December 17, 2021
On December 7th, the House of Representatives passed a $768 billion defense policy bill, increasing the Pentagon’s budget by approximately $25 billion over what the Biden administration had requested. Then, on December 15th, the Senate approved the bill on an 88-11 line, and the President is expected to sign the measure despite the increase in funding over what was requested. Some of the differences between the administration’s request and what is being funded are $4.7 billion more for procurement of five additional naval vessels, five extra F-15EX multi-role fighters, and twelve F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets. Budgets, and the priorities that they reveal, are important guides to what an administration truly values. As argued by Lawrence J. Korb at the Center for American Progress, “there is little that President Biden does in his first months in office that will be more significant and have more impact than his proposed FY 2022 defense budget and FY 2026 defense programs.”
Now, as the year draws to a close—and this blog wraps up until January—it is as good a time as any to take a look at some of the recent reports and papers that have come out regarding the defense budget for Fiscal Year 2022. Of particular note are a series of reports analyzing the strategy and budget contexts for military forces in FY 2022 by Mark F. Cancian at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an analysis of funding trends by Todd Harrison and Seamus P. Daniels, and an evaluation of topline budget figures by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments’ (CSBA) Travis Sharp.
As Lawrence Korb and Kaveh Toofan pointed out in an piece in late October for the blog Just Security, “Many of Biden’s supporters who are disappointed that his budget essentially ratifies Trump’s projected budget contend that it is a placeholder and that the FY2023 budget will make the tough decisions Biden has so far avoided. But this assertion ignores the fact that presidents who have made significant changes in defense spending have normally done so in their first year in office.” This distinction is important, because, as noted in Travis Sharp’s CSBA report, U.S. presidential administrations, and their spending patterns on defense, can be lumped into one of three groups based on the rate of first year real growth in defense spending: “Boosters”, whose first year real growth rate exceeds 5%; “Cutters”, whose first year rates fell below -5%; and “Maintainer” administrations, whose first year rates fell in between those two extremes. Importantly, Sharp makes clear that those first year budgets go a long way towards determining the overall trajectory of defense budgets over the life of an administration. Therefore, despite the FY 2022 request being largely a creation of the outgoing Trump administration, the fact that the Biden administration kept the figures as steady as they have does indicate that the administration is unlikely to diverge too radically from the prior administration’s defense funding levels.
Therefore, pieces like the ones from Cancian, Sharp, Harrison, and Daniels are a valuable way to examine both the priorities of the Biden administration, and the ways in which they line up with the current thinking about how to best protect the country. To that end, Cancian’s series of reports begins with an overview of the budget request submitted by the Biden administration, “U.S. Military Forces in FY 2022 – Peering into the Abyss: The Budget and Strategy Overview.” The report endeavors to examine the trade-offs the administration has proposed in terms of force structure and modernization. These trade-offs are an attempt to pay for investment in advanced technologies as part of the pivot to the Indo-Pacific and the renewed focus on great power competition.
Cancian notes that the Biden administration’s Interim National Security Strategic Guidance (INSSG) calls for a broader definition of national security, encompassing issues ranging from democracy enhancement to racism, education, and climate. The INSSG also identifies five key threats to the U.S.: China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Global Terrorism. The interim guidance also focuses on: the importance of allies; the ending of “forever wars”; the cutting of “legacy systems”; the constraints facing defense resources; the pursuit of arms control agreements; and the implementation of progressive social goals and the screening of arms sales.
In attempting to enact this strategic guidance, the administration has, somewhat surprisingly, kept Pentagon funding levels similar to that of the Trump administrations’, though those funding levels are still unlikely to be enough to meet all the elements of the strategy. Overall, the FY 2022 request shows an increase to the personnel budget as well as research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) funding. However, overall procurement declines by approximately $8 billion in the Biden administration’s request—which appears contrary to the administration’s “divest to invest” approach. As Cancian notes, in the administration’s budget request, the services maintain their end strengths, even at the expense of modernization, which is antithetical to the philosophy put forth in the INSSG.
