs chiefs for the department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. It’s a category that includes foreign military financing for partner nations to buy American-made weaponry.

“Such assistance is critical to enhancing military-to-military interoperability, training, and cooperation, as well as fighting corruption, and money-laundering,” the March 17 letter read, adding that such a cut would also be like “opening the door for our competitors.”

To the Pentagon, a rollback to FY22 levels would mean a $100 billion — or nearly 12% — budget cut, compared to Biden’s FY24 budget request of $842 billion, McCord said in his three-page letter to DeLauro.

“The Department of Defense is concerned about both the magnitude and potential method of implementing such reductions, which would have harmful and potentially devastating effects on our people, our mission and our national interests,” McCord wrote.

Such cuts, he said, would upend congressionally supported efforts to stabilize the defense-industrial base and also stymie modernization efforts. Beyond that, they would mean less money for the Indo-Pacific Deterrence Initiative and proposed munitions plus-ups at the center of the FY24 request ― both aimed at deterring China in the region.

The U.S. Navy would hypothetically take a $10 billion cut, likely eliminating a Virginia-class submarine and DDG-51 destroyer, and also endanger cost-saving multiyear procurement contracts, the letter read.

A notional 40% cut to the nuclear triad modernization would hurt B-21 bomber production plans and the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program.

For planned missile defense upgrades, a rollback means 50% less for space-based missile warning and ground-based midcourse missile defense “at a time when our adversaries are modernizing their offensive capabilities,” the letter read.

“Such ill-advised politics would also have global ramifications,” McCord wrote. “At a time when our allies in NATO and the Indo-Pacific region are increasing their security spending to the levels we have been advocating, a move backward on our part would send the wrong message both to allies and adversaries.”

Furthermore, the Coast Guard would have to cease efforts to buy the offshore patrol cutter and the polar security cutter, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s letter.

That in turn would “create an operational gap and further delay of the U.S. presence in the polar regions and reduce the ability detect, deter, prevent, and disrupt terrorist attacks and other criminal acts in the U.S. maritime domain as well as our National Defense Strategy,” the letter read.

The notable exclusion of politically sensitive Ukraine contingency funding from the budget request suggests the Pentagon may be seeking to insulate its core programs against Capitol Hill cross-currents. House Republicans are divided on Ukraine aid, and some have also made an ambitious promise to slash discretionary spending by at least $130 billion even as they seek to grow the overall defense budget.

But excluding Ukraine aid from the $842 billion in Pentagon spending the Biden administration has requested for fiscal 2024 puts the onus on Congress — if it wants to continue to help Kyiv — to pass billions of dollars more in supplemental appropriations.

Pentagon budget officials attributed the decision to rely on supplementals to the uncertain nature of the war.

“Ukraine support above the pre-conflict levels is not in this budget; the situation remains too fluid,” Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord told reporters at Monday’s budget rollout. “The way we’re handling this is the way we’ve handled every emerging situation in the last few years, and that’s supplementals.”

The Republican divide over whether to continue aid to Kyiv ― and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s vow not to grant Ukraine a “blank check” ― has prompted House GOP leaders to spotlight the extensive oversight on Ukraine aid and that U.S. weapons have not been diverted from their intended use.

But even some Democrats supportive of the aid have have begun to question the Biden administration’s reliance on extra-budgetary means. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., for instance, told Defense News he would rather include Ukraine aid as part of the defense budget.

“My personal preference would be to bake it into the base budget,” Whitehouse said. “That sends a very positive signal to Ukraine. But there are a lot of players in this world who have a voice on that. And I’m very comfortable following the lead of my colleagues on the Armed Services Committee and the Appropriations Committee as to what they think the best way to go would be.”

At a defense appropriations subcommittee hearing last month, Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif., said the Biden administration needs to “do a better job of messaging on this long-term, especially over the next two years,” while Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii, called on the Pentagon at the same hearing to “be totally honest with everybody about what this is all going to cost.”

“People need to know what this will cost and people need to consider how to fund it,” Case said. “We have colleagues that are good representatives of their constituents who want to increase, who want to decrease, who want to borrow more, who want to borrow less and we just need to know what it takes realistically to get through the assumption … that this war is going to continue.”

