Tag: congress

  • What a second Trump presidency could mean for the defense budget

    What a second Trump presidency could mean for the defense budget

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    Former president Donald Trump won reelection Tuesday, a night of voting that led to Republicans taking control of the Senate and potentially holding their House majority.

    The chance for a governing trifecta, which would repeat the first two years of Trump’s term, already has some in Congress, the Pentagon and think tanks wondering what it means for the defense budget.

    While it’s too early to forecast with confidence, analysts who spoke to Defense News said, the return of a Trump presidency will likely augur a larger defense budget, though less security aid for American partners abroad like Ukraine.

    Part of why its so difficult to predict the effects of a second Trump term is that there is less Republican consensus on defense spending, said Mark Cancian, who studies security budgets at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

    Whereas the right once almost uniformly supported higher military spending, it’s now split into three main camps, he argued.

    The first is traditional defense hawks, such as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who favor a more assertive military and funding to support one. The second is budget hawks, like the House Freedom Caucus, who are most concerned with bloated government spending and would in some cases favor cuts.

    And the third is the “America First” wing of the Republican Party, such as Trump’s final acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, who are skeptical that America’s military needs to maintain so many missions around the world, and may also support cuts.

    What faction will prevail won’t start to become clear until a future Trump Cabinet is set, Cancian said.

    “Until we get some sense of that, we’re just guessing,” he said.

    Clear telltales will be the nominees to become secretary of defense and director of the Office of Management and Budget, said Mackenzie Eaglen, an expert on the defense budget at the American Enterprise Institute.

    “The first thing that matters is the OMB director,” she said, noting the office’s role in managing government budget requests.

    By Eaglen’s count, Trump oversaw a massive hike in defense spending during his first term — some $225 billion higher than projected from the late Obama years. Defense hawks in Congress are counting on a repeat of that trend, and will have more power to force it.

    Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., published a memo earlier this year calling for a $55 billion surge in defense spending. The paper helped increase the Senate Armed Services Committee budget bill, though by less than half that number. With Republicans taking control of the Senate, Wicker will now chair that committee and can push for further increases.

    Republican aides in Congress, when asked by Defense News, signaled confidence that a second Trump term would increase the military budget, though cautioning that it’s still too early to predict.

    Congress hasn’t passed either of its two main defense bills this fiscal year, instead operating on a short-term spending bill that lasts through December.

    While those will in all likelihood pass eventually, now that control of both chamber is becoming clear, the large security aid packages America has been sending to Ukraine are far less certain. The U.S. has committed more than $60 billion in security aid so far during the Biden administration — much of it going to American arms companies — gleaned from additional spending bills passed by Congress.

    “Will there be any more supplementals?” Eaglen said, arguing that Taiwan and Israel had better chances of maintaining American aid.

    Trump has said his main priority is ending the war with Russia, without committing to an outcome first. If Trump did abruptly end American assistance, it also risks a whiplash for defense firms that have expanded their product lines to meet Ukraine’s needs, Cancian said.

    “That’s industry’s great worry,” Cancian said, though he was skeptical the shift would be too abrupt for firms to adjust.

    Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.

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  • Pentagon unveils new plan to energize America’s defense sector

    Pentagon unveils new plan to energize America’s defense sector

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    The Pentagon published a second and more detailed plan to invigorate the American defense industry this year, including the weapons it sees as most crucial to deter China.

    The implementation plan, released Tuesday, builds on a strategy published this January, which described how the U.S. defense sector has withered and how the Pentagon wants to revitalize it.

    “The contraction of the traditional DIB [defense-industrial base] … was a generation-long process and it will require another generation to modernize the DIB,” the strategy reads.

    Improving America’s defense sector has become a top priority for the Biden administration. The war in Ukraine — and the Pentagon’s rush to defend it — exposed how brittle the industry’s supply chains and workforce had become. As the U.S. tried to surge its production of key weapons, its suppliers couldn’t keep pace.

    The delays worried many inside the Defense Department that it would struggle even more in a conflict with China, which has a far larger manufacturing sector than the United States, including in important areas like shipbuilding.

    The plan released Tuesday had been promised and delayed for months. Pentagon officials first said it would come out in the late winter or early spring, then said it would publish by the summer. In a briefing with reporters Tuesday, the officials leading the effort said it’s still not complete.

    A classified portion with more specific metrics will likely be released before the end of the year, said Laura Taylor-Kale, head of Pentagon industrial base policy.

    As it stands, the plan lists six priority areas, from deterring a conflict with China to firming up fragile supply chains. That first goal — the top one listed in the plan — will rely on America’s ability to build more submarines and munitions, two areas the Pentagon has struggled to expand in recent years.

    Both of these priorities have the longest time frame listed in the document, requiring more than five years to accomplish those goals, the plan estimates.

