The Trump administration, with the bipartisan support of Congress, has achieved large increases in defense spending in recent years. The proposed 2020
national defense budget of some $750 billion (as of this writing in November 2019, a final 2020 budget has not been passed by Congress) is much larger than the Cold War average of some $575 billion or President Obama’s last budget of just over $600 billion.
Our view is that after two decades of war, a decade of budgetary irregularities in Washington, and nearly 10 years of gradual decline in the topline, there is no doubt that the Pentagon can make good use of these funds. Former
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ National Defense Strategy sensibly called on the Department of Defense to reinvigorate its capabilities vis-à-vis China and Russia
including addressing dangerous vulnerabilities in cyberspace and outer space, while still managing today’s wars in the Middle East as well as the potential for a
near-term crisis on the Korean Peninsula. That is a daunting set of tasks.
While we do not doubt that the Pentagon can make good use of a $750 billion national defense budget in 2020, we are very concerned whether it will do so. Each of the services continues to clamor for more force structure: more ships for the Navy, more tactical aircraft squadrons for the Air Force, and more troops for the Army. While growth in some key areas such as unmanned systems, cyber and
space resilience, and precision-guided munitions is warranted, it makes no sense under a strategy focused on China and Russia to grow the force overall. The
nation’s fiscal plight, with a 2019 federal budget deficit approaching $1 trillion, reinforces the expectation, as evidenced in the Trump administration’s own budget
projections for 2021 and beyond, that real defense spending will not grow further and might well shrink. For that reason as well, tough choices are necessary.
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