As part of his top-line analysis, Cancian outlines four challenges facing the administration as it attempts to balance the competing goals of maintaining readiness in order to meet day-to-day demands, and being prepared to fight a technological peer-competitor such as China. For Cancian, the first challenge is how to retain the capacity to accomplish U.S. objectives for regional conflicts, crisis response, and ally engagement, as high demand for forces by the individual combatant commanders increases operational tempo, creating a persistent drain on the readiness of servicemembers. Cancian points out that competing demands of high-end conflict and day-to-day deployments push the services toward a force that mixes advanced, expensive technology with less expensive items that can help against regional threats or during crisis response. However, he argues that though the Biden administration’s INSSG does not advocate such an approach, the service branches have still moved towards a diversification of elements, retaining older systems while still developing new ones.
Another challenge faced by the administration is the gap between strategy and resources, as even when the budget was rising, there was criticism that it was not rising fast enough, with calls for the defense budget to grow between 3-5% per year. Cancian notes that the flat budgets of the Trump and Biden administrations has opened up a gap between strategy and resources, as the Department of Defense (DoD) requires budget growth every year to offset the increase in cost of personnel and operations due to inflation.
A third challenge facing these budgets is the need to shift U.S. defense posture towards defending against peer-competitor Great powers. Cancian points to analysts like Becca Wasser and Stacey Pettyjohn, who argue that the FY 2022 budget request attempts to do “too much with too little” and instead argue for a strategy which cuts personnel in order to fund investments in advanced weaponry, which would satisfy a “divest to invest” strategy. However, Cancian argues that in those discussions, there are major unanswered questions, including which systems are true “legacy” systems, which can safely be cut. He notes that while strategists tend to see legacy platforms as those that use old tech and outdated operational concepts, military planners view “legacy” items more as older systems and platforms in their inventory. To that end, Cancian argues that while outside analysts would prefer to retire old tech platforms in favor of new, unmanned, smaller, distributed systems, the services would simply retire old platforms like the A-10 and F-16 in order to buy more of their similar, but modern, platforms like the F-35. Cancian argues that the FY 2022 budget request seems to indicate that the services definition of “legacy” seems to have prevailed, judging by the lack of unmanned aerial systems requested by the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.
Finally, a fourth challenge facing the Biden administration is that while it’s INSSG has received support in Congress and the national security community, some have proposed a more restrained path which would reduce overall defense spending by over $100 billion per year. Those critics would rather the U.S. focus on issues like climate and global health rather than conventional military threats. While those arguing for a shift in national security strategy have not won the day as of yet, the administration does include some funding for pandemics and climate change, though mostly to make the military more resilient.
Overall, Cancian notes that polling demonstrates that most Americans feel that the U.S. military is either as strong as it needs to be or not strong enough. Meanwhile the support for budget increases and force expansion has been weak, but growing, since 2012, when the U.S. began its withdrawal from Afghanistan. In addition, he includes in his report a call for future budget documents to do more to link together DoD’s force structure calculations with the overall strategic goals that this force structure intends to achieve. Cancian argues that such explanations would require articulation of “theories of victory” which lay out how the U.S. proposes to use its forces in a conflict, illuminating the trade-offs and operational concepts that are left mainly hidden from public view. By providing such an explanation, the administration could not only strengthen the justification for the exact request that it has submitted, it would help the public understand the administration’s goals, and further the overall administration goals of increasing government transparency.
Trends and Issues for the Next National Defense Strategy – CSIS
In addition to the series of reports from Mark Cancian, the Center for Strategic and International Studies also released, “Analysis of the FY 2022 Defense Budget: Funding Trends and Issues for the Next National Defense Strategy,” by Todd Harrison and Seamus P. Daniels, which took a holistic analysis of the entire proposed FY 2022 budget, looking for the various trends that have emerged. What Harrison and Daniels note is that some of the fastest rising areas of the Defense Department and national defense budget comes from funding for veterans, which has increased 94% above inflation over the past decade, compared to just 32% for social security, 47% for Medicare, and an overall 4% decline in national defense spending over the same period.
