Proposed Defense Budget for 2022

The president has proposed his defense budget for 2022. The budget has not gone down, which may not have been what some people expected. The Department of Defense (DOD) budget is $715 billion. This is an increase in the budget of $10 billion from 2021, or about 1.6 percent. Inflation in 2020 is estimated to be 1.5 percent. The overall budget for “national defense” is $753 billion, with expenditures for the Department of Energy and other federal agencies included.

Don’t have details of the budget. It may be out there, but I have not chased them down yet. So, I don’t know what the Army’s share of the budget is. Budget for 2021 included supplemental spending bills and funding transfers and the expenses for combat operations were separately funded. For this proposed budget, these are included in this budget and are $18.4 billion. This is apparently a drop of 21 percent from last year.

There is a renewed focus on conventional war against near-parity opponents. We are now looking at a 296-ship fleet vice a 355-ship fleet envisioned by the previous administration. The 355-ship fleet was kind of a wasteful pipedream that was not easily achievable. It harkened back to the movement for a 600-ship fleet that was envisioned in the 1980s. This was briefly attained before it was cut back. They are also decommissioning two Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), which always struck me as a bizarre expenditure of money. Then there is the controversial F-35 program, which has been reduce from 60 new planes this year to 48. They are retiring 42 A-10s, leaving the Air Force with 239. Artillery is back in fashion with $6.6 billion to develop and field long-range fires. Overall, they are spending a lot on R&D, the “largest-ever” R&D spending according to the SecDef (I have not tested statement against inflation). There was $107 billion R&D requested in 2021. For 2022 it is higher (but I did not see an exact figure).

By the way, the budget for the State Department and international programs is proposed as 63.6 billion.  

This is a proposed budget. It is a recommendation sent to congress and congress can choose to do whatever they wish with it. As it is a Democratic controlled House and a bare Democratic majority in the Senate, it may be passed close to as is, but probably will not be unscathed. Most likely, if it is significantly changed it will be to reduce it in general or to maintain or restore hardware (LCS and A-10s) that DOD is trying to reduce. I don’t expect the final figures to be much lower than what is proposed.

The total active and reserve component of the military is planned to be 2,145,900, which is a slight reduction (4,475 less) than last year. Chinese active personnel is 2,185,000 in 2021. Russia’s active personnel is 1,454,000.

In contrast the estimated defense budget for the Chinese armed forces for 2020 or 2021 is given as $193.3 (IISS-2020), $209.4 billion (Wikipedia-2021) or $252.0 (SIPRI-2020). This is between 1.3% to 1.7% of GDP. In contrast the U.S. defense budget is 3.4% to 3.7% of GDP. The Chinese budget in purchase parity (PPP) figures I gather would be some 1.6 times higher.

The defense budget for Russia is given as 61.7 billion in 2020. This is around 3.9% to 4.3% of GDP (as of 2019). The Russian budget in PPP figures is probably around 2.5 times higher.

 

See: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-look-at-what-s-inside-biden-s-6-trillion-budget-request/ar-AAKuAdi?ocid=msedgntp

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/28/pentagon-asks-for-715-billion-in-2022-defense-budget.html

https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/2639101/dod-budget-request-boosts-research-nuclear-modernization-and-includes-27-pay-ra/

https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2021/05/27/pentagon-budget-will-shake-up-legacy-systems-lawmakers-are-shaking-back/

https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2021/5/28/air-force-proposal-would-shift-funding-to-new-aircraft

https://breakingdefense.com/2021/05/secdef-rd-spending-to-skyrocket-in-22-budget/

Older related blog posts:

GAO: “We’re 26 ships into the contract and we still don’t know if the [Littoral Combat Ship] can do its job.” | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

The Challenge of Getting to a 350-Ship Fleet | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

The Saga of the F-35: Too Big To Fail? | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

U.S. Army Invests In Revitalizing Long Range Precision Fires Capabilities | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

Status Update On U.S. Long Range Fires Capabilities | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.
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Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.
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His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) , The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019), The Battle for Kyiv (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2023), Aces at Kursk (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024), Hunting Falcon: The Story of WWI German Ace Hans-Joachim Buddecke (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024) and The Siege of Mariupol (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2024).
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Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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