Emergency spending for the Pentagon is not new, but it grew increasingly controversial in the final years of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Funds were appropriated through Overseas Contingency Operations spending packages outside the base budget, which some lawmakers likened to a “budget gimmick.”

According to the Congressional Budget Office, emergency funds made up 2% of the Pentagon’s budget between 1970 and 2000, but grew after Sept. 11, 2001 and peaked at 28% in 2007 and 2008. Overseas Contingency Operations spending averaged about $119 billion per year before President Joe Biden’s 2022 budget request eliminated it.

Though the Biden administration has doubled down on using emergency Ukraine spending rather than starting to integrate it into the regular budget process, as recently as last month a senior Pentagon official testified that the Biden administration had started work on placing Ukraine assistance within the base budget.

“There is work ongoing to build it into a base budget, and we are not ruling out coming back to you for a supplemental,” Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Celeste Wallander told the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel on Feb. 28.

But on Monday, McCord said the Pentagon would rely on emergency supplementals. Though his office has not put together additional supplemental spending requests for fiscal 2023 or fiscal 2024, he said, the Pentagon was able to quickly draft four supplementals in 12 months.

“The spring offensives are not far along enough for us to draw any conclusions on that,” McCord said. “We can do them quickly, especially if we do them in short windows, but we’re not trying to prognosticate a whole year in advance.”

McCord noted some proposed funds that had gone into the base budget’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative would now go into the European Deterrence Initiative — for which the Biden administration has requested nearly $5 billion in FY24.

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget announced last week it was only seeking $6 billion in Ukraine aid as part of its FY24 base budget, an amount roughly on par with funding for Kyiv before Russia’s invasion last year.

That $6 billion is also a small fraction of the $113 billion in military and economic aid for Ukraine that Congress passed last year via four emergency supplemental packages.

WASHINGTON — The Missile Defense Agency’s $10.9 billion fiscal 2024 budget prioritizes regional and homeland missile defense with a major focus on building an air and missile defense architecture in Guam.

Last year, the agency asked for $9.6 billion, but received nearly $1 billion more from Congress. The FY24 request is up nearly 4% from that enacted funding level.

The new proposal includes $8.7 billion in research and development funding, up 6% from last year’s enacted spending. R&D funding accounts for 80% of the FY24 budget proposal.

The MDA is requesting $1.5 billion in procurement funding, 11% less than Congress enacted in FY23, and $564 million in operations and maintenance spending, 4% more than last year.

The agency is also seeking to dramatically increase its military construction budget, requesting $149 million, nearly triple what it received in FY23.

According to budget documents, the agency wants to increase military construction spending even more in FY25 to $524 million.

The agency is also seeking to dramatically increase its military construction budget, requesting $149 million, nearly triple what it received in FY23, to pay for a new ground test consolidation facility the agency is building at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama.

The effort will “consolidate all of our disparate ground test facilities right now,” Michelle Atkinson, the agency’s director of operations, said during a March 13 briefing at the Pentagon.

According to budget documents, the agency wants to increase military construction spending even more in FY25 to $524 million. That funding will be devoted to building the missile defense architecture in Guam, Atkinson said.

Defending Guam

The agency is asking for more than $800 million to develop and begin constructing its architecture to defend Guam from air and missile threats. The MDA proposes spending nearly half of the $800 million to continue design and development of the integrated missile defense architecture for the island.

The architecture will defend against ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missile threats, “so you need a sensor architecture, you need command-and-control and you need weapons that are in launchers,” Vice Adm. Jon Hill, MDA’s director, said during the March 13 briefing.

The architecture will be comprised of MDA, U.S. Army and U.S. Navy systems. Part of the effort includes development of the AN/TPY-6 radar for 360-degree coverage, long-range midcourse discrimination, precision tracking and hit assessment.

This radar will be tied to the U.S. Navy’s Aegis Weapon system, Hill said. The U.S. Army’s Integrated Battle Command System, the brains of the service’s air and missile defense capability, as well as its Lower-Tier Air-and-Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) and Sentinel radars will fill in gaps for cruise missile and hypersonic threats, he added.

The MDA also wants to spend $38.5 million to upgrade the Command and Control, Battle Management and Communications System to support the Guam defense architecture.