With regards to war-related funding, the authors note that the 2022 budget is the first in two decades which does not include a separate request, known previously as the Overseas Contingency Operations budget. That practice, which was used to skirt budget caps from the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA), is no longer required as those BCA caps are no longer in effect.
In terms of other funding trends, Harrison and Daniels note that overall, the FY 2022 budget request continues a shift towards spending a greater share of the budget on military personnel (MILPERS – grows 1.9% in real terms) and RDT&E (grows by 4.4% in real terms) rather than on procurement (declines 7.3% in real terms). Meanwhile, O&M funding grows just above inflation following a year of decline due to drawdowns in Afghanistan, and the expiration of COVID-related supplemental funding that was enacted in 2020.
Furthermore, the authors note that the Biden administration is in the middle of conducting several reviews that will determine the future status of the overall national defense strategy; U.S. nuclear posture; and U.S. missile defense. As Congress this week passed the 2022 NDAA with $25 billion in funding increases, Harrison and Daniels note that this will set a new baseline for comparison when Congress begins consideration of the 2023 budget from the administration. This means that the $25 billion increase could mean the prospect of continued extra funding in 2023.
Trends and Issues for the Next National Defense Strategy – CSBA
Back in July of this year, Travis Sharp at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments released “Slow and Steady: Analysis of the 2022 Defense Budget Request,” which provides a number of useful insights when looking at the FY 2022 defense budget. The first trend that Sharp notes is that from between 2013 and 2021, the DoD had allocated a larger and larger portion of the topline budget to RDT&E, and investment in the air and naval forces, over personnel salaries and operations. However, Sharp is careful to note that this increase in topline share to 36% is still roughly similar to what DoD allocated in the 1990s and early 2000s, and far short of the 45% it received in the 50s, 60s, and 80s, during the height of the Cold War. Furthermore, that percentage is consistent with a country which is transitioning to great power competition, while still not anticipating a major conflict in the next decade. Sharp believes that if war were indeed something that was being imminently contemplated, the administration would send more funding towards procurement. Relatedly, Sharp feels that the increase in RDT&E funding could risk an overbalance towards research and development over actually the actual procurement of new systems and platforms. As interesting as prototypes are, they are not nearly as useful as the genuine article.
The second major trend that Sharp notes is that the Air Force and Navy have seen a greater share of the topline defense budget, as from 2013 to 2021, the two branches’ topline share grew from 38% of the budget to over 52%—though the Navy’s share tends to hover at around 24%. This increase in budget share reflects a focus by successive administrations on the idea of China as a peer-competitor pacing threat. However, Sharp is careful to note that in an era of flat budgets, further increases to the topline will be harder to find without major cuts to ground forces.
Finally, Sharp, like Harrison and Daniels, notes that the administration is currently conducting reviews which will likely not be completed until later next year, meaning the FY 2023 budget request likely will not fully reflect the results of those reviews. Therefore, the FY 2024 request, which will be the administration’s third budget, will best encapsulate the administration’s overall strategic vision, demonstrating the administration’s true priorities, rather than reflecting the legacy ones inherited from the Trump administration.
Service Branches – Army
Diving deeper into the specifics of the FY 2022 DoD budget request, CSIS’ Mark Cancian has published four separate papers, one on each of the major U.S. service arms—mostly excluding the Coast Guard and Space Force—examining how the FY 2022 budget requests impact their force structure and modernization plans. Beginning with the Army, Cancian notes that the service has taken a risk: Army leadership has decided to maintain personnel strength, both regular and reserve, despite a declining budget. To do so, it cut modernization, in the hopes that Congress would later add back what was cut. Cancian states that over the long-term, the Army’s eventual force structure will depend on future administration budgets, as relatively flat budgets from the Trump and Biden administrations threaten the Army’s ability to maintain its current force structure. Continuing flat budgets could force a reduction to the current number of brigade combat teams (BCTs), which senior Army leadership has questioned before.
