How Congress Should Think About The Pentagon Budget

Spending Is The Point, Not Security

“The Manhattan Project took only three years to produce the first atomic bomb, now it takes us four times that long to roll out a new military plane or ship,” said Rep. Burchett (R-Tenn.), Chair of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE). “What is going on here,” he asked witnesses, kicking off the hearing.

The short answer is that the United States is pursuing acquisition programs with less restraint than we did during World War II. Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that nuclear modernization alone will cost U.S. taxpayers $95 billion annually from 2025-2034 – more than two Manhattan Projects a year, accounting for inflation.

From 2025-2032, the United States is set to spend at least 9% more on weapons acquisition annually than it did from 2000-2024 – a time that includes the U.S. war on Iraq and its near 20 year occupation of Afghanistan. The president’s fiscal year 2026 budget request set acquisition spending about 18% higher than what the department spent on acquisition in fiscal year 2025.

Why, then, is the military getting less for more money? I argued that the Pentagon is too ambitious in the scope of its weapons acquisition, as well as the scale of military integration of emerging capabilities. “Technology will always outpace law and regulation,” I said. “The challenge is not integrating every new technology, but betting on the right capabilities.”

The best way to pick reliable, cost-effective systems that fill capability gaps and mission requirements is to prioritize simplicity and avoid the simultaneous development and production of new weapon systems.

Buyer’s Advantage

Pentagon officials, military contractors and lawmakers often claim that the weapons acquisition process is overregulated, rendering it too rigid and slow to keep pace with technological innovation and pacing threats. But the government isn’t regulating a third-party transaction. It’s exercising its leverage as arms manufacturers’ primary, if not only, customer.

Contracting laws and related regulations exist to protect taxpayers from industry price gouging. They set competition and cost transparency standards, which are particularly important in sole-source environments. Contractors claim that compliance with these laws and regulations slows down weapons delivery to the military but provide little to no evidence to support that claim.

Further, as Government Accountability Office Director Shelby Oakley told the committee, the right measure of acquisition success isn’t how fast a contract gets signed, it’s how fast capabilities reach the troops. Notably, the Pentagon doesn’t track the extent to which rapid acquisition tools that bypass traditional laws and regulations deliver reliable capabilities to the military faster.

Reliability is particularly important for pilots, who are deprived of flight hours when systems like the F-35 fighter jet – the most expensive acquisition program in U.S. history – boasts a 25% full mission capability rate, meaning the aircraft fails to fulfill its mission requirements more than half the time. The program is an expensive lesson in the folly of concurrent development, and lawmakers should cancel it.

By acquiring fewer weapons, the military could sustain weapons that work and improve military readiness – the purpose of which is to prepare the military for the exceedingly unlikely event that it must protect the U.S. homeland from attack.

Budget Tradeoffs

“Ultimately, the best way to save taxpayers money on military contracts is to make strategic tradeoffs about what capabilities the military needs and why,” I told the committee. Tradeoffs are essential to any budgeteer – whether she is working in the Pentagon or managing her personal finances.

The House and Senate committee versions of the defense policy bill, the latter of which was just released Tuesday, largely align with the White House’s Pentagon budget request. Both versions of the bill approve about $1.15 trillion in funding for the Pentagon and other defense activities, excluding additional funds requested for the department through the reconciliation process.

The administration’s weapons procurement budget request heavily relies on the reconciliation package, which requires only a simple majority vote in the Senate rather than the usual 60 votes. It’s no surprise then that President Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael have campaigned for the $350 billion reconciliation package on and off Capitol Hill.

Michael told a thinktank crowd last Friday that the department will have to “sacrifice” some weapons systems if lawmakers decline to approve another Pentagon-focused reconciliation bill, according to a report from “Breaking Defense.”

Reality Check

Lawmakers, however, have the authority to make budget tradeoffs now. Taxpayers are already footing the bill for the U.S. war in Iran and they are poised to spend billions more repairing military installations in the Middle East and refilling weapons stockpiles, among other long-term costs of the war.

As lawmakers approach floor debate on the annual defense policy bill, they should consider amendments to cut the $1.15 national defense topline. Congress could eliminate weapon programs like the F-35, or go further by closing U.S. military bases. This spending delivers negative returns for U.S. taxpayers, whose investments have led to planes that don’t fly and costly wars in the Middle East.