The top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee is calling to boost the defense topline for fiscal year 2025 by an additional $55 billion, part of a new proposal that pushes to increase annual U.S. defense spending to five percent of the gross domestic product.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the SASC ranking member, unveiled his plan on Wednesday for a “generational investment” in defense, which includes a widespread array of recommendations ranging from maxing out munitions production capacity, growing the size of the Navy fleet and moving into production of modernization efforts across the services.
“Unfortunately, America’s military has a lack of modern equipment, a paucity of training and maintenance funding, and a massive infrastructure backlog. America’s existing National Defense Strategy and budget were not built to deal with the current threat landscape. The U.S. military needs this generational investment immediately to combat these rapidly growing and metastasizing threats,” Wicker writes in his defense investment plan.
Wicker opens his plan calling for boosting annual defense spending from around three percent up to five percent and to start with adding $55 billion to the FY ‘25 defense topline, for a total of $950 billion, which would break with the one percent spending cap set by last year’s debt limit deal and the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
“This will enable the United States to fix our failing defense infrastructure, field a new generation of equipment, and maintain American technological leadership,” Wicker writes. “Ideally, devoting five percent of GDP to defense spending in the near future will not be necessary for very long, but it would certainly pay dividends far beyond five years. This defense buildup would set up the U.S. military for sustained success over the next two to three decades, as the Reagan-era buildup did in the 1980s. This program is a generational investment that will revive the U.S. military and put it on a stable path for the entirety of the 21st century.”
Wicker’s push to boost spending arrives about two weeks before SASC is set to markup its version of the next defense policy bill and as Senate appropriators have signaled an openness to potentially considering increases to the topline as well.
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), the Senate’s top defense appropriator, said earlier in May the Pentagon will require a “bigger number” for its FY ‘25 topline than the nearly $850 billion requested and cautioned the imposed spending cap could hinder modernization efforts (Defense Daily, May 8).
Meanwhile, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chair of the Appropriations Committee, has offered some support for exploring a potential defense topline boost, while reiterating she is “going to insist on parity for non-defense spending.”
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the House’s top appropriator, has said his committee plans to adhere to the spending cap and the requested $895 billion nation defense topline when marking up its FY ‘25 defense spending bills (Defense Daily, May 16).
“In the face of an aggressive schedule and fiscal constraints, we will demonstrate responsible governance and safeguard hard-earned tax dollars. The bills written by this committee will adhere to law set by the Fiscal Responsibility Act—with no side deals—and focus resources where they are needed most,” Cole said in a recent statement.
The remainder of Wicker’s defense investment plan includes a series of programmatic and planning priorities, some of which may be addressed during SASC’s upcoming National Defense Authorization Act.
On munitions, Wicker calls for maximizing production rate across the board unless a weapon is already above the required stockpile level, pursuing new production lines to increase short-term capacity and bolstering the munitions supplier base with “special attention to energetics and component manufacturers.”
“While the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon continues development, the Army can further expand production capacity on its Precision Strike Missile line. The GMLRS missile line should remain maxed out, and the Army should immediately move to develop a maritime seeker for GMLRS. The Army should also take over the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb program and develop a maritime seeker for that weapon as well,” Wicker writes as an example.
For air and missile defense, Wicker calls for reversing the Pentagon’s decision to cancel the SM-3 Block IB interceptor and pushing to field the Guam Defense Systems “as soon as possible.”
“At the high end, the Pentagon’s decision to pursue SM-3 Block IB cancellation must not only be reversed, but the line should continue producing highly capable missiles far into the future. The SM-3 Block IIA line is maxed out with U.S. and Japanese purchases this year; a small investment could increase SM-3 Block IIA production to 36 missiles per year,” Wicker writes.
On the Navy, Wicker calls for growing the size of the fleet to 357 ships by 2035, pushing for shipyard and industrial base capacity to build three attack submarines per year, going after multi-year procurement of amphibious warships and accelerating procurement of underwater vessels and unmanned surface vessels.
Additional priorities in the plan include, “vastly” expanding prepositioned stocks in the Indo-Pacific, addressing the $5.2 billion backlog in Defense Production Act projects and pursuing a “complete modernization of Cold War-era air defense radar network” for homeland defense, to include building up counter-drone defenses at U.S. installations.
For Indo-Pacific priorities, Wicker suggests considering new nuclear sharing agreements with partners in the region, assessing the re-deployment of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in the Korean Peninsula and accelerating Taiwan and the Philippines military modernization with “the procurement and employment of asymmetric capabilities.”
Wicker also calls for reversing Air Force retirement plans for F-15Es and F-22s, purchasing at least 340 more fighter aircraft in the next five years, acceleration B-21 production, working to complete Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030 priorities and declaring nuclear forces modernization as a “national priority.”