While the Army is keeping its force structure relatively unchanged, Cancian does note that the Army has finished establishing its Security Force Assistance Brigades, which conduct training, advising, assisting, enabling, and accompanying operations with allies and partners. The hope with these units is that they will reduce the strain on already overtaxed BCTs, which would otherwise have to deploy in pieces for those missions.
In terms of total dollars, the Army budget request declined by $3.6 billion to $173 billion. However, in constant dollars, that actually amounts to a $5.5 billion cut over the previous years’ levels. Cancian notes that Army leadership argues that they are at the end of internal savings, however, as it has cut 105 procurement programs and further reduced funding to an additional 169 programs. Further, Cancian states that every Army account except for military personnel (MILPERS) receives a cut, including procurement ($2.8 billion) and RDT&E ($1.3 billion). In addition, cuts in the operations and maintenance (O&M) accounts mean reducing the training of certain high-level units to focus on a foundational readiness model that prioritizes the training of individuals and small units at the company level.
Overall, the Army, like the other service branches, faces fundamental trade-offs between investments in current readiness and future modernization, which will determine the future force structure of the modern U.S. Army. Near-term, Cancian notes that the Army is trying to plug its capability gaps through upgrades rather than the procurement of entirely new systems, in order to avoid the risk of relying on just a few high-cost, high-risk programs. Further, despite a strategic emphasis on unmanned systems, the Army has not yet focused on the procurement of those systems. However, the Army has emphasized, in this year’s request, the procurement of the new Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, the Armored Multipurpose Vehicle, and the Mobile Protected Firepower System, all of which reflect a focus on great power combat with China or Russia. Still, long-standing concerns about modernization means that there are few new systems coming online due to: missed procurement cycles due to program failures; a focus on near-term systems for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; and modernization funding reductions in the post-war drawdown after 2012. Ultimately, Cancian notes that the Army intends to develop “multi-domain task forces” that would integrate space, cyber, air, ground, and maritime domains in order to execute simultaneous operations across all of those domains. However, those units remain in the conceptual stage, and if the Army wants to build these new kinds of units in a constrained spending environment, it needs to reduce or eliminate some existing units, which means eliminating or slimming down the existing BCTs, with National Guard infantry BCT units the likely first target for a cut, especially as states lobby to restrict the ability of the federal government to make use of those troops.
Service Branches – Navy
Cancian then proceeds to an analysis of the Navy’s FY 2022 request, which leaves the fleet at 296 ships. Further, as a result of the mostly flat budget, active duty personnel decreases 1,600 to 346,200. Cancian’s analysis makes clear that the Navy is caught between two worlds at the moment, attempting to modernize while still attempting to keep up with the myriad of commitments the Navy must meet all around the globe. Cancian notes that the average number of ships the Navy has deployed has hovered at around the current level of 100 ships, even though the overall number of ships in the fleet has declined. Furthermore, the European theater, which the U.S. had comfortably been able to ignore for the last thirty years, has re-emerged as a potential hot-spot in a future conflict with Russia, necessitating deployments to the area.
Cancian notes that while there have been efforts to expand the fleet to 355 ships since at least 2016, the plan that has emerged under the Biden administration, while still possessing an architecture that was roughly similar to what was proposed at the end of the Trump administration, the Biden plan provides for less shipbuilding funds, producing a smaller overall fleet size.
In terms of the individual elements of the fleet, Cancian notes that the carrier force size is essentially locked in a range between 9-11 carriers for the foreseeable future, with the Navy having procured two new Ford-class carriers in January of 2019. Furthermore, the Navy has continued to reject cheaper light-carriers as being insufficiently cost-effective, meaning that large carriers will likely continue to rule the day as the premier power-projecting element of the Navy’s fleet composition.