Regional missile defense spending

Additionally, the MDA is seeking $220.3 million in FY24 for development of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, which provides ballistic missile defense capability in Guam and in South Korea. The agency also requests $47.6 million for testing and $216.8 million to buy 11 interceptors.

The agency is also asking for $89.3 million to support seven THAAD system batteries, including two forward-based batteries stationed in the US Indo-Pacific Command region.

The MDA is requesting $693.7 million for Navy Aegis ships that also provide regional missile defense and more than $800 million to buy 27 Aegis SM-3 Block IB missiles and 12 Aegis SM-3 Block IIA missiles.

The Aegis Ashore system, meant to offer regional defense for Europe, has been operational in Romania since 2016. The MDA is still working to reach operational capability at another Aegis Ashore site in Poland and is seeking $2.4 million to complete the site.

Hill said the construction issues that have long plagued the Poland site are in the rearview mirror and the agency is now conducting combat system installation and testing. Testing will continue through the summer and into the fall, followed by formal acceptance by the U.S. Navy, U.S. European Command and NATO.

The MDA is also requesting $80.4 million to configure Aegis for land-based defense on Guam and integration with dispersed AN/TPY-6 radar and multiple launchers, according to Pentagon budget documents.

The MDA also continues to develop its Glide-Phase Interceptor, capable of eliminating hypersonic missile threats, and is asking for $209 million in FY24 to fund an ongoing competition between Raytheon Technologies and Northrop Grumman. Both companies are working on concepts and designs after receiving contracts in November 2021.

While the Army has a capability to defend against hypersonic missile attacks in the terminal phase of flight, the GPI will allow it to eliminate threats in the glide phase, before the missile begins its descent.

MDA is in the “mission solution analysis phase,” Hill said, which means the agency is working with the two companies already selected to determine what technologies are needed and how they can come together to form a weapon system.

“The timeline is always hard to tell,” Hill said, but “the budget supports a deployment or getting to that first article out there in the early ‘30s.”

Homeland defense efforts

The agency is also asking for $903.6 million in FY24 to sustain and upgrade its Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System, designed to protect the nation from intercontinental ballistic missile threats from North Korea and Iran.

Additionally, MDA wants another $2.1 billion in FY24 to continue development of its Next-Generation Interceptor. Two teams — Lockheed Martin with Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman with Raytheon Technologies — are competing to build interceptor prototypes.

The NGI is meant to replace the current Ground-Based Interceptors that make up the GMD system. There are 44 GBIs in the ground with the majority in silos at Fort Greely, Alaska, and the rest at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

The current interceptors aren’t equipped to counter a missile that could contain multiple kill vehicles or decoys that make the defeat process more complicated, agency officials have said, and the military hopes to have the new interceptor in the ground by 2027 or 2028. Hill confirmed the agency is looking to a fielding goal of 2028.

The GMD system will need $41.8 million for testing and $174.8 million for maintenance and sustainment, according to the agency.

Missile defense in space

The agency plans to spend $109.5 million in FY24 for its missile defense space programs. Congress enacted $130 million in funding for the programs in FY23.

The funding would go toward the Hypersonic & Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS), a program initiated in 2018 to detect and track hypersonic and ballistic missile threats. L3Harris Technologies and Northrop Grumman each received $277 million contracts in early 2021 to produce prototypes.

The HBTSS is slated to launch in FY23 and remain on orbit in FY24 to validate its performance. Eventually, the Space Force is expected to deploy the capability.

The request also funds the Space-based Kill Assessment project, a network of sensors on commercial satellites capable of delivering hit-to-kill assessments for homeland defense.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is seeking an additional $17 billion in personnel funding as part of a $185.5 billion budget for next year, a request meant to advance its modernization programs even as it grapples with recruiting challenges, the war in Ukraine and rising inflation, according to service officials.

The proposal marks a 4.6% increase over the Army’s $178 billion budget last year. Taking into account inflation, the Army’s FY24 budget would fall about 2% below that of what was enacted for FY23, Maj. Gen. Mark Bennett, the service’s budget director, told reporters in a briefing last Friday.

Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo said the budget still “enables us to fully fund our needs to meet the National Defense Strategy,” but the Army faces “a generational challenge right now in terms of recruiting.” As a result, he said during the same briefing, the budget prioritizes people.

