Global Military Spending - NEWS ONLY

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http://www.heritage.org/military-strength

 

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https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/10/06/failure_to_adequately_fund_our_military_puts_america_at_risk_112440.html

 

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http://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/us-military-death-spiral?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=thf-fb

 

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http://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-repair-rebuild-americas-military-22889

 

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House Passes Senate Budget Resolution

The House on Thursday voted 216-212 to approve the Senate budget resolution that outlines $2.5 trillion in fiscal year 2018 spending for the federal government. The nonbinding resolution includes $557 billion in base budget defense spending and $77 billion in overseas contingency operations spending on current war efforts. The resolution will not be signed by the President, but is intended to provide a blueprint for the congressional appropriations committees to complete their work of assigning spending levels for various departments of the government. The resolution’s $634 billion in total defense funding comes in just under the $639 billion proposed by the Trump administration in May. The resolution levels also fall well short of the $700 billion in base-plus-OCO spending approved in the Senate version of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act and the $696 billion approved in the House version of the NDAA. The resolution’s base budget number of $557 billion, however, is much closer to the $549 billion cap placed on defense spending by the Budget Control Act of 2011. Final defense spending levels for FY18 will not be set until Congress passes an appropriations bill. —Wilson Brissett

 

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https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/171024_Cancian_MilitaryForcesFY2018_Web.pdf?wLffPrxbS7E5NsiDo9MDKl6VjSG4uHYN

 

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http://aviationweek.com/defense/opinion-we-need-arsenal-not-artisans-democracy?NL=AW-19&Issue=AW-19_20171107_AW-19_196&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1&utm_rid=CPEN1000000230026&utm_campaign=12458&utm_medium=email&elq2=a4886179cc62478a98bc21a74a1aab25

 

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https://breakingdefense.com/2017/11/at-war-next-week-bob-work-on-readiness-modernization-cocoms/

To deter rising great power rivals, Work argued, the US must invest in a range of key technologies, especially

artificial intelligence and robotics, a major theme of the Third Offset Strategy he championed as deputy secretary;

space operations, including offensive warfighting in space, another area Work championed as deputy;

hypersonics, which operate in realm above the highest-flying aircraft but below the lowest-orbiting satellite, a realm Work says we have unilaterally ceded to China;

air and missile defense, from short-range battlefield systems (SHORAD) to Patriots;

cyber and electronic warfare, the ability to dominate the digits on which modern militaries and societies rely;

cheap-to-operate light attack aircraft so we can reserve high-tech fighters for high-threat missions

and a new nuclear triad of ICBMs, bombers, and submarines.

 

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https://www.defensenews.com/news/pentagon-congress/2017/11/08/congress-700-billion-defense-authorization-deal-includes-20000-new-troops-rejects-space-corps/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MIL%20Space&utm_term=Editorial%20-%20Military%20Space%20Report

 

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https://news.usni.org/2017/11/14/report-fiscal-year-2018-national-defense-authorization-act

 

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https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2017/12/04/cbo-trump-military-buildup-will-cost-taxpayers-an-extra-683-billion/

 

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http://www.defenseone.com/business/2017/12/defense-hawks-optimism-wanes-pentagon-spending-boost/144288/?oref=defenseone_today_nl

 

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http://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/commentary/how-congress-can-boost-defense-spending-without-busting-budget-caps?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=thf-fb

 

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https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/171207_Defense_Budget_Analysis.PDF?WxIRsNUqzPy_qIpQvlxrVz4LBYtnq5mp

 

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https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/18/ihs-janes-global-defense-spending-to-see-best-growth-rate-in-decade.html

 

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https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2017/12/22/pentagon-expects-on-time-budget-for-2019-but-trumps-masterpiece-will-be-in-2020/

But he did acknowledge that it will likely feature “many of the bets in terms of innovation and some of the new technology will take place,” adding that the technology being considered is “really cool.”

I hope it's a trillion dollar budget and there's CPGS, PCA, New nukes and a doubling of the SSN build rate................for starters.

 

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https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2018/01/11/the-dod-office-youve-never-heard-of-and-why-thats-about-to-change/

What does the future hold for American military might? By many accounts, the situation appears bleak. For fiscal 2018, the federal budget is $4.094 trillion, of which roughly 62 percent — or $2.535 trillion — is mandated spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. These accounts will continue to grow as the population ages, placing evermore pressure on discretionary spending.