Regarding large surface combatants, which Cancian notes are the true backbone of the fleet, the Navy’s 355-ship goal would require 104 large destroyers and cruisers. However, the Biden plan only calls for sixty-five of these ships, which will reduce the overall number of missile launchers available for the fleet—a figure frequently seen as a key metric with which to judge overall fleet capability. To close the gap between the administration’s sixty-five ship goal and the current ninety-four ship inventory, the Navy has proposed to retire seven cruisers and decline to extend the service lives of some older destroyers, though Congress has balked at similar plans in the past. While the Congressional Budget Office has discussed other options to achieve the Biden administration’s goal, there are drawbacks to each plan, and it appears that a reduction in the current rate of ship procurement is not something the House or Senate would be at all comfortable with.
Therefore, Congressional funding would still seem to provide for the Navy to procure two new large surface combatants a year while maintaining the current service lives on those ships. However, in terms of large surface combatants, there are major questions regarding the Navy’s next-generation large surface combatant, with many experts left wondering how the Navy will be able to find the resources for the program in light of the competition for resources already present in the large surface combatant fleet.
In terms of small surface combatants, which include frigates, littoral combat ships, and mine countermeasures ships, there are issues here as well. While Cancian notes that the Navy proposes to phase out its remaining eight mine countermeasures ships by 2024, replacing them with littoral combat ships which are coming on-line, the littoral combat ship program has had problems of its own, and the Navy has already retired several of those ships early. Ultimately, Cancian notes that the late-era Trump and early Biden shipbuilding plans both assume large increases in shipbuilding resources, which may or may not materialize, meaning the planned increase in small surface combatants may never materialize.
Amphibious ships are similarly in a state of flux as a result of new operational concepts that will reduce the number of large amphibious ships that the Navy and Marine Corps have become used to. Furthermore, while there are plans for a new Light Amphibious Warship for the Marine Corps, that project is still years away, and may struggle to find a balance between survivability, speed, beachability, and price.
Regarding the submarine element of the fleet, here the Navy is in better shape in terms of reaching future fleet goals. The late Trump-era shipbuilding plan called for three new subs to be built per year, and the NDAA passed by Congress this week reinstates funding for a third Virginia-class submarine that was cut from the Biden administration’s submitted budget. Furthermore, the U.S. shipbuilding infrastructure is in dire need of revitalization, which has left the country with only two yards—one in Connecticut, the other in Virginia—that build submarines. There have been strong arguments that the Navy needs to invest money into shipyards, both in terms of facilities and workforce, just to achieve the planned rate of two attack submarines and one ballistic missile submarine per year. Furthermore, Cancian notes how the AUKUS submarine deal could put more pressure on the submarine industrial base, with the U.S. commitment to assist Australia in building its new nuclear-powered submarines. In the short-term, Cancian notes that the Navy’s submarine inventory will dip into the low 40s in the mid 2020s. Furthermore, this shortfall will occur just as Russian and Chinese submarines become more and more capable.
In terms of unmanned vessels, while various concepts exist in various stages of development, none constitutes a program where the Navy has a commitment to build them, with all of their relevant support infrastructure included. While the Navy has proposed an unmanned undersea vehicle, that program is still in the prototype phase and there are still concerns about how they will be used in the real world, as they carry risks for potential unwanted escalation.
Finally, in the air, the Navy has recently released its vision for naval aviation, and in 2022 the service calls for fewer new aircraft, as naval aviation is in fairly stable condition. However, Cancian notes that while that stability is great, the bad news is that the service faces both higher costs to maintain its inventory, and will soon see gaps in long-established production lines for platforms like the P-8 Poseidon and the FA-18. Further, a paucity of Navy drones will leave the force with questions about its ability to conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions in a potential conflict with China. This failure to robustly support a drone program would reflect an overall Navy emphasis on manned aerial systems, despite the Navy’s overall interest in unmanned surface and subsurface combatants.
