Opinion - A trillion dollars annually for the Pentagon: Military spending is out of control

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a day ago

The era of trillion-dollar annual Pentagon budgets is upon us.
Members of Congress are likely to increase defense spending by $150 billion through the budget reconciliation process. When added to the Trump administration's fiscal year 2026 Department of Defense base budget proposal, Pentagon spending will total over $1 trillion a year.
There are two factors that virtually guarantee that defense spending will never dip below that mark again.
The first is political. If a future budget proposal dips below the $1 trillion mark, there will be howls about national security cuts, and few politicians are willing to weather those attacks.
The second reason is more practical. The reconciliation boost includes development funding for a slew of new weapons programs — the F-47, Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the B-21 strategic bomber, Sentinel ballistic missiles, underwater drones, hypersonic missiles and more. The services aren't buying these weapons yet, just paying to develop them. As expensive as they are now, they will become vastly more expensive in coming years when they go into production.
This is the beginning of a Pentagon spending 'time bomb.' New programs currently entering into development will be vastly more expensive than they initially appear as they transition into the production and sustainment phases in coming years.
The American people are now dealing with the explosion of the last Pentagon spending time bomb, the one that started on Sept. 11, 2001. We now pay more on the military than at any time since the end of World War II. Even at the height of the war on terror, with American troops fighting in two separate theaters, the military wasn't spending as much in real terms as it does now.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, no one seriously questioned military spending in Washington. Politicians almost universally wanted to appear strong on defense, and so few were willing to do anything to impede military spending proposals. The services took advantage of the moment and launched a series of new acquisition programs, few of which had any relevance to the war on terror. The Future Combat System, the Littoral Combat Ship, the F-35, the Zumwalt-class Destroyer and others were begun in earnest after 9/11.
These were all programs that began the last time the national security establishment decided the historical moment justified their profligacy with taxpayer dollars. In 2001, it was the fear of global terrorism. Today, a menacing China serves the same purpose.
The national security establishment has seriously lost its way. It continues to spend more and more while delivering a lot of disappointments.
All components of the U.S. military are far smaller than they were 50 years ago. The Army is approximately 40 percent the size it was in 1975. The Navy went from 559 ships to 293 today. The Air Force had more than 10,000 aircraft then and a little more than 5,000 today.
What the military does receive is delivered years late and typically twice the quoted price. Many weapons systems also don't work too well. The F-35 works less than one-third of the time. The Navy is retiring Littoral Combat Ships decades ahead of schedule because they can't perform the missions the Navy needs. Army leaders cancelled the Future Combat System without producing a single operational vehicle.
Today, policymakers are doubling down on the same structure used to create the current mess. While the American people continue to pay for the sins of the previous generation of policymakers, today's military leaders are setting up at least the next two generations for even more disastrous Pentagon spending.
Defense spending has increased nearly 50 percent since 2000. The post-9/11 spending time bomb accounts for a significant portion of that increase. In 20 years, the American people could easily be spending $2 to $3 trillion a year to cover the obligations made today.
The Trump administration still has a good opportunity to establish a better path forward. The first step is to reevaluate the strategy that underpins military policies. The world has changed over the last decade. China is facing mounting political, economic and demographic challenges. The U.S. no longer has massive forces fighting overseas.
Before proposing gigantic new military spending, the administration should first formulate an updated strategy that can guide policy decisions. By doing things backwards, the entire national security establishment gives the appearance of making the defense budget itself the strategy.
Dan Grazier is a senior fellow and program director at the Stimson Center. He is a former Marine Corps captain who served tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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