Should be spending $2.535 trillion on defense

 

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https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2017-07/BG3229_0.pdf

 

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https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2018/01/19/national-defense-strategy-released-with-clear-priority-stay-ahead-of-russia-and-china/#.WmJH1QLlja0.facebook

 

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https://www.csis.org/analysis/measuring-impact-sequestration-and-drawdown-defense-industrial-base/?block4

 

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-26/trump-is-said-to-seek-716-billion-for-defense-in-2019-budget

 

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https://news.usni.org/2018/01/31/selva-pentagon-gambling-on-fiscal-year-2019-budget

 

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https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/02/infographic-top-ten-countries-military-spending-in-2030.html

 

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https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/02/12/everything-you-need-know-about-trumps-2019-budget-request.html?ESRC=edu.nl&spMailingID=1270150&spUserID=Mjk3OTgyNTY0MzkS1&spJobID=480446637&spReportId=NDgwNDQ2NjM3S0

 

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https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/commentary/how-congress-can-start-rebuilding-the-military-within-new-budget?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=thf-fb

 

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https://www.csis.org/analysis/making-sense-bipartisan-budget-act-2018-and-what-it-means-defense

Q1: What does the funding deal include for defense?

A1: Negotiated by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (BBA 2018) is a two-year agreement that raises the spending limits for both defense and nondefense in FY 2018 and FY 2019. As shown in Table 1, the deal raises the caps for the national defense base budget by $80 billion in FY 2018 from the previous limit of $549 billion and increases the FY 2019 cap by $85 billion from $562 billion. In comparison, the nondefense funding for FY 2018 is raised $63 billion above the cap of $516 billion while FY 2019 funding includes a $68 billion increase above the prior cap of $529 billion.

 

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https://www.defensenews.com/smr/federal-budget/2018/02/28/pentagon-requests-212-billion-in-classified-intelligence-funding/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow

WASHINGTON ― The Pentagon is seeking to grow its secretive black intelligence budget for the fourth straight year.

The department announced Tuesday that its fiscal 2019 budget request for the Military Intelligence Program will be $21.2 billion. While the department’s budget request was released Feb. 12, the MIP request typically comes several days or weeks after.

A 2016 Congressional Research Service report says the MIP represents “defense intelligence activities intended to support tactical military operations and priorities.” That is different from National Intelligence Program funding, which goes to nondefense organizations.

https://special-ops.org/news/us/white-house-seeks-largest-ever-black-ops-budget/

 

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https://www.defensenews.com/smr/federal-budget/2018/03/02/whats-on-the-air-forces-unfunded-wishlist-a-bunch-of-classified-programs-you-cant-see/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow

If appropriated by lawmakers, some of that funding would be headed toward developing two of the Air Force’s largest nuclear programs: Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, its next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile system; and the Long Range Standoff Weapon, an air-launched cruise missile that can be equipped with a nuclear or conventional warhead.

That funding would also go toward operating the E-4B Nighthawk, better known as the Doomsday plane, an airborne mobile command post for the president, defense secretary or other top U.S. officials.

The Air Force included $351 million for unfunded space requirements. Again, the service does not lay out exactly how the money would be split, the document states that funding would be directed toward space resiliency technologies and the development of new launch systems.

 

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https://armedservices.house.gov/legislation/hearings/us-strategic-forces-posture-and-fiscal-year-2019-budget-request

U.S. Strategic Forces Posture and the Fiscal Year 2019 Budget Request

 

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https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/03/29/a-balanced-defense/

When President Trump signed the 2018 omnibus spending bill, he committed the nation to a two-year, $1.416 trillion defense-spending plan, but his signature did not answer the larger question that has been hanging over the defense debate: Should the nation invest in increased lethal capabilities — that is, more technical solutions such as stealth aircraft and more precise intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance systems — or expand capacity, otherwise known as growing the force? The new national-security strategy issued by the White House in December and the national-defense strategy released by the Pentagon in January both endorse building capacity — increasing the number of personnel and ships, aircraft, and vehicles overall — as a strategic goal, although the Pentagon document is muted in its phrasing.

 

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https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/no-the-pentagon-shouldnt-plan-lean-future?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=thf-fb

In its 2018 Index of U.S. Military Strength, The Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense found that budget cuts and sequestration “have kept the military services small, aging, and under significant pressure … . Without a real commitment to increases in modernization, capacity, and readiness accounts over the next few years, America’s military branches will continue to be strained to meet the missions they are called upon to fulfill.”

A report by the Military Times published last week also makes that connection. It found that aviation accidents across the military increased by 40 percent between fiscal years 2013 and 2017, leading to 133 deaths. The report states, “The rise is tied, in part, to the massive congressional budget cuts of 2013.”