Service Branches – Marine Corps
In terms of the Marine Corps, the Commandant has advocated that the branch return to its naval roots after years of ground-based fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. As part of this, the Corps envisions an architecture wherein it contributes to sea control through forward deployed aircraft and shore-based fires, not simply through landing Marines on beaches. To achieve a new balance towards aircraft and long-range fires, the Marines have proposed cutting three battalions to pay for their modernization efforts, as Congress had in the past eliminated funding for long-range fires in order to fund other Congressional priorities. In essence, the Marine Corps has proposed what it calls a “divest to reallocate” scheme, which divests legacy and surge capabilities—such as tanks—to allow for innovation and modernization in other areas.
While Cancian notes that there are supporters of the Marine Corps proposed “Force Design 2030”, there are a number of concerns with the proposed future force structure. Cancian notes that the focus on China downplays the possibility of conflict in other locations; that new warfighting concepts—which presume a Marine Corps that is able to operate inside the Chinese defensive bubble—are unproven; that a force designed for an island campaign in the Western Pacific against China would likely be unsuccessful in eastern Europe against Russia; and that future conflicts will be in the gray zone, an area in which which the Marine Corps will no longer be suited to due to its reduction in both short-range fighting ability and counter-insurgency capabilities. Overall, there are simply concerns that a focus on a high-end fight with China or Russia will make the Marine Corp unsuited to other tasks in the interim.
Going forward, the Marine Corps is, as mentioned above, working on new long-range fires. In addition, it has plans for unmanned ground systems, new air and missile defense, and a long-range unmanned surface ship. However, Cancian notes that the proposed future Marine Corps amphibious ships will unlikely be able to sustain the current structure of seven Marine Expeditionary Units, as the Light Amphibious Warship landing craft that is being developed is only intended for short voyages.
Service Branches – Air Force
In regards to the U.S. Air Force, that service branch has continued to procure new F-35 aircraft. However, Air Force procurement has not been conducted at a rate that is capable of sustaining its current force structure. Furthermore, Cancian notes that deep cuts to the Air Force fighter inventory are likely in the future, as the Air Force grapples with how to maintain fleet size in order to meet an operational tempo that has, since the 1990s, resembled war more often than peace. To meet those demands, the Air Force has decided to maintain inventory and procurement levels, while allowing the overall age of the fleet to increase. Cancian notes that while the Air Force’s fighter and transport fleets are still fairly new, its fighters (29 years), bombers, (45 years), tankers (49 years), choppers (32 years) and trainers (32 years) are all older, and while some of those programs have modernization plans in place, they take a long time, and the proposed budget has funding levels that are too low to sustain current inventory.
To maintain a service life of 30-years for every aircraft in the fleet, it would require doubling the number of aircraft procured each year to 182 aircraft. However, even at 2021 funding levels, Cancian argues that the implied service life required to maintain the current inventory of 5,541 aircraft would mean the Air Force would need to extend the service life of all aircraft to an geriatric 43 years (5,5411 target inventory / 128 aircraft acquired per year = 43 year average life). Therefore, like the other service branches, the Air Force has to engage in a “divest to invest” strategy in order to meet its goals. Cancian notes that to meet its requirements, the Air Force has repeatedly proposed to retire aircraft, only to be rebuffed by Congress.
As far as the current state of the Air Force’s aviation fleet, its bomber force is aging, though the B-21 program is making progress and should be fielding models soon. However, the fighter/attack force inventory, fleet age, and procurement rate do not produce a stable force, even though the fleet has decreased in size from around 4,000 aircraft in 1991 to just 2,094 today. And while the new F-35, KC-46 and C-130J’s do reduce overall fleet age by a little, it is not enough to maintain current inventory levels without a major increase in fleet age. This conflict is best demonstrated in the continuing tug-of-war between the Air Force and Congress over whether to retire some of the aging A-10 fleet. Ultimately, the Air Force and the administration are going to need to make a decision on the exact nature of its future fighter force, as the F-35 continues to be expensive, and its sixth-generation follow-up promises to be equally pricey.
