Just last week, flooding at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center made headlines after a pipe burst causing extensive damage and distress for patients amid deferred procedures. However, a failing steam system that severely limits staff’s ability to sterilize surgical equipment and “sharply” reduces the number of surgeries performed highlights the deferred maintenance bills due across every single branch of the U.S. military.
Base upkeep has long been an area where the Defense Department has “consistently chosen to take risk” since the Budget Control Act in 2011. Continued under investments have resulted in a GAO-estimated backlog of at least $137 billion—which doesn’t even account for facilities that are already past their useful lifespans, totaling about one-third of all Pentagon bases and places.
So it tracks that days before departing office, word leaked that former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had recommended a dramatic—and sustained—boost to the U.S. military’s annual budget. In a letter to the White House budget office, the four-year cabinet chief argued forcefully that the “demands of our strategy requires real growth” above inflation alongside “sustained new investments in fiscal years 2026-2030.”
Austin highlighted the fragility of the defense industrial base as part of his rationale to grow defense budgets in the second Trump administration. The memo stated that America lacks the capacity to meet ongoing needs; therefore investments to reset munitions and other inventories should begin in earnest this year.
As with base upkeep, other readiness, strength and investment trendlines have been moving south for the armed forces. In constant dollars, the defense budget (excluding funds for Ukraine and Israel) declined in real terms in fiscal year (FY) 2024 and 2025.
Washington is currently in talks about using reconciliation in part to boost overdue military investments of the kind Lloyd Austin admits need urgent addressing. While the rumor is about $200 billion over two years, this would align with the outgoing Biden team assessment.
Back of the envelope math suggests former SecDef Austin is advocating for roughly $240 billion added to Trump defense budgets over Biden’s 5-year budget. Originally, Biden’s future years defense plans estimated a flat 2.1% annual growth in the outyears, while Austin’s letter calls for 9% growth in 2026, 5% in 2027, and at least 3% in 2028.
There are few ways to crunch the numbers without arriving at consensus. Indeed at the end of the first Trump administration, the national security adviser at the time and returning White House budget boss Russ Vought penned an article decrying America’s crumbling Navy. The duo called for a much larger fleet, a new shipyard, and lots of drone ships to supplement current capabilities.
The naval buildup would have required an additional $40 billion either from internal savings or new spending. Since shipbuilding basically stalled out the past half decade, the costs of reversing the Navy’s decline are now only higher. A blend of more funds, lots of additional skilled workers, expanded capacity and new yards, and updated laws and policies are required to stem the bleeding of American naval power.
The Pentagon’s own industrial base strategy, the first ever to be released, highlighted similar deficiencies across the portfolios and capabilities of all U.S. military branches.
Noting the multi-decade deindustrialization of defense that has created today’s brittle force, the report identifies 10 systemic challenges—of which the lack of money is a direct or underlying cause in at least six categories.
Most notably these include:
-inadequate production and uncertain levels of and timing to enact defense funding;
-lack of a business case for industry to raise needed capital for investment due to an unstable Pentagon customer;
-narrow profit margins of sub-tier suppliers, “making them susceptible to cyclic demand and shifts in defense budgets;”
-diminishing power of the Defense Department to shift demand due to low volume purchasing in most industrial markets;
-instability of weapons purchases including program cancellations, compliance burdens, and technology obsolescence; and,
-uncertainty and constraints in budgets, including lapses in appropriations and spending freezes by Congress.
The Pentagon indicts itself and its lowball budget requests, concluding that the Defense Department’s “low volume buying patterns, lengthy periods between modernization, and often unnecessarily over-customized design specifications have combined to make [the U.S. military] an unattractive customer, especially for smaller businesses.”

US Military M777 Artillery. Ukraine Now Has a Similar System.
You could say that again.
Joe Biden’s defense secretary’s investment goals hew closely to current Armed Services Committee chairman Senator Roger Wicker’s (R-MS) peace through strength plan. Both gentlemen agree at least $50 billion per year above current plans are required to triage the patient and reverse our defense decline.
The Austin budget memo, combined with the inertia of the last four years in defense investments, means it is time to resurrect and bolster plans to grow the fleet, rebuild munitions stockpiles, grow manned and unmanned aerial inventories, upgrade bases, and increase homeland air and missile defense capabilities. The bills only get larger and the problems for servicemembers increase the longer there is a delay.
About the Author: Mackenzie Eaglen
Now a 19FortyFive Contributing Editor, Mackenzie Eaglen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she works on defense strategy, defense budgets, and military readiness. She is also a regular guest lecturer at universities, a member of the board of advisers of the Alexander Hamilton Society, and a member of the steering committee of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security.

JingleBells
February 4, 2025 at 12:36 pm
So who’s at fault.
In afghanistan, obama was to blame for US soldiers eagerly avoiding the taliban due to general shortage of ammo.
But today, US soldiers are avoiding the PLA due to them now reduced to using vintage equipment caused by joe biden gutting the military in order to amply supply zelenskyy’s neo-nazis in ukraine.
It’s alleged that VAQ-136 super hornets from USS Carl vinson tangled with a PLA destroyer in dec 2023 in the south china sea and were bested by the PLA crew.
The PLA ship blanked the onboard avionics systems of the ultra modern US aircraft.
No wonder joe biden was mad. Mad as HELL. He began imposing all kinds of bans, sanctions and restrictions on entities alleged to have links with the PLA like wechat and tencent.
Crazy. But now biden has been thrown out of the oval office.
Mike Walsh
February 4, 2025 at 10:07 pm
Total BS!
Webej
February 5, 2025 at 3:10 am
Maybe a good start would be to figure out where the money is going. Nobody who fails audits keeps getting money.
The audit might help to clean up waste & corruption.
And after that, maybe they deserve to get some money.
JDDrouin
February 5, 2025 at 10:11 am
Just one more reason to fire every 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-Star Admiral and General in the US military.
RTColorado
February 5, 2025 at 4:11 pm
There is so much to consider and a ton (imperial, not metric) of questions. The first and foremost question is “What happens to the money in the ever-increasing Defense Spending budgets? I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that there was a modicum of Congressional oversight. What happened to that? Historically, Walter Reed (whatever) Medical Center has had constant issues with infrastructures such as heating (and the list goes on and on and on) going back to at least the Reagan administration…so you just noticed this now? Finally…who are we going to march to the wall for the well-deserved firing squad? I would suggest a cross section of members of Congress, the DoD, the Armed Services, past Presidents…did I leave anyone out?