People problem

The Army’s planned end strength in FY24 is 452,000 active duty troops, 325,000 National Guardsmen and 174,800 in Army Reserve. In FY23, the Army planned for a force of 473,000 in the active force, 336,000 in the Guard and 189,500 in the Reserve.

The service expected in its FY23 budget to increase its end strength back to 485,000 active duty soldiers within five years, but is now projecting 464,000 active duty troops in FY28.

“We think [recruiting] is a longer term challenge,” Camarillo said. “We certainly are pulling a lot of levers to include in this budget that we’re continuing from ‘23 and going into ‘24 to help address that challenge.”

He pointed to the expansion of the Future Soldier Prep Course as well as more money for advertising and recruiting incentives. The Army plans to spend $12.8 million on the course and $398 million on marketing and advertising in FY24, according to budget documents.

The Army is requesting $69.8 billion in personnel funding, up from the $52.3 billion Congress enacted to cover Army personnel costs in FY23.

The service also plans to spend $288 million on barracks, including five new barracks projects, which is part of a 10-year, $10 billion investment plan.

The Army is seeking $72.1 billion in total for operations and maintenance, compared to $59 billion approved by Congress in FY23. And the service is asking for $2.8 billion in its military construction account. The service asked for just $845 million in FY23.

Modernization milestones

The Army has long planned for a fully modernized force by 2030 and is facing several key milestones on the road to delivering 36 signature weapons systems in the next decade.

“This budget allows us to maintain significant continuity in our modernization strategy, as we have always said, maintaining emphasis on the six modernization key areas,” Camarillo said.

The Army’s plans to spend $15.8 billion in research and development in FY24, down from $17.2 billion enacted in FY23.

The service is seeking $23.4 billion in procurement, nearly the same as the $23.6 billion approved by Congress the prior year.

In FY24, the service is planning to field its first unit equipped with its Mid-Range Capability missile, which will be able to strike ships. The Army is asking for $380 million in research and development and another $170 million in procurement for the program in FY24.

The Army is requesting $273 million to work on future increments of its Precision Strike Missile, or PrSM, and another $384 million to buy 110 Increment 1 missiles, slated for delivery in the fourth quarter of FY24.

A total of $944 million will go into further research and development of the Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, or LRHW, and another $157 million in procurement to buy missiles for the first unit equipped, which has already received its launchers and supporting equipment.

The Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System will go to the first headquarters battalion in FY24, and the Army will also deliver counter-small unmanned aircraft system prototypes in the third quarter of FY24.

The Next Generation Squad Weapon is slated for fielding to the first unit equipped in the second quarter of FY4.

Of the 24 new Army systems slated to make it into the hands of soldiers by the end of 2023, only one program, the Extended Range Cannon Artillery, might miss that goal, according to Army acquisition chief Doug Bush.

The operational evaluation of ERCA, Bush said, revealed “engineering challenges,” and the service will know more in a few months about how it will proceed with the program.

The Army is also facing delays in several of its other modernization programs outside of the 24. The Lower Tier Air-and-Missile Defense System and the Improved Turbine Engine Program are both delayed, Bush said, “because as we go into testing, we are running into some challenges.”

The delays are “not dramatic,” he added. “This is normal, this is advanced technology. There are always some delays. So it’s a question of manageable delays and whether we understand them and in all of these cases, I believe we do.”

The Army expects to field several programs for the first time in FY24. Kord Technologies will deliver the Directed Energy Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense System — which puts a 50-kilowatt laser on a Stryker combat vehicle — at the end of FY24. A few systems are already in testing. And Leidos’ Dynetics will deliver the Indirect Fires Protection Capability to the first platoon along with two Lockheed Martin-Dynetics developed prototypes of the IFPC High Energy Laser system.

Looking abroad

The budget also helps advance the Army’s pivot to the Pacific, Camarillo said, which is a key priority in the NDS. The Army is requesting $1.3 billion in FY24 as part of the Pacific Deterrence Initiative.

The Army plans to fully fund Pacific Pathways exercises, for a total of $123 million in FY24, as well as make a “significant investment in building partner capacity and training efforts in that region,” he added.

The service plans to host 33 of its planned 115 exercises in the Pacific theater.

Additionally, the Army will fund its third Multidomain Task Force, which specializes in long-range precision fires. The Army has already established a task force unit in the Pacific and one in the European theater.