Finally, in terms of the tactical and strategic mobility fleets, Congress has finally allowed the Air Force to divest some of its aging C-130H cargo planes as well as 18 KC-135 and 14 KC-10 tankers. As far as the unmanned fleet goes, Cancian states that the proportion of remotely piloted aircraft in the fleet has stalled out at 5-7% over the past decade, and current procurement plans show no change, as the 2022 budget retires the block 30 RQ-4 Global Hawk in favor of the manned E-11 aircraft.
Half Measures on Defense
President Biden likes to quote his father, who allegedly once said, ““Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” Taken in that light, the Biden administration’s budget shows that what it values is a more robust military budget than what many Democrats and progressives would like. Further, its lack of focus on unmanned systems is worrying, as the expense of procuring and maintaining existing manned systems continues to increase. Further, the decline in aircraft procurement, coupled with the increasing age of the fleet, poses worrisome questions when it comes to a potential future fight against China.
Senators Cardin and Sanders are clearly correct that the U.S. has many other domestic challenges that it faces, ranging from the pandemic to income inequality, all of which are hard to address with a Pentagon budget that continues to eat up more than half of all discretionary spending, and “has increased by over $100 billion since President Trump took office.” If the administration is looking to keep the defense budget flat while simultaneously keeping inventories at current levels, then it will need to do more than what it has done in the FY 2022 budget request.
In an era of flat budgets, greater innovation is going to be required if the administration wishes to keep the U.S.’ currently robust capabilities. Therefore, the lack of funding for unmanned aerial vehicles, surface vessels, and underwater vessels is striking in its short-sightedness, particularly as China increases its ability with drones. Furthermore, Congress’ inability to move on from legacy systems like the A-10 and C-130 hinder the administration’s ability to keep cost down while keeping capability high.
With its first budget, the administration has chosen a half measure rather than going all the way in its pivot towards China. Essentially, the argument that the U.S. is keeping legacy systems and platforms around in order to hedge against the lesser array of threats posed by transnational terrorism, Iran, or North Korea is a bit ludicrous. The goal of the Biden administration’s national security and foreign policy is to pivot U.S. attention away from conflicts in the Middle East and towards China and the Indo-Pacific. However, the administration seems to also wish to achieve that pivot towards Asia while simultaneously keeping the defense budget flat. Frankly, this is a nearly impossible goal, and conflicts with both the pivot towards China competition and the pivot away from smaller conflicts. For example, the FY 2022 budget contains funding for a number of systems, ranging from the littoral combat ship to the F-15EX and the A-10, all of which are either of questionable utility (littoral combat ship), or of questionable utility in a fight against China (F-15EX and A-10). Furthermore, a lack of focus on unmanned platforms misses a crucial opportunity to reorganize the armed forces in light of changing budgetary priorities. Essentially, if the administration is going to pivot towards Great Power competition with China, then it should pivot. There is a strong argument to be made that the Pentagon needs to learn to do more with less, as the country has other priorities that it desperately needs to fund. However, if the administration is going to pivot while concurrently attempting to keep the defense budget flat, it will need to invest in the RDT&E and procurement of more unmanned systems and other technology that will enable the service branches to truly do more with less.
Overall, while the flat FY 2022 budget is encouraging in that it is not an increase from the Trump-era, the FY 2023 and FY 2024 budgets will be the real test of the Biden administration. Those budgets will not only determine whether the administration is able to shift funding from defense to domestic priorities, but also whether it is able to keep the U.S. ready for a fight against China in the future.
Foreign Policy Reviews 