Why Trump’s Historic Defense-Budget Request Matters

After three decades of guided degradation and two long wars, the U.S. military is in need of a comprehensive refresh of its combat systems, technology, infrastructure, doctrine, and training. Deep in the “Terrible 20s,” America’s military is attempting to recapitalize both its conventional and strategic forces in the same decade, when all the bills are due simultaneously.

This is why a suggested record-high defense increase on top of last year’s large request is needed. The proposed fiscal year 2027 defense budget -- totaling $1.5 trillion -- seeks a surge in capital investment comparable to the Reagan buildup. Further, it takes time to redress readiness of high operations tempo, rebuild for the current moment, and jump-start an institution that has been in stasis.

Some highlights from the latest military spending request include an emphasis on bureaucratic reform, procurement, infrastructure on bases, and expanding the shipbuilding, aerospace, and defense industrial base.

Reform. The administration is undertaking generational changes in how the military buys equipment, hires and fires personnel, and streamlines bureaucracy. Built-in flexibility allows the pursuit of strategic reform. While steadily improving, the Pentagon has yet to complete a full audit of all its organizations. A bigger budget would help leaders go faster in pushing accountability and updating the back-end business systems of this massive agency. Innovative tools must also be abundant, such as multiyear contracting for critical capabilities like munitions. These costs, according to White House Budget Director Russell Vought before Congress earlier this month, must be “booked in the first year.”

Procurement. At last, this year’s request seeks a higher percentage increase in procurement, at 85 percent, than all other major defense accounts. Targeting increases on military modernization is important, as the procurement-to-R&D ratio has gotten dramatically out of whack historically (three-to-one in the Reagan years versus one-to-one today). This means that when the U.S. military was actually building capacity, procurement spending far exceeded research and development, but over time procurement stalled and became on par with R&D spending. This imbalance has created many roads-to-nowhere in research and development projects while aging the geriatric fleets and inventories of the services all the faster.

This allows for unprecedented scale of purchases of key support ships and dwindling munitions, for example. Thanks to the budget bonanza, select ordnance accounts have requests at unseen quantities over historic numbers. The anti-ballistic-missile THAAD interceptor would see a 2,200 percent increase in purchases over the 2026 request; the Army’s PAC-3 interceptor, which is shot by the high-end Patriot system used around the world, 680 percent; and Tomahawk cruise missiles are being sought at a 1,300 percent higher level. This sends the needed demand signal to industry for stable production on a wartime footing and creates incentives for industrial surge capacity.

Two budgets. The risk for this modernization blowout is that most of these funds would come from mandatory spending instead of the regular and annually appropriated base defense budget. This complicates the administration's effort to seek another major split between discretionary and mandatory spending as part of one year’s defense budget. Typically, mandatory spending accounts for less than 5 percent of the total defense budget. President Trump's 2027 defense budget seeks $1.15 trillion in discretionary funds and an additional $350 billion in mandatory outlays.

The mechanics of using mandatory funds (the kind that pays for Social Security and Medicaid, for example, but not annual budgets of federal agencies such as the Pentagon or the Treasury Department) is that it is a one-time spending boost that does not automatically continue in subsequent years. Using the mandatory side of the ledger is a tool best leveraged for one-time overdue payments such as procurements and repairs, which this does.

Manufacturing workforce. While the request would grow ship construction $20 billion higher than last year, already elevated, it must also strengthen and expand the industrial base that builds these capital assets. Leaders must build off last year’s major defense increase to continue attracting new companies to provide commercial innovation to military problems and money to expand those same solutions at scale.

Many defense companies are experiencing problems that money alone cannot solve, including anemic and green workforces. America’s aging employees combined with rising private-sector wages have discouraged job-seekers from dull, dirty, and dangerous manufacturing openings in industries such as aerospace and shipbuilding. The forthcoming defense budget could easily afford new apprentice programs, accelerated training, advanced manufacturing adoption, supplier development, and more automation.

Facilities. Often the bill-payer in lean times, the 2027 Pentagon budget pursues funds to make infrastructure more modern and usable. Dilapidated bases and places where troops work means current buildings and facilities are falling into complete disrepair. Our defenders have been subjected to mold, plumbing that is less than functional, and even sinkholes. The total facilities maintenance and repair backlog is $200 billion due to consistent underfunding. Deteriorating facilities elongate the time to conduct equipment maintenance and therefore slow the generation of forces for combat due to limited inventories of ready weapons. The services regularly confront Navy dry docks that average over 100 years old and the majority of Army munitions factories that date to World War II.

Thankfully, the Army and Air Force requests for facilities sustainment, restoration, and modernization are both double what they were last year. Meanwhile, the Navy’s request is just about double and the Marine Corps’ is almost quadruple. A large chunk of these purchases are requested in mandatory funding — as they need to be paid for only once to fill the infrastructure hole. After the hole is plugged, the base budget can carry the weight with consistent sustainment of the now modernized facilities.

In sum, this year’s defense budget request is a great start but is just an opening bid. Now it’s time for Congress to do the difficult work of passing another reconciliation bill and a separate base defense budget bill on time before the start of the fiscal year on October 1. Already on a condensed timeline, Congress needs bipartisanship to enact spending bills quickly. Every day that the military is stuck under a spending freeze known as a continuing resolution, the value of this historic budget request decreases. When the Pentagon operates on a CR, funding is frozen at the previous year’s approved amount, which in this case is much, much smaller. Locking in spending at the 2026 levels, which are more than 40 percent less than the proposed 2027 levels, wastes billions in taxpayer funds and ensures that the armed forces will not reap the full benefits of this buildup. If the budget is to have lasting impact, Congress needs to be an on-time partner.

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