The effect of the war in Ukraine on the FY 24 budget is limited, according to service officials.

“There’s no question replenishment and continuing to resupply our munitions for our support, from drawdowns for Ukraine, remains a significant area of emphasis, but that is funded through a different type of appropriation,” Camarillo said. “That is primarily through supplementals that were funded not only in FY22 but also going into FY23.”

The Army is requesting $1.2 billion to buy Patriot missiles, $107 million to buy Tomahawk missiles, $942 million for Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems and $221 million for 155mm artillery. The proposal indicates modest increases over each of these missiles and munitions’ planned procurements in FY23, but Army leaders stressed the missiles and munitions requested in FY24 are not meant to replenish those sent to Ukraine.

However, Russia’s invasion has spurred the Army to accelerate its investments in the industrial base. While the service already had plans to invest $16 billion over 15 years to modernize its 23 depots, arsenals and ammunition plants, the FY24 budget request “doubles down” on this effort, according to Camarillo.

The Army is requesting $1.5 billion to invest in the industrial base in FY24.

A total of $726 million in FY24 will go toward ammunition facilities and another $115 million will fund modernization and upgrades for depots that work on weapons and tracked combat vehicles, according to Bennett.

Bush said the budget reflects “significant additional funding across the [Future Year Defense Program] for the Army’s [Organic Industrial Base] plan.”

“We’re going to do it much faster than we thought we could,” he added.

With an eye on Russia and China, the Pentagon in fiscal 2024 would spend $30.6 billion for missiles and munitions ― 12% more than last year and 50% more than five years ago, when the U.S. was still fighting the Islamic State and Taliban.

The Pentagon budget would also break new ground by using multiyear procurement authorities generally reserved for ships and aircraft to buy munitions and expand production capacity over several years.

At Monday’s budget rollout, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks and Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Adm. Christopher Grady did not answer directly whether the Pentagon, like the NATO alliance, is raising stockpile targets due to the war in Ukraine. The move was aimed at deterring China and ensuring the health of the U.S. defense industrial base, they said.

“This latest budget expands production capacity even more, and procures the maximum amount of munitions that are most relevant for deterring and, if necessary, prevailing over aggression in the Indo-Pacific,” said Hicks, adding that one-third of the munitions budget request is for long-range fires.

Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord said the munitions request was “Ukraine informed, even if not Ukraine specific.” To replenish U.S. stockpiles depleted by the war in Ukraine, Pentagon officials said they will rely on supplemental appropriations from Congress, which granted the Pentagon $35.7 billion for FY23.

“These are not the kind of missiles that are key to the Ukraine fight, they are key to Indo-Pacific deterrence,” McCord said. “What [Hicks] has been pushing us to do is to think about lessons we’re learning today and apply them to future scenarios, think about what would I have done four years ago if I had a crystal ball, to think about things that might be coming.”

The Pentagon’s $170 billion procurement budget request ― touted as the largest ever ― would use a new “large lot procurement pilot” strategy to maximize production capacity for several munitions used across the services: Lockheed Martin’s Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile Extended Range (JASSM-ER) and Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) ― and the Raytheon Technologies-made RIM-174 Standard Missile (SM-6), AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AAMRAM).

Though not in the pilot program, the Pentagon is also using multiyear contracting to buy roughly 103 Naval Strike Missiles at $250 million. The Marine Corps’ new, low-signature Marine Littoral Regiments and their Navy/Marine Corps Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System are slated for 90 of the ground-based missiles, which Raytheon manufactures.

Of the $30.6 billion for munitions, more than half ― $17.1 billion ― is for tactical missiles, while $7.3 billion is for strategic missiles, $5.6 billion for conventional ammunition and $600 million for technology development. The plans separately call for $15.1 billion more spread across the next five years to cover upfront costs for long-lead item procurements.

Another $1 billion would allow industry to procure long-lead items for the weapons, and otherwise “put that money up front to send the demand signal to our industry partners,” according to Maj. Gen. Michael Greiner, the Air Force’s deputy assistant secretary for budget.

To further spur defense firms to expand production capacity, defense officials said they will seek congressional approval for future multiyear buys of the Raytheon-made Patriot surface-to-air guided missile system and the Lockheed-made Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, a surface-to-surface medium-range rocket fired from the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System. The U.S. has given all three systems to Ukraine.

