US Forces Won’t Grow Much Despite Hill & Trump Rhetoric
By Mark Cancian on November 16, 2017 at 3:43 PM
The defense community is abuzz with talk of strategy and force expansion as the Pentagon develops the Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy. Talk is nice but, as budgeteers like to say, “If it ain’t funded, it ain’t”.
Building the forces the services say they need—with the readiness and modernization to support them— requires large budgets, such as those proposed by Sen. John McCain. Defense Secretary Mattis and General Joe Dunford have identified 5 percent budget growth per year as the required level. But political gridlock, the enduring drag of the Budget Control Act, and the history of budget compromises will conspire to prevent DOD from getting that much. The Pentagon will need to make some tough trade-offs. A recent CSIS study showed what these tradeoffs look like, and it’s going to disappoint a lot of people.
https://breakingdefense.com/2017/11/us-forces-wont-grow-much-despite-hill-trump-rhetoric/
