Strategic Investments: Mapping the Next Defense Strategy and Budget By Roger Zakheim

A Response By Roger Zakheim

Defense reform. Strategy. Resources. These are three necessary elements Mackenzie Eaglen addresses in her excellent paper on reversing America’s declining defense posture and countering the most formidable threat environment since World War II. ¹ Eaglen assesses how the Pentagon’s litany of day-to-day operational duties threatens to cannibalize DOD time and resources and leave our strategic objectives unrealized. This stems from an environment of budget scarcity, forcing leadership to simply make ends meet today with no time, energy, or (most importantly) resources to seriously consider tomorrow’s goals. For those enamored with reforming the Pentagon, I agree with the conclusion that the DOD does its best work when resources are ample; it allows the Pentagon to engage in creative strategic thinking and drive innovation rather than agonizing over budget-imposed tradeoffs. This is a point not well understood or appreciated, and Eaglen’s paper provides the data to back up the claim.

Yet, before exploring what defense reform might look like, we should first take a step back and assess the overall strategic objectives we seek to accomplish. An honest discussion recognizes our defense strategy is dramatically out of date and underfunded. Both the Trump and Biden National Defense Strategies (NDS) adopted a one-war force planning construct that prioritizes competing and winning against China while also deterring Russia, Iran, North Korea, and terrorist groups. It assumes the United States would likely face a major conflict in one region of the globe, and that conflict would be of limited duration.

Of course, the world today is dramatically different than it was in 2022 when the last defense strategy was written. Wars in Europe and the Middle East not only pose an existential threat to our friends in Ukraine and Israel, but they also reveal how the new axis of adversaries of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela actively and cooperatively work against the American-led order and threaten American peace and prosperity. Russia and China deepened their “no limits” partnership in May, and China is now contemplating providing lethal aid to Russian forces. ² Russia provides Iran operating space in Syria in exchange for Shahed drones to bomb Ukrainian cities. ³ North Korea sustains Russian artillery advantages across the frontline. ⁴

These developments lead to the commonsense conclusion that it is plausible, and likely, that should the United States fight a conventional war against China, Russia, or Iran, it will not be limited to one region, nor a single adversary. As a result, the United States should be prepared to fight simultaneous conflicts in disparate regions of the globe.⁵ Restoring a two-war force planning construct would be a necessary first step, though the Cold War-era model would need to be modified for the primacy of new domains, such as space and cyber, which do not fit traditional geographical boundaries.

Eaglen raises the important point that under the present defense strategy, the U.S. military is tasked with accomplishing global responsibilities with an $850 billion budget, while nearly all of China’s estimated $700 billion topline is invested in building its combat power in Asia. Thus, relative parity in defense spending between the United States and China plays to Beijing’s benefit. ⁶

So what level of resources does the Pentagon need today to confront China, Russia, and others? Unless we go big and return to Reagan-era levels of defense spending,⁷ trying to squeeze more reform out of the Pentagon, or realizing the goals of even the current NDS is futile. This assessment is beginning to take hold. The 2022 Strategic Posture Commission report came to this conclusion, and it is the likelihood that the United States might find itself engaged in two major conflicts simultaneously that drove Senator Wicker’s recent report to call for a return to a two-war force construct with five percent of GDP defense spending to reach this goal.⁸

Saying we need more resources is not enough. The subject requires specificity given the scope and contours of the challenge. Three percent real growth, the minimum required according to Secretary Mattis when he led the Pentagon, barely delivers on the current defense strategy. Five percent real growth would not deliver a force capable of engaging in two simultaneous conflicts. Five percent of GDP might be sufficient, but the Pentagon will need time to ramp up so it can efficiently execute such a bump in funding.

Rebuilding the military to counter the axis of adversaries will be a daunting task. Eaglen suggests several prudent recommendations to redress the reality that today’s shrinking, aging, and brittle force would be unable to absorb attrition early in a conflict and rearm and resupply to remain in a protracted fight. The wars in Ukraine and Israel have demonstrated that conventional forces still matter, and the United States must have the industrial base to expand the force and replace losses with expediency. Supplying our allies alone has drained years’ worth of buys in weeks, to say nothing of if the U.S. military was to fight a peer adversary tomorrow.⁹ A starting point would be a Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) Act for recapitalizing the defense industrial base. The CHIPS Act provided $52.7 billion for semiconductor research and development (R&D) to expand America’s domestic capacity.¹⁰ A similar capital infusion may be required for the U.S. defense industrial base (DIB), which is at capacity meeting peacetime needs. Focused congressional oversight, like Senator Wicker’s recent report, calls for generational investments in the DIB to upgrade and expand existing facilities, building new factories and shipyards along with investing in new manufacturing methods like 3D printing to ensure the U.S. military can take successive punches in a protracted conflict.¹¹

While investing in industrial capacity is critical for building and sustaining today’s force, modernization efforts to prepare for tomorrow are equally important. Here Eaglen correctly points out that modernization has repeatedly been deferred for readiness and capacity today due to budgetary scarcity. The result is a smaller, older force unable to meet the goals of the NDS today or tomorrow.

Both the 2017 and 2022 NDS delineate the technologies and capabilities critical to the future force. Integrating artificial intelligence and cutting-edge software into current and future platforms, building and employing space assets, and introducing autonomous systems across the joint force are just a handful of priority areas. Yet, DOD’s fiscal year 2025 request takes its foot off the accelerator. The science and technology (S&T) request of $17.2 billion is three and a half percent lower than the $17.82 billion request in Fiscal Year 2024. This does not bode well for key S&T investment that will deliver critical capabilities like autonomy in the 2030s and beyond.12 The double-digit real growth enjoyed by space programs in recent years and encouraging progress in the Department’s hypersonics program offer a template of what investing in tomorrow’s capabilities without sacrificing today’s force looks like.

Eaglen’s paper makes several budgetary suggestions that are sound and should be implemented by policy makers. However, to accomplish transformational change, creating the force to be used in a “break the glass in case of emergency” scenario, robust increases in the size of the force are required. It is spot-on to highlight the problem of “focusing solely on the inbox and problems closest at hand.” However, the strategy needs to acknowledge the inbox too, and we wish it away to our own detriment. Going big on defense promises to deliver the resources to confront today’s challenges with enough left over to get past today’s inbox and meet the problems of tomorrow.