{"id":26134,"date":"2018-02-11T21:40:24","date_gmt":"2018-02-11T21:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2018\/02\/11\/fy19-budget-puts-us-back-to-a-position-of-primacy-mattis-says\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T22:09:57","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T22:09:57","slug":"fy19-budget-puts-us-back-to-a-position-of-primacy-mattis-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/smr\/federal-budget\/2018\/02\/11\/fy19-budget-puts-us-back-to-a-position-of-primacy-mattis-says\/","title":{"rendered":"FY19 budget puts US \u2018back to a position of primacy,\u2019 Mattis says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

ROME \u2013 A new budget agreement<\/a> in Congress, coupled with the fiscal year 2019 budget, has given the Pentagon the ramp it needs to begin reshaping the U.S. military, defense secretary Jim Mattis believes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am very confident that what the Congress has now done, and the president is going to allocate to us in the budget, is what we need to bring us back to a position of primacy,\u201d Mattis said while traveling to Europe on Sunday. Defense News is traveling with the secretary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he took office, President Donald Trump pledged to \u201crebuild\u201d America\u2019s military<\/a>, but his FY18 budget request<\/a> was largely viewed by analysts as falling well short of that goal. Exacerbating that problem has been Congress\u2019 inability to reach a budget deal through the first five months of the fiscal year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That latter problem appears to have solved itself, with Trump signing off on a congressional deal that gives defense $700 billion in FY18 and $716 billion for FY19. And with the FY19 budget set for release Monday, Mattis is prepared to spend that money \u2013 with an eye on building up capability, rather than investing in pure numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to buy some new F-18s, for example, in order to keep the F-18s squadrons where they can be maintained,\u201d Mattis said. \u201cWe will be standing up some new elements, cyber is one example, and we will be recruiting more mechanics in the Air Force and recruiting more soldiers and sailors\u201d to fill out gaps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo, it\u2019s not a lot bigger, organizationally. It\u2019s built more to address the changing forms of warfare and to bring the current capabilities up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Susanna Blume, a defense analyst with the Center for a New American Security, said she believes a focus on capability over capacity makes sense, even if it goes against Trump\u2019s promise of a large military buildup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven this considerable increase in resources, and it is considerable, is not going to allow the department to approach the campaign promise for structure numbers that then-candidate Trump put out there,\u201d Blume said on Feb. 9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn an environment where we\u2019re trying to shift focus to strategic competition with China and Russia, it makes very little sense, to me at least, to focus on number of soldiers and number of ships and number of aircraft without carefully thinking through the capabilities,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\t