https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-defense-budget-pentagon-u-s-military-china-russia-israel-ukraine-ba7fd46b?mod=opinion_lead_pos1
President Biden opened his State of the Union address last week invoking Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941. This week he rolled out a military budget fit for 1991, the twilight of the Cold War. Will Congress step up to defend the country amid compounding threats?
The President’s $850 billion request for the Pentagon in 2025 is a mere 1% increase over 2024. That’s a cut after inflation, the fourth in a row Mr. Biden has proposed. What’s happened in the past year? Israel was brutally attacked and is now fighting a war for survival. Iranian proxies have fired drones and rockets at U.S. troops in the region more than 100 times, and its terrorists in Yemen have taken a global shipping lane hostage.
Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is a bloody slog that he could still win. North Korea is ratcheting up its belligerence toward South Korea, which the U.S. is bound to defend. China announced recently a 7.2% increase in defense spending. One recent think-tank report estimates Beijing is fielding high-end equipment five to six times faster than the U.S.
Mr. Biden thinks this is an acceptable moment to put American defenses on a diet, and the Administration says it’s merely complying with budget caps negotiated last year with Congress. Yet few priorities escaped the axe.
The U.S. Army will contract, and not because America is relying less on land forces, which are in high demand in Europe and the Middle East. The Army is asking for 442,300 troops, though the Biden Administration requested 485,000 as recently as 2022. The healthier number for the missions required is 500,000. Shrinking the force is no substitute for fixing the underlying problem, which is a struggle to find recruits.
The U.S. Navy will purchase only six ships and retire 10 early, which would shrink the fleet to 287 ships in 2025 from 296 today. Perhaps the most egregious choice is the Administration’s decision to purchase only one Virginia-class attack submarine, instead of a planned two.