Defense budget nears $1T with eyes on China

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon intends to load up on advanced missiles, space defense and modern jets in its largest defense request in decades in order to meet the threat it perceives from China. The spending path would put military’s annual budget over the $1 trillion threshold in just a matter of years, its chief financial officer said Monday.

The administration is asking Congress for $842 billion for the Pentagon in the 2024 budget year. It’s the largest request since the peak of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the mid-2000s, when the weight of hundreds of thousands of troops deployed in those overseas conflicts ballooned overseas war spending

Now, the budget could surge again. That’s in part to meet the higher cost of weapons and parts, but also to answer the vulnerabilities that the Ukraine war has exposed in the U.S. defense industrial base, and the strategic threat the U.S. sees from China’s rapidly growing nuclear arsenal, its hypersonic capabilities and its gains in space.

The budget request is part of an overall $6.8 trillion spending proposal rolled out by Biden last week, which Republicans say they’ll reject. But it’s not clear how they’ll act on the Pentagon proposal.

One of the largest new priorities is getting the U.S. defense industrial base to speed production of munitions. Ukraine’s rate of use of 155 Howitzer rounds and other precision munitions has shown the U.S. defense industrial base “is not where it needs to be,” Pentagon comptroller Michael McCord said.

It’s been a lesson learned over the last year, particularly as the U.S. assesses how best it can prevent a similar fight over Taiwan, which could pit it against China.

The goal of the budget is to ensure China “wakes up every day, considers the risks of aggression, and concludes, ‘today is not the day,’ ” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said.