Defense budget speeds toward $1 trillion, with China in mind

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon intends to load up on advanced missiles, space defense and modern jets in its largest defense request in decades in order to meet the threat it perceives from China. The spending path would put the military's annual budget over the $1 trillion threshold in just a matter of years, its chief financial officer said Monday.

The administration is asking Congress for $842 billion for the Pentagon in the 2024 budget year. It’s the largest request since the peak of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the mid-2000s, when the weight of hundreds of thousands of troops deployed in those overseas conflicts ballooned overseas war spending.

Now, the budget could surge again. That's in part to meet the higher cost of weapons and parts, but also to answer the vulnerabilities that the Ukraine war has exposed in the U.S. defense industrial base, and the strategic threat the U.S. sees from China’s rapidly growing nuclear arsenal, its hypersonic capabilities and its gains in space.

Even if it only grows to account for inflation, “the budget will hit a trillion dollars,” probably before the next five years, Pentagon comptroller Michael McCord told a press briefing. “Maybe that’s going to be a psychological, big watershed moment for many of us, or some of us, but it is inevitable.”