The Pentagon has told Congress in a long-delayed report that within the next year it intends to burn through more than $153 billion in new military funding that was signed into law by President Trump in his signature domestic policy bill.
When Republicans pushed through the sweeping legislation last summer, they allocated the billions of dollars for the Trump administration to spend over the next five years. But the Defense Department said in its report to lawmakers that it was “working to accelerate” and spend all the funds in 2026 “if that can be done without sacrificing effectiveness.”
The Defense Department detailed a range of priorities for the funds, including purchasing over a dozen new ships, enhancing weapons manufacturing and integrating artificial intelligence into the military’s capabilities.
The push comes on the heels of Mr. Trump’s proposing an increase in military spending by more than half in 2027 and at a time when his administration is flexing its military strength abroad, including most recently by positioning ships in the Middle East for a possible attack on Iran.
Last year, Republicans said the additional $153 billion they approved for the Pentagon, on top of the $900 billion in annual spending that Congress later authorized, was a much-needed “generational investment” that would help modernize the military and improve troops’ quality of life.
But Democrats warned that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth could use the funds that their G.O.P. colleagues jammed through as a slush fund, given the lack of guardrails placed on the money. The Senate and House Armed Services Committees sent the Pentagon informal guidance on how to use the money and requested that the agency submit a formal spending plan by August. But the administration blew past that deadline.
Lawmakers eventually received a classified version of plans for how the Pentagon would spend a portion of the money. But Democrats denounced the secrecy as an attempt to stifle any congressional oversight.
Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, said in a statement on Monday after the unclassified report’s release that “at a moment when the administration is planning to propose a $1.5 trillion defense budget — the largest in American history — transparency and oversight are more essential than ever.”
The latest report leaves some spending details still murky.
The Pentagon did not declassify how it would spend over $24 billion allocated for the president’s “Golden Dome” project, a proposed defense shield modeled after Israel’s Iron Dome. That information “is available at a higher classification,” according to a single line under several items relating to the missile defense system.
It also did not provide any additional detail on how the department would spend $1 billion that Republicans included for deploying U.S. troops to patrol the border and assist with anti-narcotics operations, and for the “temporary detention” of migrants on military bases, stating only that the spending was “pending approval.”
In other sections, the Pentagon outlined in greater detail its plans to spend $29 billion on shipbuilding, including procuring a new nuclear submarine; $24 billion on munitions such as medium-range missiles; and $16 billion on readiness, including for maintenance or repair of existing equipment.
Megan Mineiro is a Times congressional reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early-career journalists.
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