The military industrial complex is looking forward to big profits as a result of Congressional support for a huge surge in defense spending. Another feature on this appeared in the New York Times yesterday as the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act is about to become law. The bill authorizes $858 billion in spending and the Times notes that if this is approved, the Pentagon budget will have grown at 4.3% per year over the last two years—even after inflation—compared with an average of less than 1% a year in real dollars between 2015 and 2021. This is according to calculations made by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Funding for weapons procurement in particular spikes upward, including a 55% jump in Army funding to buy new missiles and a 47% jump for the Navy’s weapons purchases.
However, overcoming physical limitations in the production process is another problem. “We went through 6 years of Stingers in 10 months,” Gregory J. Hayes, Raytheon’s chief executive, said in an interview earlier this month, referring to 1,600 of the company’s shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles sent by the U.S. government to Ukraine. “So it will take us multiple years to restock and replenish.”
According to the Times, military spending next year is on track to reach its highest level in inflation-adjusted terms since the peaks in the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars between 2008 and 2011, and the second highest in inflation-adjusted terms since World War II—a level that is more than the budgets for the next 10 largest cabinet agencies combined. Even more orders are coming in to military contractors from U.S. allies in Europe and Asia, as they too have concluded they must do more to arm themselves against (allegedly) rising global threats.
