The Pentagon has mapped out a $2.77 trillion spending plan for the next five years, a military buildup after five years of decline that would exceed existing budget caps by $155 billion, or 5.9 percent.
The latest five-year plan accompanied a $534.3 billion Defense Department request for the year beginning Oct. 1 that President Barack Obama sent to Congress on Monday, a 7.7 percent increase over this year's spending. The one-year request exceeds the caps known as sequestration by about $36 billion, based on revised estimates in a Department of Defense book of budget highlights.
The proposals underscore the gap between needs asserted by the military and the spending formulas imposed by Congress and the White House to cut the federal deficit. Sequestration is set to take full effect again in October after being eased for two years.
While Obama called last week for ending sequestration for both defense and domestic programs, an eventual compromise in Congress is likely to reduce the $177.5 billion that the Pentagon is seeking for weapons procurement and research in fiscal 2016, a 13 percent increase from this year, according to analyst Todd Harrison.
"So industry shouldn't expect it's going to be as rosy in FY16 as DoD is telling them," Harrison, senior fellow for defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said at a briefing last week.
The Department of Defense five-year plan calls for spending $547 billion in fiscal 2017, $556 billion in 2018, $564 billion in 2019 and $570 billion in 2020.
The department's budget overview describes the fiscal 2016 request as one of rebuilding "after several years of declining defense budgets" that "began after the fiscal year 2010 budget."
Pentagon leaders have argued that the U.S.'s military readiness, morale and technological edge have been eroded by cuts in defense spending even as the nation faces expanding threats, from terrorism in the Middle East to a more assertive China and a Russia willing to use force in Ukraine and beyond.
"The United States continues to face a rapidly changing security environment, as warfare evolves across all domains," the department said in the overview.
The $534.3 billion base Defense Department budget doesn't include funding for defense-related programs at other agencies, such as nuclear weapons activities at the Energy Department, which bring the total request to $561 billion, 8 percent more than this year's spending. Also separate is the war-operations request that the Pentagon makes each year.
For fiscal 2016, the administration is seeking $50.9 billion in such Overseas Contingency Operations funds for the Defense Department, 21 percent less than this year, mostly to pay for troops remaining in Afghanistan and the fight against Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria. Including war funds for other agencies such as the State Department, the request totals $58 billion.
Amid criticism that the war-operations fund has become a way to bulk up defense spending, the Pentagon is announcing that from fiscal 2017 to 2020 it will shift into its base budget some enduring expenses for supporting Afghanistan's national forces, stationing U.S. troops in the Middle East and conducting counterterrorism operations.
For the coming fiscal year, the Obama is proposing a 1.3 percent pay raise for federal government employees, including military personnel. The defense budget also reflects a slowdown in the Army's plan to reduce its force to 450,000 by 2017 from about 500,000 today to give the service more time to minimize disruptions from the change. The 450,000 would be reached in 2018 instead.
For the U.S. nuclear missile arsenal, the Pentagon is seeking $2.2 billion from 2016 through 2020 to improve shipyard and silo infrastructure, training, support and storage facilities. Funds also are added to sustain and modernize the land-based force of Minuteman III nuclear missiles.
An "aerospace innovation initiative" would be started in the effort to reduce the development time and technology risk for the next generation of tactical aircraft after Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-35. The fighter, the costliest U.S. weapons system, has been criticized for soaring costs and delays.
Pentagon officials and lawmakers have said that Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed is making progress in surmounting those issues, and the budget calls for buying 57 F-35s in fiscal 2016, up from 38 this year. The budget calls for $11 billion for the plane, known as the Joint Strike Fighter, and spare parts, an increase of about $2.4 billion over this year.
The five-year plan calls for funding 393 F-35s: the 57 in fiscal 2016, 66 in 2017, 88 in 2018, 90 in 2019 and 92 in 2020.
That reflects a slower pace, though, than previously projected. Last year, the Pentagon said it planned to buy 309 F-35s from fiscal 2016 through 2019; now that number is 301.
The Air Force plans to spend $13.8 billion in fiscal 2016 through 2020 on research and development for a new long-range strike bomber, including $1.17 billion in 2016. Spending would build to $3.79 billion in 2020. Falls Church, Virginia-based Northrop Grumman is competing against a team of Lockheed and Chicago-based Boeing for the program. The Air Force plans to select a winner this year.
For military space launches, the Air Force plans to buy launch services for 24 missions in the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program, spending about $8.24 billion over five years procuring the services from United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed that now performs all launches, or from a competitor. The proposed budget would increase from $1.37 billion next year to $1.84 billion in 2020.
Billionaire Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies would have the opportunity to compete for launches once it's certified for military space missions, which the Air Force has indicated is expected this year. The Air Force plans to open to competition seven of 10 launches planned for 2016-2017 and all 14 launches after 2018.
For the Navy, the five-year budget calls for building 48 vessels, including 14 Littoral Combat Ships built in different versions by Lockheed and Henderson, Australia-based Austal Ltd. Five of those vessels would be the first among 20 ships that the Navy has said would be better able to survive under attack.
Jamie Morin, the head of the Pentagon's independent cost group, said in an interview that "if the department's driven down to sequestration resources, it'll get much worse real fast" over the 10-year horizon for budget planning.
That's "because so much of the department's costs are fixed" so "if you take 5, 7, 10 percent off the top of" the Pentagon's total budget "the investment programs get squeezed heavily."
Many of those new programs are intended to replace aging systems that must be paid for eventually beyond 2020, the last year of the new plan, he said.