Next Pentagon budget may trade new weapons development for readiness

The Fiscal Year 2020 U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) budget may slow down modernization efforts and research into next-generation weapons, like hypersonic missiles, but will still invest in growing the military force and boosting readiness for aircraft such as the F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, says Patrick Shanahan, deputy secretary of defense. Shanahan says the U.S. Office of Budget and Management told the Pentagon to prepare a $700-billion national security budget for fiscal year 2020, whereas the Defense Department had previously been given a $733-billion topline. As a result, Pentagon comptroller David Norquist is building two budgets even as the services are moving forward with a single budget request to submit to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The more constrained $700-billion budget does not just apply the lower topline to 2020, but also to the whole five-year future years defense program. Because the topline doesn’t immediate bounce back up, investment in hypersonics and other technologies “comes down to a judgment call, how fast we modernize – that’s probably going to be the biggest knob we have to turn” to adjust to a lower topline, Shanahan says.