Defense spending for the next fiscal year, excluding veterans’ benefits, was finalized this month at $572.7 billion, a $94 billion decrease over the amount spent in 2009, when President Obama entered office. Defense News projects that the pre-Obama spending levels will not be reached, if at all, until well after 2020.
A Defense Dept. review of the budget emphasizes what the FY 2016 deal does not adequately address, including:
NEAR TERM: — Balancing capability, capacity and readiness;
— Terrorism, instability across the Middle East and North Africa;
— Rising pressure from Russia and China;
— Globalization of advanced technology;
— Rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific region;
— Cyber defense, attribution and response; and
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— Short-term budget deals, constrained resources and fiscal uncertainty.
LONG TERM: Priorities and uncertainties for fiscal 2017 and beyond include, among others, McCord said, nation-states like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea; ISIL and the global counterterrorism challenge; balancing capability, capacity and readiness; compensation and retention for today’s force; the Force of the Future; innovation in investments and practices; operating in space and cyberspace; and modernizing the nuclear deterrent in the 2020s and 2030s.
As noted by the Department of Defense, reduced support for the military comes at a time when Russia and China have both dramatically increased their military spending and aggressiveness, made significant technological strides, and engaged in aggressive actions. It also comes as North Korea moves rapidly ahead in nuclear armaments, and the threat from Islamic terrorists escalates to extremely dangerous new levels.
PressTV reports that “Russia’s Defense Ministry has announced an increase in future military equipment procurement…The announced plans included the annual purchase of some 200 planes and helicopters, up to 30 ships and submarines, and around 600 armored vehicles, the UPI reported on Tuesday.”The state program for armaments extending till 2021 will increase the share of modern weapons and military hardware to no less than 70 percent,” said Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces General Valery Gerasimov during a press briefing in Moscow.
China, by contrast, continues its rapid escalation in military spending. According to a CNBC report “Beijing’s defense spending is estimated to grow 7 percent annually until 2020…By 2020, the center of gravity of the global defense spending landscape is expected to have continued its gradual shift away from the developed economies of Western Europe and North America and towards emerging markets, particularly in Asia.”
In addition to Beijing’s announced spending, a Quartz.com reports that “China is responsible for 30% of the world’s secretive defense spending,reports Transparency International (TI), a Berlin-based anti-corruption NGO. Secretive spending, defined by TI as “military expenditure where no meaningful details are released either to the public or parliament,” is leading to corruption at home and mistrust in the Asia-Pacific region that could destabilize the area, the organization says… No information is available on acquisition planning, and only broad details are disclosed on actual and planned purchases.”
An analysis by The Week opines: “The defense budget is often constrained for economic or political reasons. The gap between what the United States actually spends and what it takes to fully resource and execute the strategy is risk. Unfortunately, risk is difficult to measure, but all too easy to ignore. A particular threat may be out of sight and out of mind, but it still exists and could still harm a vital interest of the United States. It’s similar to buying cheap car insurance. It may save a few bucks and turn out fine as long as you never have an accident. That is what it means to accept risk… Since the imposition of the Budget Control Act in 2011, the base defense budget (excluding war costs) has gone down by 15 percent in real terms, while the threats to U.S. vital interests have, if anything, increased. The Heritage Foundation’s 2015 Index of U.S. Military Strength assessed the current capacity, capability, and readiness of the U.S. military as “marginal.”