Major trends and takeaways from the Defense Department’s Unfunded Priority Lists
By MARK CANCIAN and CHRIS PARK
on April 19, 2024 at 12:06 PM
On March 11, 2024 the Pentagon and military services presented their fiscal year 2025 budget requests. (Graphic by Breaking Defense, original images courtesy DVIDS, Getty)
Over the last month, Breaking Defense has published a series of reports on the unfunded priority lists from the military services and combatant commands. In a new analysis, Mark Cancian and Chris Park analyze the lists as a group, highlighting common themes and the reasons behind the requests.
Celebrated by defense hawks, reviled by defense skeptics, and ignored by OSD leadership, the annual unfunded priority lists (UPLs, or “wish lists”) get attention as indicators of where holes exist in the defense budget. This year’s lists total a near-record high of $29.4 billion, driven by an ambitious national defense strategy, a defense top line that does not keep up with inflation, and an unstable world that demands attention.
Although each list reflects the specific needs of the issuing institution, an analysis of the collected UPLs shows a few themes carried across all the lists: no additional military personnel, concerns about a rising and increasingly aggressive China, risks in other theaters, and the need to replenish stockpiles of missiles and spare parts.
The lists began in the 1990s as a way for defense hawks and the Republican opposition to highlight risks in defense and embarrass the Clinton administration in the process. The motivation and the lists have continued — Defense hawks use them to point out items that should get funding, while the opposition party uses them to argue that the administration is not a good steward of national security.
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/04/major-trends-and-takeaways-from-the-defense-departments-unfunded-priority-lists/
