While waiting for details and clarity on the plans of the Trump Administration for Defense, there have been reports of deep cuts being sought by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, of some 8% per year.
This was in open contradiction with known Republican wishes to up Defense spending by a significant amount and in contradiction with Trump’s intent to “rebuild” American strength, and it soon became clear that there had been a misunderstanding: Hegseth is not asking the DoD to cut 8% of planned expenditure, but rather come up with recommendations and options for shifting money for roughly that amount (circa $50 billion) from within the Defense budget, each year for the next 5 years, to dramatically accelerate investment on 17 agreed Administration priorities.
Among the 17 priorities are:
1. Southwest Border Activities and the fight against “Transnational Criminal Organizations in the Western Hemisphere”, fully in line with Trump’s promise to secure the border with Mexico and wage “war” against, in particolar, drug traffics.
2. Audit, to finally put the Pentagon’s accounts in order: for 7 years in a row as of end 2024, the Pentagon has failed to properly account for how its massive budget was expended, which potentially means very significant waste is hiding in the process.
3. Nuclear Modernization, from the weapons to the nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) architecture.
4. Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) projects to field adjunct, uncrewed air platforms.
5. VIRGINIA-class Submarines, and “executable” Surface Ships are named priorities as well, although it is not immediately clear what projects will be classed as “executable” and which might be judged less positively. Overall, the expectation is that Trump will push for a larger, stronger navy yet there are some lingering concerns.
6. Homeland Missile Defense is unsurprisingly a listed priority, in keeping with Trump’s intention to create an “Iron Dome for America”. One-Way Attack/Autonomous Systems and, at the opposite side of the spectrum, Counter-small UAS Initiatives are both in the list, together with Cybersecurity, Munitions stockpiles, Munitions and Energetics industrial base capacity, Readiness (including full Deployment Readiness Training (DRT) for the troops).
Other priorities include “executable” (again, it’ll be interesting to see how this attribute is measured) construction projects for military infrastructure in the INDO-PACIFIC COMMAND; as well as Combatant Command support agency funding for INDOPACOM, NORTHCOM, SPACECOM, STRATCOM, CYBERCOM, and TRANSCOM. It must be noted here that CENTCOM (Middle East), EUCOM (Europe) and AFRICOM (Africa) are not included, and thus are destined to see their funding affected by re-prioritisation efforts.
Another protected priority is Medical Private-Sector Care.
Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Salesses released a statement that clarifies how “the Department will develop a list of potential offsets that could be used to fund these priorities, as well as to refocus the Department on its core mission of deterring and winning wars. The offsets are targeted at 8% of the Biden Administration’s FY26 budget, totaling around $50 billion, which will then be spent on programs aligned with President Trump’s priorities”.
The amount of money to be re-prioritised is thus calculated on the basis of Biden’s assumptions for the size of the overall budget for FY2026, thus excluding any potential growth that could materialize out of the push in Congress for a 100 to 150 billion Defense spendign boost.
The internal re-prioritisation effort appears to be separated from Elon Musk’s DOGE hunt for “efficiencies”.
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