The budget proposal presented by the Pentagon yesterday is focused not only on the confrontation with Russia, but also on not yielding an inch on the prospect of a potential conflict with China. “As the PRC races to modernize its military, this budget will sharpen our edge by making critical investments across all timeframes, theaters, and domains,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement issued by the Pentagon yesterday. “Among numerous important actions that bolster our combat credibility in the short term, this budget makes the Department’s largest-ever investments in readiness and procurement – and our largest investment in research and development.”
“To sustain our military advantage over China, it makes major investments in integrated air and missile defenses and operational energy efficiency, as well as in our air dominance, our maritime dominance, and in munitions, including hypersonics,” Austin went on. “This budget includes the largest ever request for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, which we are using to invest in advanced capabilities, new operational concepts, and more resilient force posture in the Indo-Pacific region.”
This year’s budget request for the Pentagon is $842 billion, $26 billion more than the 2023 level and $100 billion more than 2022. Once military nuclear activities of the Department of Energy, supplemental appropriations outside of the regular process, and whatever boosts the Congress may add, then we’re looking at a total defense budget reaching the neighborhood of $900 billion.
One focus of the press coverage of the budget release is on munitions procurement, which the budget aims at China, not Russia. “Almost one-third of our munitions dollars are specifically for long-range fires to increase procurement and improve the capability of not only hypersonic missiles, but also our most lethal and survivable subsonic weapons, including those we’ve been buying at or near maximum capacity for several years,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said at a Pentagon news briefing, yesterday. “This latest budget expands 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,” she added, naming the Tomahawk cruise missile, the SM-6 missile, and others. “These are not the kind of missiles that are key to the Ukraine fight, they are key to Indo-Pacific deterrence,” said Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord. The replenishment of stocks of munitions sent to Ukraine will be dealt with in supplemental requests to be sent to Congress at a later date.
