In his 2027 budget request, U.S. President Donald Trump has called for the largest U.S. defense budget in history: $1.5 trillion. This is the biggest surge in U.S. defense spending since the Korean War—nearly double the country’s 2022 defense budget and more than the next 18 nations combined.
$1.5 trillion is a lot of money. And all of it is vitally necessary.
The United States faces a dangerous security environment. There are major ongoing conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, and China engages in daily military aggression in the Indo-Pacific. As the 2026 U.S. National Defense Strategy correctly states, Washington and its allies face the risk of simultaneous major power wars across Eurasia.
In fact, this moment may be more perilous than even the darkest days of the Cold War. China is more capable than the Soviet Union, and it is not the only nuclear-capable dictatorship challenging the United States. Washington is simply not ready for war with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran at the same time.
Looking to the Cold War as a successful model, the United States spent an average of about 7 percent of its GDP on defense. In contrast, the abovementioned 2022 defense budget amounted to less than 3.5 percent of the country’s GDP. Measured in these terms, this represents a nearly 70-year low.
As I argued in 2022, Washington needs to meet the moment by strengthening nuclear deterrence, convincing allies to step up, and going “so far as to double defense spending.” At the time, commentators, including some now serving as Trump administration Defense Department officials, questioned the plausibility of—and political support for—such huge defense spending increases. But Trump likes to go huge. This year’s plan takes what the United States spent on defense in fiscal 2022 ($778 billion) and roughly doubles it.
Top U.S. defense spending priorities include modernizing the nuclear deterrent; building the Golden Dome missile defense system; expanding shipbuilding; replenishing depleted munitions stockpiles; investing in new tech, like artificial intelligence, drones, and space capabilities; and revitalizing the defense industrial base.
A stronger nuclear deterrent and homeland missile defense system will help deter strategic attacks by nuclear-armed adversaries. Shipbuilding funds prioritize submarines, which will help the United States maintain subsurface dominance and mitigate against the surface fleet’s growing vulnerabilities to Chinese anti-ship missiles. Munitions, such as PAC-3 interceptors, have been depleted after Operation Epic Fury and years of support to Ukraine and badly need to be replenished. The war in Ukraine is a laboratory for the future of warfare, and investments in new technology will ensure that the United States remains on the cutting edge, including by helping U.S. Pacific Command field a “hellscape” defense.
The most important priority, however, may be revitalizing the defense industrial base. Whenever I give speeches on the subject of defense spending, someone usually asks about the nefarious influence of the “military-industrial complex.” They assume that defense spending increases are driven by defense contractors and lobbyists seeking to line their own pockets, not the national interest.
In fact, we have the opposite problem. The “military-industrial complex” is too weak.
As House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said in February, “we do have to expand the defense industrial base. It’s gotten very small, and it’s atrophied, and it needs a lot of attention.”
After the end of the Cold War, the U.S. defense industrial base nearly withered away. At the famous “last supper” in 1993, then-President Bill Clinton’s defense secretary, Les Aspin, called together the major defense contractors and warned that a reckoning was coming. He encouraged them to prepare for a prolonged period of tighter budgets and to either consolidate or perish. The U.S. defense industrial base shrunk from 51 prime contractors to only five today.
Moreover, the defense industrial base is a component of the broader U.S. industrial base, which has also shriveled in recent decades. During World War II, civilian industry was mobilized as what then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt called an “arsenal of democracy.” Ford Motor Company paused production of Deluxe coupes and started cranking out M4 Sherman tanks.
Decades of globalization and offshoring manufacturing, however, mean that Americans literally do not make things like they used to. The United States’ modern software, financial, and other services companies are second to none, but they are not well suited to mass produce munitions in the next major power war.
As such, revitalizing the U.S. defense industrial base was correctly recognized as a key pillar in the 2026 National Defense Strategy. Larger defense budgets will help provide the demand signal that industry needs to open new manufacturing lines, operate more shifts, recruit a workforce, invest in new manufacturing technology, and otherwise scale production.
Spending at this level will also help the United States uphold its alliance commitments. Under heavy pressure from the Trump administration, NATO allies agreed last year to spend 3.5 percent of their GDPs on hard defense and another 1.5 percent on other security-related spending by 2035. Allied officials questioned whether these spending targets included the United States. This year’s budget request (coming in at about 4.6 percent of GDP) shows that Washington is, indeed, well on its way to doing its fair share.
In a joint statement, Rogers and Sen. Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, “These funds will drive the U.S. toward a defense budget of 5 percent of GDP—a benchmark we have long supported as necessary to maintain our national defense. President Trump is also sending a clear signal for our allies and partners to build on recent progress and meet this benchmark alongside us.”
Some fret that increased defense spending will lead to national insolvency, but the math doesn’t bear this out. To be sure, soaring U.S. debts and deficits are an issue, but the share of government spending going to defense is only about 13 percent. In contrast, nearly half (45 percent) of U.S. federal spending goes to Social Security, Medicare, and other healthcare programs.
Further, the cost of these entitlement programs is projected to rapidly grow over time as baby boomers retire; Medicare costs alone are expected to nearly double over the next decade. Ultimately, reforming entitlement programs is the only practical way to balance the budget. Looking for major cost savings at the Pentagon, on the other hand, is a hunt for small potatoes.
Some Democrats are loathe to support the spending plan because they argue that it would implicitly endorse Trump’s war in Iran. But it would be shortsighted to fail to make a generational investment in the country’s national security due to a disagreement over current policy.
The defense legislation is winding its way through Congress and will come in two tranches: a $1.15 trillion baseline bill and a $350 billion reconciliation package. The bill is stalled as some Republicans try to tie it to Trump’s controversial voter ID bill. Still, the National Defense Authorization Act is one of the few congressional bills that regularly passes, and it will likely make its way to the president’s desk for signature in the near future.
$1.5 trillion is a large, hard-to-fathom number, and dropping 13 figures on any expense is nothing to sneeze at. But spending enough to deter or defeat hostile rivals is necessary—and will ultimately prove less dear than losing a major power war.