High operational tempo, loss of thousands of aircraft maintainers, and the drop in flying hours have also fed into the crisis, and in many cases, those problems can be linked to a lack of sufficient resources.

These problems are not limited to military aviation. The Navy’s recent high-profile struggle with ship collisions is another reminder of how diminished resources cause ripple effects.

 

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https://breakingdefense.com/2018/05/us-defense-budget-not-that-much-bigger-than-china-russia-gen-milley/?_ga=2.138298294.746269865.1526982541-799951594.1526890807

WASHINGTON: It’s become a commonplace to say the US spends much more on defense than any other country — but what if that’s not exactly true? Inspired by something Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley said to the Senate, I pulled together some numbers that suggest America’s superior spending power erodes dramatically when you compare actual purchasing power. Once you factor in how much the US military spends on pay and benefits for uniformed and civilian personnel — almost half the budget by some measures — as opposed to weapons, operations, and training, then China’s defense budget may actually be bigger.

We aren’t econometricians here at Breaking Defense, so our methodology is admittedly very rough. What we are good at is listening to Pentagon and Hill leaders very carefully, and I was struck by an exchange last week at a hearing of the Senate appropriations subcommittee on defense.

 

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https://breakingdefense.com/2018/05/sasc-doubles-down-on-rd-budget-pushing-new-tech-the-pentagon-missed/

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the 2019 defense budget would increase research and development spending by about $1.2 billion over the White House’s request, pumping cash into some of the Pentagon’s most critical modernization programs as lawmakers prod the Pentagon to move faster — and smarter — to head off modernization pushes by China and Russia.

Senate staffers on Friday portrayed the new lines of funding as a way of challenging the Pentagon and White House to better define how it plans to shift to an age of great power competition with China and Russia, while stepping away from the focus on fighting insurgents in the deserts and mountains of the Middle East.

There was some frustration on the Senate side over the timing of the release of the budget and the Pentagon’s new National Security Strategy, which weren’t tied together in the way that most strategists would like.

“The request and the strategy were not exactly not aligned,” one Senate staffer said on Friday. “This wasn’t a clearly sequential ‘strategy informs budget’ type of process.” For the lawmakers who marked up the budget, “the strategy raises a lot of questions, and the implications of the strategy are quite significant in terms of what it means to reorient the force toward great power competition…that the budget won’t be fully able to capture.”

 

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https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2018/06/13/time_to_get_the_black_out_of_the_blue_113532.html

Theoretically, the Pentagon operates under a so-called “golden ratio” where roughly equal funding is allotted for each military service. While that is not true, as Todd Harrison has documented previously, the myth persists.

Worse than this legend is the fact that it is based on misleading data to boot—artificially inflating the Air Force’s topline and therefore its sympathy (or lack thereof in this case). Sure, the Army, Navy, and Air Force have jockeyed to increase their share of dollars for decades. Recent examples abound, from the Army’s redirection of funding intended to support troop surges into modernization efforts to the Navy’s gimmicky National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund.

 

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More than a month old, this:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-military-spending/russian-military-spending-falls-could-affect-operations-think-tank-idUSKBN1I24H8

WORLD NEWS MAY 2, 2018 / 12:05 AM /
Russian military spending falls, could affect operations: think-tank
Reuters Staff

3 MIN READ

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Russian military spending fell by a fifth last year, its first decline in nearly two decades, with tighter purse-strings likely to affect Moscow’s military activity ahead, a report by defense think-tank SIPRI showed on Wednesday.
Russia has flexed its military muscles during the last few years with its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and deep involvement in the Syrian conflict serving as examples of its more belligerent stance.

But while global military spending rose one percent to $1,739 billion last year, Russia’s fell 20 percent in real terms to $66.3 billion, the report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) showed.

It was the first fall since 1998, a year of a major crisis when Russia’s economy collapsed and it defaulted on domestic debt. The following year Vladimir Putin took power as prime minister and, on New Year’s Eve, president.

Based on the government’s spending plan until 2020, defense costs are expected to stay flat from 2017 or possibly even fall somewhat adjusted for inflation, said Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher in the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure Programme.
[...]

More at the link.

 

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https://news.usni.org/2018/06/13/hac-d-passes-674-6b-fy-2019-spending-bill-22-7b-shipbuilding

The House Appropriations defense subcommittee passed its Fiscal Year 2019 spending bill, according to a Wednesday statement.

