Just like the climate, everybody complains about Pentagon spending and mismanagement, however nobody does something about it. Leaders of the world’s costliest army have refused to conduct or failed to finish each inner monetary audit since Congress first demanded such accountability within the Nineteen Nineties. The Division of Protection owns over 70% of the nation’s property and can’t account for half of them. In equity, army brass has had loads of enablers in its failures to tame wild and generally blindfolded spending, with a particular increase from political leaders who persistently block reform.
Though the Pentagon funds has grown by 50% during the last 10 years, President Trump needs so as to add one other 12% to the Pentagon’s funds for fiscal 12 months 2026, a transfer that for the primary time will increase protection spending to over $1 trillion.
That quantity will virtually definitely find yourself increased as a result of, by legislation, regardless of how beneficiant the president’s request is, the Pentagon is required to ask Congress for much more cash. The chief of workers of every army department should put collectively an unfunded precedence record – nicknamed a “want record” – requesting cash for objects not included within the president’s funds.
This has been routine for the reason that Nineteen Nineties, and the process grew to become federal legislation in 2017. The lists don’t want to incorporate prolonged justifications of why the cash is required, as is the case for many funds requests to Congress.
These “Pricey Santa” letters totaled no less than $30.8 billion in fiscal 12 months 2025, $17 billion in 2024, and $21.5 billion in 2023. Among the objects the Protection Division “wished” for in these three years embody:
$6.8 million for an Air Power canine kennel
$10.2 million for a “excessive altitude balloon”
$22.5 million for “cellular kitchen trailers”
$106.6 million for an influence plant in Djibouti
$8.5 million for the Area Command to renovate its short-term base whereas it waits for its precise base to be constructed
$20 million for a Nice Lakes icebreaker that may sail by means of frozen water – 10 years from now
$398 million for labeled Area Power packages
Biden’s Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord mentioned spending legal guidelines make it laborious to light up “prime priorities.”
AP
The follow persists although the Protection Division isn’t at all times glad about it. The Biden administration’s Pentagon Comptroller, Mike McCord, publicly supported ending the requirement. He wrote in a 2023 letter to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that unfunded precedence lists are “not an efficient approach to illuminate our prime priorities.”
The alternatives to spend transcend even the want lists. Members of Congress usually add “Congressional will increase” to the Pentagon funds – de facto earmarks for packages neither the president nor Pentagon officers thought had been vital sufficient to incorporate even of their dream spending plans.
Congressional will increase added no less than $22.7 billion to the army funds in 2024. The greenback whole is probably going even increased as a result of the general public report lists solely will increase of $20 million or extra. Auditors on the authorities watchdog group Open the Books filed a Freedom of Info Act request for the lacking info, however had been informed that no file exists.
The most important single addition final 12 months was $1.8 billion for the Navy to purchase ten additional planes. Different add-ons have little direct connection to protection, similar to $110 million for prostate most cancers analysis.
Though Trump created the Division of Authorities Effectivity to sign his dedication to decreasing and streamlining authorities, the president is sending blended indicators on Pentagon spending. On the one hand, the president mentioned in an April 9 government order that he wished the Protection Division to compile a listing of packages greater than 15% not on time or 15% over value to allow them to be assessed for doable cancellation. The (delicate) deadline was final week.
On the similar time, nevertheless, Trump has been receptive to the complaints of lawmakers like Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Armed Companies Committee, who lamented in February that protection spending was “close to file lows as a proportion of our gross home product, and all points of our army forces at the moment are in dire want of restore or substitute.” (Protection spending in 2023 was 3.4% of GDP, according to the final 10 years however properly under the Reagan-era excessive of 6.8% in 1982, earlier than the top of the Chilly Struggle.)
Trump’s proposed will increase in army spending may erase most financial savings from Musk’s DOGE staff.
AP
Trump’s deliberate enhance of the army funds would go a protracted approach to wiping out the $160 billion that DOGE claims it’s saved taxpayers with its government-wide value cuts.
