Pentagon Seeks Largest Defense Budget In History
The Pentagon is expected to request $835 billion from Congress in the fiscal year 2024 defense budget, which, if approved, could be the largest non-inflation-adjusted request in history, according to Bloomberg.
It will also be one of the largest peacetime budgets, with up to $170 billion set aside for weapons procurement and $145 billion for research and development, Bloomberg reported, citing officials who declined to be identified before the final proposal is presented to Congress. In total, the expected Pentagon request is the highest ever in “nominal” terms, not adjusted for modern inflation rates, but still falls below some historical budgets in real dollars, one senior administration official told the outlet.
With such a large amount of funding set aside for research and development, the request “reflects a budget that is still focused primarily on developing weapons for future wars rather than procuring weapons for near-term wars,” Mark Cancian, an expert at the Center For Strategic and International Studies and former defense analyst at OMB, told Bloomberg.
The request includes $13.5 billion for the modern F-35 fighter jet alone, according to Bloomberg, as the Air Force seeks to accelerate the retirement of older A-10 “Warthogs” with F-35s for missions that require close air support, according to Business Insider.
The Pentagon will request 83 new F-35s for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, compared to 61 included in the fiscal year 2023 budget request, Bloomberg reported. Congress upped the total number of authorized fighter jet purchases to 80.
However, the $170 billion expected for procurement is roughly $8 billion larger than Congress eventually approved for 2023, Bloomberg reported. Of that funding, a significant amount is allocated for long-range munitions for the Navy and Air Force that officials told the outlet are requested with a future conflict with China in mind.
Now is not the time to slash our defense budget. https://t.co/xgZ4GPKXtR
— Rep. Mike Waltz (@michaelgwaltz) March 6, 2023
The White House’s annual budget request will come down as the U.S. largest adversary recently vowed to supersize its defense budget, according to The Associated Press. China announced a 7.2% increase in defense spending for 2024, up slightly from 7.1% sought the year prior, which was equivalent to $224 billion.
The research and development budget would be the most ever requested, Cancian told Bloomberg.
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They want the largest budget in history even though there has been zero accountability for the horrendous withdrawal from Afghanistan that killed thirteen Americans and left the country in the hands of the terrorists that we had been fighting for twenty years at a cost of Trillions of dollars. And, oh yeah, we left them with tens of billions of dollars of military hardware and ammunition.
A record budget while they now promote “woke” ideology to train our troops in CRT and the idiot General Milley (who was responsible for the Afghan debacle) testifies before Congress about “white rage” and the military now can’t even meet 75% of it’s recruiting requirements.
A record budget so that we can enrich our military/industrial complex who manufactures the weapons we buy and then send to Ukraine in unending billions for a war that was never in our national security interest, that we didn’t want, didn’t vote on, and can’t win. And Senators and Representatives will be getting rich off of those defense manufacturing stocks or from donations from their lobbyists.
I don’t think so. Time to defund the military until we can end the “woke” indoctrination and stop the never ending spending for never ending wars.