U.S. Army officials have said their 2024 budget will request authority to buy more munitions in bulk over multiple years as the U.S. and its allies work to refill their inventories and help Ukraine’s forces defend themselves.

“In these ramp-ups, the reason we’re taking a really maximalist foot on the floor all the way down approach is that we don’t know how long the conflict will last, we don’t know how low our stocks will be, we don’t know the full amount we will have to help replenish,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Doug Bush said earlier this month.

The Air Force budget proposal would double missile spending, from $2.3 billion in 2032 to $4.7 billion in 2024. “The munitions buys are focused on … the targets that we would have to be concerned about in a China scenario of some kind,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told reporters in a March 10 briefing at the Pentagon.

The Air Force would include $161 million to buy 48 Joint Strike Missiles, made by Norwegian firm Kongsberg Defence Aerospace and Raytheon, for the first time. A top Air Force budget official, Maj. Gen. Michael Greiner, said those long-range missiles, which can be fired from the F-35 against land and ship targets, will help bridge the gap as LRASM continues to come online.

A Center for Strategic and International Studies report last month found the U.S. defense-industrial base is unprepared for a notional battle with China over Taiwan, as it would run out of key long-range, precision-guided munitions in less than a week. The report spotlighted U.S. military aid to Ukraine and criticized bureaucratic hurdles for defense contracting and U.S. arms sales overseas.

Other highlights from the budget proposal include:

– $1.8 billion for 550 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile Extended Range, more than twice the $902 million Congress enacted for FY23.

– $1.2 billion for 830 AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles, up from $740 million in FY23.

– $1 billion for 118 Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles, up from $550 in FY23.

– $386 million for 1,165 Joint Air-to-Ground Muntions, up from $297 million in FY23.

– $447 million for 1,170 of the Raytheon-made Small Diameter Bomb II, down $555 million for FY23.

– $1.6 billion for 125 of the Navy’s RIM-174 Standard Missile, up from $799 million for FY23.

– $1 billion for 5,064 Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, down from $1.3 billion in FY23.

– $934 million for 34 Raytheon-made Tactical Tomahawk Cruise missiles, down from $905 million.

– $206 million for 3,236 Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions, down from $328 million.

– $30 million for 40 Lockheed-made Hellfire missiles, down from $116 million.

Jen Judson and Megan Eckstein contributed to this report.

The command’s congressionally-ordered assessment delivered Wednesday calls for more than $87 billion in spending between 2024 and 2028; with $15.4 billion for fiscal year 2024 alone. That represents a significant jump from last year’s $9 billion request for FY23 and five-year projected spend of $77 billion.

With China competition a bipartisan priority on Capitol Hill, the Indo-Pacific Command assessment of its needs offers a blueprint for China hawks to add to President Joe Biden’s $842 billion defense budget for FY24, which requests $9.1 billion for the Pentagon’s Pacific Deterrence Initiative.

The report drafted by INDOPACOM chief Adm. John Aquilino calls for new space capabilities, missiles and air defenses, radar systems, staging areas, intelligence-sharing centers, supply depots and testing ranges throughout the region, as well as exercises with allies and partners.

“The U.S. must focus our efforts to present persistent, lethal and integrated Joint Force west of the [international date line] that can impose out-of-proportion costs and complicate any adversary’s ability to effectively compete with the U.S. military while simultaneously demonstrating U.S. commitment and resolve to our allies and partners,” reads an unclassified executive summary obtained by Defense News.

The command continues to call for a 360-degree persistent and integrated air defense capability on the U.S. territory Guam by 2026, as Aquilino has said his No. 1 priority is establishing an Aegis Ashore system there. The effort, underway for several years, would help protect U.S. citizens and forces.

Amid the Pentagon’s plans for more distributed forces in the Pacific, the largest portion of the assessment ― $10.8 billion ― would be to “improve the posture and presence” in the region. More than $2 billion would build aircraft parking, fuel stores and other facilities on Tinian Island, Pulau ― and Guam, where the Marine Corps is moving 5,000 Marines of III Marine Expeditionary Force, based on Okinawa, Japan.

More than $8 billion would fund research and development efforts across the services, including $1.3 billion for space technology prototyping and more than $400 million for “offensive cyber,” the report says.