The added assets don’t imply the army is getting stronger or higher at equipping its warfighters. It means there’s extra forms to feed. In 2000, the Protection Division spent roughly $150 billion on its lively personnel, adjusted for inflation. Since then, that quantity has solely inched upward, to $166 billion in 2024. Lively forces made up simply 21% of the 2025 funds request. Many of the relaxation is eaten up by “operations and upkeep,” the conducting of day-to-day enterprise, which has elevated sharply. In 2000, the army spent roughly $175 billion 2024 {dollars} on O&M. For 2025, the Pentagon requested $338 billion, a 93% enhance.
Shortchanging personnel has penalties. A March report from the Authorities Accountability Workplace discovered “shortages in skilled upkeep personnel” compromised the power of the Military, Navy, and Air Power to fulfill mission-capable targets for a lot of plane. It reported that “the Navy EA-18G Growler – an plane with superior digital warfare capabilities … (and) the Military CH-47F Chinook – the Military’s solely heavy-lift cargo rotary wing plane” failed to fulfill their “mission-capable fee aim in any 12 months from fiscal 12 months 2015 by means of fiscal 12 months 2024.” The GAO additionally discovered that “the Air Power C-130H Hercules and C-130J Tremendous Hercules – performing airlift help and aeromedical missions” met its aim simply as soon as throughout that interval and the B-2 Spirit – the Air Power’s “stealth bomber that may ship each standard and nuclear munitions by penetrating an enemy’s defenses” met its mission-capable fee aim simply 4 of the ten years.
Related issues plague the army’s marquee weapons. The F-35 Lightning II, a formidable little bit of high-tech {hardware}, can transfer at supersonic velocity, maneuver towards enemy plane, hit floor targets, and, in stealth mode, evade radar. One variant may even hover. The Air Power, the Navy, and the Marine Corps all have their variations of the fighter; there are greater than 700 F-35s deployed in bases and on carriers world wide.
By the 2040s, the Protection Division plans to accumulate 2,470 extra F-35s for an estimated whole value of about $442 billion, and to maintain them flying into the 2080s. The price of sustaining the F-35 fleet over the following six a long time is the true budget-killer. It soared to $1.58 trillion in 2023, 44% greater than the $1.1 trillion in 2018.
Even with that price ticket, the F-35 has availability issues, in accordance with the Authorities Accountability Workplace. The GAO’s litany of considerations features a scarcity of spare elements, insufficient coaching of mechanics, and an overreliance on contractors to restore the jets, leaving the army at their mercy. The result’s a disappointing stage of readiness, which the GAO defines as “the proportion of time throughout which these plane are protected to fly and in a position to carry out no less than one tasked mission.”
The F-35 may be a take a look at case for army spending as a result of it might be seen at odds with Trump’s noninterventionist, “America First” philosophy, in accordance with Richard Aboulafia, managing director of the consulting agency AeroDynamic Advisory. “It was developed in partnership with our allies, and it’s meant as an expeditionary drive, which means it’s good for defending U.S. pursuits in Europe or Asia, however not as efficient at residence,” he mentioned. However, the expensive airplane is inbuilt Texas with an engine from Florida.
Sky-high prices additionally afflict Naval housing. Quickly after John Phelan was sworn in as Secretary of the Navy in March, he reviewed the invoice for a brand new set of barracks to accommodate his sailors. Phelan, a longtime funding government with out army expertise, mentioned he had bother believing it. “I see numbers on issues which can be eye-opening to me,” Phelan mentioned at an April 9 public look. The barracks value $2.5 million a key (per room), he mentioned. “My previous agency, we constructed the best lodge in Hawaii for $800,000 a key, and that has some fairly good marble and a few fairly good issues in it, and I’m attempting to know how we will get to these numbers.”
The U.S. Navy is predicted to spend roughly $13 billion on its subsequent two plane carriers, each of that are not on time.
U.S. Navy
One other power concern is the time and expense it takes the Navy and its shipbuilding contractor, Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), to place collectively a fleet of battle-ready combating vessels. The deliberate July supply of the latest plane service, the $12.9 billion USS John F. Kennedy, will seemingly should be rescheduled. The ship is 95% full, however there are points with the elevators used to maneuver munitions from under deck and plane launch and restoration methods. Related issues plagued the usGerald R. Ford, which was delivered 32 months late in 2017 with out functioning elevators. The following service on the meeting line, the $13.5 billion USS Enterprise, is working greater than two years not on time.
