February 13, 2018
The new defense budget: what you need to know
The budget agreement finally reached by Congress last Friday provides around $700 billion for national defense in fiscal years 2018 and 2019, an allocation in line with President Trump's 2019 budget request, released by the OMB this morning.
Here's what you need to know about that spending:
- The defense budget is big, about the same size as the entire Swiss economy. It consumes over half of discretionary spending, though only about 16 percent of the total budget (including Social Security, Medicare and other programs). But the expenditure is not unreasonable: Not only is the U.S. military the finest fighting force in the world, with over 2 million men and women on active duty or in the National Guard or Reserves, it also has components that are basically a health care company, a global supply chain outfit, and a sizable retail operation.
Read the full article in Axios.
More from CNAS
-
Defense & Aerospace Air Power Podcast [Jun 26, 25] Season 3 E25: Focus Forward
Podcast
Just when people were saying the future of air power was small, distributed systems like UAVs, the US struck Iran’s nuclear program infrastructure with an old-fashioned manned...
By Stacie Pettyjohn
-
Podcast
Defense / Energy, Economics & Security
Tariffs & and the Defense Industrial Base with Becca Wasser, plus what’s new in the U.S.-China trade warGeoff and Emily debrief on the latest news in the U.S.-China trade talks. Becca Wasser, senior fellow and deputy director of the CNAS defense program, joins to talk about what...
By Emily Kilcrease, Geoffrey Gertz & Becca Wasser
-
Production Power: The Revitalisation of the U.S. Defence Industrial Base and the Consequences for Europe
Podcast
In episode 15 of Strategy Speaks, Becca Wasser from CNAS speaks with Daniel Fiott about the US defence industrial base and how its revitalisation could affect Europe. The conv...
By Becca Wasser
-
MWI Podcast: The U.S. Defense Industrial Base, from Steel to Software
Podcast
Mobilizing the U.S. defense industrial base. for a future large-scale conflict, however, will look very different than it has in the past. In the information age, data and sof...
By Becca Wasser
