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The Pentagon's Fiscal 2015 budget request, set for unveiling this week, is the closest the Obama Administration has come yet to meeting mandated spending caps, but has some long-term problems that must be addressed,Todd Harrison, defense budget expert with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, told reporters on Monday. Each federal budget the White House has issued since 2011's Budget Control Act has steadily moved closer to the spending caps, said Harrison during a teleconference. While the Defense Department's Fiscal 2015 proposal meets the $496 billion cap for the year, projected defense spending for Fiscal 2016 to Fiscal 2019 exceeds the caps by a total of $115 billion, he said. But Congress has not stuck to the caps either, said Harrison. A big question looms on the future of overseas contingency operations funding, as DOD has taken to moving base budget funding into OCO accounts, since they are a non-capped funding stream and these transfers have offset many cuts from the BCA. The practice appears to have continued despite the lower number of troops in Afghanistan. "This is a dangerous situation," said Harrison, noting that these funds could disappear quickly when the United States leaves Afghanistan. (See also Harrison's Fiscal 2015 budget backgrounder.)

The Pentagon’s proposed $495.6 billion budget for the coming fiscal year would provide $154 billion for weapons purchases and research, $25 billion less than projected a year ago, according to the Defense Department.

Over at Defense News, Mark Gunzinger and Bryan Clark, senior fellows at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), make the case that it is time for America to embrace “a stealthy unmanned combat aircraft system (UCAS) that would be able to perform strike and surveillance missions over long ranges, thus greatly increasing our nation’s ability to use carriers to maintain a military presence or fight aggression in multiple regions.” They will get no argument from me. Yet, a number of challenges remain that could stop the project from really, well, taking off (sorry, I had to do it).

The Air Force on March 4 released a fiscal year 2015 budget that emphasizes the funding of new capabilities over legacy equipment.

The soon-to-be-released Quadrennial Defense Review will be judged based on how much it clarifies and expands upon the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance, and the extent to which it aligns strategic priorities with the resource choices now being rolled out, said Mark Gunzinger, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The 2006 and 2010 QDRs were basically "wartime reviews," said Gunzinger during a March 3 teleconference with reporters. They focused on current operations that heavily emphasized counterterrorism, irregular threats, and homeland defense activities. The DSG attempted to reset Defense Department priorities and prepare the joint force for a post-war footing. "But we haven't seen the kind of shift in resources to support the [DSG]," said Gunzinger, and there's been no real attention to a force-sizing or -shaping construct. How much the new QDR addresses these points will determine if it serves a useful purpose or it will be just another "posture statement," he said. It will likely include discussion of weapons of mass destruction, rising powers, and anti-access/area-denial and irregular threats, he said. It should also focus on "long-term competition" with rivals such as China, Russia, and their proxies, said Gunzinger.

The US Defense Department will likely continue asking Congress for war funding separate from the Pentagon’s base budget accounts and not subject to federal spending caps even if all American troops leave Afghanistan by the end of the year, experts say.