Former US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
United States: Former US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin advised increasing the defense expenditure by $50 billion than is currently planned for the financial year 2026, which could take the defense budget to over $ 1 trillion in subsequent years, as reported by Bloomberg News on Monday.
Proposed Five-Year Defense Blueprint
However, in a letter to the OMB dated November 27, reviewed by Bloomberg, Austin suggested that the Pentagon offer Trump’s incoming administration a five-year defense blueprint that begins with $926.5 billion in fiscal 2026 compared with a projected $876.8 billion, as reported by Reuters.
Both The Pentagon and the Office of Management and Budget failed to respond to the request for comment.
“I have not wavered in my assessment that meeting the demands of our strategy requires real growth” above inflation “and sustained new investments in fiscal years 2026-2030,” Austin wrote in the letter, according to Bloomberg.
Budget Constraints and Challenges
President Joe Biden’s 2025 defense and national security budget request that he presented in mid-March last year was only 1% more than the previous year due to a two-year budget agreement reached in mid-2023 that capped the budget at a 1% increase.
❗🇺🇸 Outgoing SecDef Austin has told the Office of Management & Budget that the Department of Defense requires a budget of $926 billion in FY26.
— Colby Badhwar 🇨🇦🇬🇧 (@ColbyBadhwar) January 13, 2025
Congressional Republicans are already discussing an increase in both FY25 & FY26 defense spending of a similar magnitude.
House… pic.twitter.com/EYvO5fH4lv
It compelled a dampened pace of expenditures across virtually all programs and postponed attempts to restock munitions destroyed in Ukraine and Israel.
Projected Spending Milestones
The letter also mentioned a spending of $972.8bn in the fiscal 2027 and over $1tn in the fiscal 2028, according to the Bloomberg report, which said that the spending would comfortably cross the $1tn mark in the fiscals 2029 and 2030.
Outgoing U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has recommended a boost in defense spending by about $50 Bn more than the current 2026 projections.. Bloomberg News reported on Monday. https://t.co/vLiom71NKR
— AirPower 2.0 (MIL_STD) (@AirPowerNEW1) January 13, 2025
The report says that Austin’s proposed funding does not include aid to Israel and Ukraine but is only confined to the Pentagon, as reported by Reuters.
There was still a bit of uncertainty about Trump’s acceptance of the idea that Austin had put forward.
Uncertainty Around Trump Administration’s Stance
Austin recommends defense spending boost by more than $50 billion in 2026, Bloomberg News reports https://t.co/UOUiqjXNpr
— DarkMischief (@keanaik112) January 13, 2025
Last week, the U.S. president-elect stated that members of the NATO military alliance should spend 5% of their GDP on defense – a significantly higher raise than the previous 2%.