A $5.3 billion “persistent battlespace awareness” project, the Space Force’s Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared program, would offer an orbiting missile warning system that includes the Arctic. Another $1 billion would fund a network of space-based sensors to cover air, sea and ground-launched missile threats.

A $2.8 billion wedge in the plan for “integrated maritime fires” includes hundreds of millions of dollars for Maritime Strike Tomahawk Missiles for the Navy and Army; sea mines and for the Navy’s long-range anti-ship missile. Also included is $170 million for the Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System, meant to be used by the new Marine littoral regiments for ship targeting and sea control.

As the Pentagon works to improve alliances in the region as a counterweight to China, Indo-Pacific Command also sees a need for $700 million to “build defense and security capabilities, capacity and cooperation of allies and partners.” The lion’s share of that proposal, roughly $530 million, would go toward Defense Security Cooperation Agency programs.

The administration issued only limited details, but spotlighted $9.1 billion in proposed investments for the Pentagon’s Pacific Deterrence Initiative, meant to bolster U.S. force posture in the region amid increasing tensions with China. The spending plan also includes $37.7 billion for the Defense Department to continue modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

“This budget cements our commitment to confronting global challenges and keeping America safe,” President Joe Biden wrote in an accompanying message to Congress. “It outlines crucial investments to out-compete China globally and to continue support for Ukraine in the face of unprovoked Russian aggression.”

The budget proposal pledges $6 billion to support Ukraine, though it’s unclear whether that money is for military or economic aid. That figure falls far short of the $113 billion Congress allocated for Kyiv via emergency supplemental spending last year.

Pentagon officials are scheduled to discuss the details of the department’s budget on Monday. The White House proposal also vowed to optimize and modernize U.S. naval shipbuilding, but did not detail any specific dollar amounts.

The document stated that the budget “continues the recapitalization of the Nation’s strategic ballistic missile submarine fleet while investing in the submarine industrial base” and makes “meaningful investments in improving the lethality and survivability of the fleet, particularly improving undersea superiority.” That includes “the recapitalization and optimization of the four public Naval Shipyards to meet future submarine and carrier maintenance requirements.”

According to the administration, the budget also “invests in key technologies and sectors of the U.S. industrial base such as microelectronics, submarine construction, munitions production, and biomanufacturing.”

Funds allocated to the Energy Department will support “the strong technical and engineering foundation” for the trilateral AUKUS agreement between the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, which the leaders of the three countries are expected to unveil in more detail in San Diego on Monday.

Congressional headwinds

The defense spending proposal is expected to face harsh criticism from Republicans lawmakers, both for being too small to meet global threats and too large to meet deficit reduction goals.

The release of the White House budget draft kicks off the public debate over spending for the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, and negotiating a full-year budget plan is expected to take months. Already, House Republican leaders have simultaneously promised to trim federal spending while boosting funding for national security needs, including the military.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., for his part, has vowed to cut at least $130 billion in non-discretionary spending, raising questions as to how the Republican-controlled House can accommodate a defense budget increase.

Some defense hawks, like House Defense Appropriations subcommittee Chairman Ken Calvert, R-Calif., have started looking at ways to squeeze savings out of the Pentagon. Calvert, for instance, has proposed trimming the Defense Department’s civilian workforce.

However, the Biden administration said its budget will “strengthen” the Pentagon’s “civilian workforce as a critical contributor to the nation’s security.”

The Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin, of Illinois, on Wednesday, before the White House released the proposal, vented that House Republicans have not offered their own budget plan.

Republicans “want to cut spending, but they want to increase defense spending, and many of us have asked for more money for Ukraine, and we certainly are sensitive to the fact that we have to replenish our own supplies in the process,” Durbin said.

“They keep talking in generalities,” he added. “It’s time to establish what they can pass in the House of Representatives.”

Speaking Wednesday before the budget release, the Senate Armed Services Committee’s top Republican, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, said any openness to cut defense spending among Republicans is out of step with the majority of the party and suggested McCarthy would buck those views.

“He’s going to make the right decision for the future of our country, and it goes without saying you can’t accommodate two differing positions at one time,” Wicker said. “We are ready to defend our national security interests, and I am getting every signal that this budget will be inadequate and will need to be plussed up.”