President Donald Trump recently announced that he would request a $1.5 trillion defense budget in 2027. That 50 percent annual increase may sound outlandish at first. Yet it’s not far from the historical norm — and perhaps the most important step the White House can take to ensuring peace through strength.
Last year, the White House promised to spend $1 trillion on defense in April but got there with budgetary gimmicks. The president’s base request of $893 billion would have been a cut after inflation and was supplemented by a one-time infusion of $150 billion in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Congress deserves credit for raising the topline to $900 billion last month as part of the defense policy bill, but that still falls short of what’s needed to ensure long-term security. Projects such as revamping the Navy’s fleet will take years of sustained funding. The higher figure is a victory for hawks on Capitol Hill, who argue that defense spending now will help deter costlier conflicts.
Under Trump’s new topline, defense spending would approach the 5 percent target of gross domestic product that the U.S. recently convinced the rest of NATO to aim toward. During the 1980s, the U.S. averaged 5.5 percent a year. As the threat from China intensifies, it’s encouraging that the president has been persuaded he’ll need to return to the old normal.
Still, spending $1.5 trillion is more complicated than it sounds, even for a spendthrift government. If the president is serious about ramping up defense production, it’s better to immediately raise spending for multiyear projects, even if outlays in the short-term fall short of $1.5 trillion.
The first reason to start spending sooner is that procurement takes time. The president blasted defense contractors last week for stock buybacks. It’s fair for him to ask contractors to operate with more urgency, but the primes also need assurances of stable government support to justify costly and time-intensive projects with long runways, like replenishing the depleted missile stock.
The second reason to increase spending before 2027 is that Trump probably won’t have Republican majorities after the midterms. If Trump waits for next year’s defense appropriation process, he’ll face pressure from Democrats — who are favored to win the House — to match an increase in defense spending with more non-defense spending, which the nation cannot afford.
Republicans in Congress can skirt that by pushing for an emergency supplemental before the end of 2026. They could pass a bill that infuses hundreds of billions of dollars over multiple years into massive amounts of relatively low cost but important munitions and drones.
Spending is only part of the process, and it’s fair to worry whether this massive infusion of cash will be spent well. Fortunately, Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) and his colleagues have done important work on reforming acquisitions and can build on that momentum, so that a generational investment would not be squandered.
From striking Iran’s nuclear sites to capturing Nicolás Maduro, Trump continues to show the value of American military might. But even isolated operations come at a steep cost. The B-2 bombers that hit Iran cost upwards of $2 billion each. Tomahawk missiles cost $2.2 million apiece. That operation took one night. Imagine the expense of protracted conflict with China.
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