Blog Post

AEIdeas

President Trump’s fourth defense budget request reflects his belief from last week’s victory lap at the State of the Union address that “our military is completely rebuilt.”

But the job is far from done, as evidenced by Monday’s headlines (and the data behind them). One particularly succinct summary blared: “The US Navy wants more ships but can’t afford them, admiral says.”

To be fair, it’s a constant refrain from military and defense officials that money is tight. But this defense budget is in decline after the three-year “Trump Bump” for defense comes to an end.

Trump’s cash infusions bought a lot of readiness and repairing of the foundation of the force frayed by years of combat.

What the president’s defense increases did not buy enough of was classic rebuilding through investments in the operational fleets and inventories of the services which they use to fly, sail, and drive in each day around the globe. This force shows, carries, and plants the proverbial flag of presence, deterrence, assurance, dissuasion, coercion and persuasion — all to prevent war, as opposed to win one if needed.

Soldiers from B Battery, 2nd Battalion, 8th Field Artillery Regiment prepare an M-777 Howitzer to be connected to a CH-47 Chinook helicopter in order to transport it to a field training area. The transport of equipment and personnel are part of a training exercise 2-8 FA is conducting August 5-9, 2018, US Army | Flickr

A smaller budget paired with an ambitious strategy and a long road to readiness recovery means there were painful trade-offs. This seems hard to fathom inside a budget that is nearing three-quarters of a trillion dollars. But most of that money is on autopilot simply to maintain the professional fighting force as it is, with what it has.

Changes to those fixed and mostly sunk costs require tradeoffs under the defense topline, which is where the budget casualties become clear. “Losing” does not equal unimportant, but rather farther from the strategic objective all parties have agreed is the top priority for the military: beating China in strategic competition.

The highlight reel follows:

Trump’s declining defense budget is not a surprise. This reduction was known two years ago, and again just last year. The 2021 budget is in alignment with spending caps agreed to this past fall for all federal discretionary spending. While Congress may not like the choices therein, they agreed to this outcome by accepting a declining topline for defense.

Repairing the military’s foundation after two decades of war on top of a procurement holiday is taking longer than expected. This means a buildup of combat power is stubbornly just out-of-reach. The Pentagon’s $705.4 billion budget request for fiscal year 2021 actually constitutes a 1.12 percent decline from last year’s enacted defense budget of $712.6 billion. A declining defense budget cannot achieve the dramatic change called for by policymakers.

Members of Congress want it all: readiness, modernization and game-changing technologies of the future. But all three goals are currently unaffordable simultaneously.

We have been here before. The 2021 Trump defense budget request shares many similarities with its predecessor. Yet again, research and development is prioritized across the services, with a focus on critical technologies like hypersonic weapons, microelectronics, space and artificial intelligence investments. This came at a cost, however, of buying or even accelerating procurement timelines for goals like achieving a 355-ship Navy. These tradeoffs are not necessarily bad but they were entirely predictable.

The ball is now in Congress’ court to put its stamp on President Trump’s budget. It can reject Trump’s tradeoffs for defense, but it should not sacrifice other defense priorities to do so.