Supply delays of as a lot as 18 months are additionally anticipated for the lead boat within the Columbia class of nuclear-armed submarines.
Supply of the primary frigate within the Navy’s Constellation class has been modified to 2029 from 2026, and its value has swelled to $1.4 billion from an preliminary estimate of $1 billion. Frigates are armed fighter vessels usually used to escort different ships by means of treacherous waters.
The Air Power was singled out for criticism within the April 9 White Home order. The primary flight of the Sentinel, the Air Power’s new intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, is 2 years not on time and its prices have slopped 37% over what was initially promised.
“With adversaries like China and Russia quickly advancing their very own army applied sciences,” the chief order mentioned, “it’s important to prioritize velocity, flexibility and innovation to ship cutting-edge capabilities to our Armed Forces.”
The Pentagon wrings its fingers over one of many roots of this predicament – the dearth of competitors for contract work – nevertheless it’s partly its personal fault. At a 1993 banquet now often called the “Final Supper,” then-Protection Secretary Les Aspin urged protection corporations to merge with one another. Within the afterglow of the Soviet Union’s collapse, the standard knowledge on the time was that with out the antagonism of its major rival, the U.S. army can be spending much less.
The following consolidation of the protection business was a marvel of company wheeling and dealing. What had been 51 separate corporations through the Clinton administration at the moment are the “Large 5” protection contractors – Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Normal Dynamics, Raytheon Applied sciences, and Northrop Grumman. Collectively, they account for 15% of the Pentagon’s contract spending, which, defying specialists of the early Nineteen Nineties, has ballooned for the reason that finish of the Chilly Struggle. The businesses’ exalted standing doesn’t imply they’ve skimped on PowerPoint displays, wining and eating, and the occasional arm-twisting. Protection corporations spent $70 million on lobbying in 2023, with the Large 5 making up the majority of that.
There’s additionally the difficulty of assets that the Pentagon ought to have been allocating however did not. The U.S. is answerable for 40% of the world’s army spending, or roughly as a lot as the following 9 international locations mixed, however someway little of the money has gone to maintaining with know-how. Astonishingly, the software program revolution of the twenty first century just about bypassed the Pentagon procurement places of work. That lastly appears to be altering. A March 6 order from Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth, “Directing Trendy Software program Acquisition to Maximize Lethality,” requires the Pentagon to undertake new, tech-enabled shopping for practices.
Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth, seen right here with Military troopers, warns that “warfighters” pays the value for the dearth of up to date army know-how.
AP
“Whereas industrial business has quickly adjusted to a software-defined product actuality,” Hegseth wrote, the Protection Division “has struggled to reframe our acquisition course of from a hardware-centric to a software-centric method. Relating to software program acquisition, we’re overdue in pivoting to a performance-based consequence and, as such, it’s the Warfighter who pays the value.”
Synthetic intelligence guarantees to make Pentagon procurement leaner and meaner, an evolution that might be made simpler by the Trump administration’s pleasant relationship with Silicon Valley. For years, tech bros handled protection contracts as in the event that they unfold the avian flu – each Microsoft and Google stepped away from collaborating with the Pentagon, in 2018 and 2019, respectively, after staff revolted. The Protection Division had virtually $2 billion budgeted for AI in 2024 however couldn’t “totally establish” the way it deliberate to make use of the cash, the GAO discovered. Now, a political alliance between Trump and tech entrepreneurs similar to Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and David Sacks may soothe the perceived stigma of tech startups specializing in constructing weapons methods, making troops safer, and fixing value overruns and supply delays in Pentagon buying.
Alexander Karp, CEO of protection surveillance software program contractor Palantir Applied sciences and co-author of “The Technological Republic: Arduous Energy, Mushy Perception, and the Way forward for the West,” has emerged as head cheerleader of the brand new relationship. He has mentioned he hopes it yields new and higher methods for America’s struggle fighters to search out and kill their enemies. “If a U.S. Marine asks for a greater rifle, we must always construct it,” he mentioned within the e book. “And the identical goes for software program.”
Put that on the want record.