The $674.6 billion Pentagon spending bill — $606.5 billion in the base budget and $68.1 billion in Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) spending — follows last year trend of increasing the bottom line for the Defense Department, according to a statement from Defense Subcommittee Chairwoman Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas).

“Our military must have the resources it needs to respond to and deter threats from countries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, and also counter violent extremists throughout the world. This bill does what General Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff has asked, it ‘ensures the joint force has the depth, flexibility, readiness and responsiveness that ensures our men and women will never face a fair fight’,” she said in the statement.

 

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https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2018/06/13/defense-and-delusion-americas-military-industry-are-falling-behind/?utm_campaign=Socialflow&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social

Three great misconceptions of America’s martial power delude both the public and our decision-makers into thinking, and too often acting, as if our nation’s military preeminence is permanent, a preordained birthright. Americans believe we are ― and always will be ― more capable than our adversaries and can rapidly build up to overcome any threat.

Without significant investments, we’re probably wrong.

In fact, America’s 2018 military is a smaller, more expensive force largely operating Desert Storm vintage equipment. The lack of a serious conventional foe in either Iraq or Afghanistan masks the real state of the U.S. military. For example, the Air Force went into the first Gulf War with 134 fighter squadrons in its arsenal; of that, 32 deployed and fought. The average age of those fighters was 10 years.

Today, the Air Force has only 55 fighter squadrons, average age of 27 years, with one we fund through contingency resources. Because of readiness gaps, the Air Force couldn’t deploy 32 fighter squadrons today without destroying airplanes and risking aircrew lives.

 

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http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/22380/congress-demands-space-based-missile-defense-weapons-and-sensors-no-matter-what

U.S. lawmakers from the House and Senate have agreed on a final version of the approximately $716 billion defense spending bill for the 2019 fiscal year, which requires the U.S. military begin work on developing new warning satellites to spot incoming ballistic missiles and weapons to blow them up from space. The draft law requires the Missile Defense Agency to pursue these programs even if it argues against them in an up-coming ballistic missile defense strategy review, which might be setting the Pentagon up for a battle with Congress, but might also highlight the opinions of certain senior U.S. military leaders.

 

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https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/ndaa-will-give-military-critical-boost-2019?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=thf-fb

The John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2019, as approved in conference and passed by the House on July 26, will continue the progress begun in fiscal year 2018 in rebuilding the capacity, capabilities, and readiness of the U.S. military services.

In so doing, it will enable them to regain their competitive advantage over potential adversaries, and it will support the National Defense Strategy.

In a previous article, we discussed the new policy changes. We now focus on elements of military hardware and equipment.

The bill authorizes a base budget of $639 billion for the Department of Defense and the national security programs of the Department of Energy, matching the amounts allocated in the Bipartisan Budget Act, which became law in February.

In addition, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) authorizes $69 billion for overseas contingency operations. This marks another significant increase in defense budget authorization for the second consecutive year.

With the possible return to Budget Control Act spending limits in fiscal year 2020, this increase in the 2019 authorized defense budget becomes even more critical for the nation’s military.

Some key programs addressed include:

Modernizing the U.S. nuclear deterrent.

It supports the recent Nuclear Posture Review by authorizing $65 million to develop a low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic missile, as well as $110 million above the administration’s request to revitalize the National Nuclear Security Administration’s aging infrastructure.

 

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https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2018/10/08/armys-night-court-finds-25-billion-to-reinvest-in-modernization-priorities/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dfn%20dnr%2010/8/18&utm_term=Editorial%20-%20Daily%20News%20Roundup

WASHINGTON — The Army has been holding what has been called “night court,” full of “deep dives” to assess how essential existing programs are to the service’s radical modernization goals since the earlier part of this year. And according to the service’s secretary, it has found roughly $25 billion through the process to apply to its priorities.

Secretary Mark Esper, in a press briefing at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference, would not speak to the details of what programs will bite the dust to cover the cost of emerging modernization efforts because they are evident in the service’s proposed fiscal 2020 budget, which has yet to clear the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

But he did say “that dollar figure is a low-end number over the [Future Years Defense Program] FYDP,” adding: “Most of the savings are principally found in the [equipping] peg.”

Esper, as well as Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and other top leadership, spent roughly 40 to 60 hours reviewing programs within the equipping peg since this spring as a part of a new effort to comb through every program and weigh them against modernization priorities.

The thinking goes that if programs or activities didn’t fit in the top six modernization priorities the Army laid out a year ago, then the programs could go, freeing up dollars for the priorities.