    Taylor-Kale said the Pentagon intends to update this plan annually to assess its progress and that the first one will come after the president’s fiscal 2026 budget request is released early next year.

    The Pentagon consulted with around 60 defense firms when writing the plan and also spoke with staff members on the relevant congressional committees, Taylor-Kale said. Their support, Taylor-Kale argued, will be necessary to accomplish its goals — especially from lawmakers, who have yet to pass a fiscal 2025 defense budget.

    Adding to the uncertainty is next week’s U.S. presidential election, ensuring that the administration will change in January. The Trump White House made restoring the defense industrial base one of its top priorities for the Pentagon, publishing its own assessment of the sector in 2018.

    Taylor-Kale argued that the strategy will endure no matter the outcome, having met with members of both parties in Congress.

    “The feedback that we’re getting is that this will be a priority regardless of who wins next week,” she said.

    Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.

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  • Future of US defense depends on culture shift prioritizing innovation

    Future of US defense depends on culture shift prioritizing innovation

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    To get our national security right and to ensure that we maintain a strong national defense, we must figure out how the Defense Department can innovate quickly enough to keep pace with potential adversaries. Though increasing authorities have been given to DOD, it continues to struggle to adapt and pivot at the same rate as some competitors.

    As senior members of the House Armed Services Committee, we are concerned that unless we recalibrate our approach to defense technology acquisition, we will continue on the slow, costly and unsustainable path that threatens our national defense and the rules-based international order.

    Over the last 10 years, through numerous National Defense Authorization Acts, Congress has passed a variety of authorities to help streamline research and development and acquisition. These include more flexible other transaction authorities, mid-tier acquisition authorities, the Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies program and protections for commercial technology to help better attract nontraditional companies to the defense sector.

    Similarly, DOD has taken some steps of its own. The efforts of the late Defense Secretary Ash Carter, continued and expanded by leaders in subsequent administrations on a bipartisan basis, led to the creation of the Defense Innovation Unit, the Strategic Capabilities Office and the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office. Current efforts — such as Replicator and the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve — show promise in accelerating acquisition and development for certain capabilities.

    These legislative and policy efforts intended to streamline, enhance and wring efficiencies from the acquisition system have left a dizzying array of authorities available to program managers and procurement officials. However, rather than fully utilizing these authorities, DOD still largely follows a slow and costly acquisition process hamstrung by a focus on the process and rigid requirements rather than fielding a capability and achieving results.

    Furthermore, officials are more reliably punished for failures than rewarded for creativity and adaptability. Worse yet, they are incentivized to make decisions that may look good during their tenure but create unacceptable risks, cost growth or program management problems for successors. Cultural risk aversion drives a dangerous and costly tendency — one that too often results in cutting-edge technology becoming stale and outdated by the time it is put into play, if not earlier.

    We also need to change how DOD interacts with Congress. Bold ideas require early collaboration which does not fit into the model where nothing can be disclosed or discussed with Congress until the president’s budget is released. Surprising Congress with new ideas historically has not benefited any part of the government. No one should be surprised when those ideas go unsupported.

    Even when empowered offices overcome these structural disincentives, the efforts tend to be narrowly scoped. Large programs of record for complex systems or large services contracts are built around onerous requirements or meaningless metrics rather than problem-solving ideas or desired outcomes. Narrow technical requirements need to change to broad capability requirements.

    The fiscal 2024 NDAA tasks DOD with modernizing the requirements process by avoiding prescriptive language, focusing on mission outcomes and assessed threats, enabling a more iterative and collaborative approach with the services and maximizing the use of commercial products. We expect to be briefed on an interim implementation report in the coming weeks. Getting this right is an absolute imperative.

    We are likewise concerned that our research and development proving grounds are dangerously overtaxed. Years of chronic underinvestment have created unacceptable delays in test schedules. Rigorous exercise and experimentation, vital to transitioning technologies into capabilities, are hamstrung by the lack of facilities needed to develop disruptive technologies.

    Finally, Congress itself is part of the problem. Parochialism, overly restrictive and inflexible appropriations, risk aversion and an unfortunate habit of killing messengers — to say nothing of the corrosive and wasteful use of continuing resolutions — create dangerous barriers to agility and innovation. The final report of the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform Commission lays out many of these issues in more detail.

    We cannot legislate cultural change, nor can the Defense Department implement it by policy. But we can adjust the incentives, behaviors and signals that drive cultural change over time and our ability to do so is unparalleled.

    We have the most innovative economy in the world. We have the best universities, capital markets and entrepreneurial spirit. It is our duty to make sure the government can access that unmatched advantage in an effective way to give our military what it needs to meet our national security needs.

    U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, D-Ala., is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee; Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., is ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee; Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., is chairman of the Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies and Innovation; and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., is ranking member of the Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies and Innovation.

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