McAleese & Associates has released a report outlining “big picture issues” that will be addressed in the upcoming markup of the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act by the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in June and one of those is the abrupt shifting of defense resources for the “looming 2027-2030 China fight.”
Jim McAleese, founder of McAleese & Associates and a three-time Wash100 winner, said that shift is now “highly visible” in the combined Department of Defense funding for FY 2022 and FY 2023.
According to McAleese, the proposed FY 2023 budget for the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Space Force takes the lion’s share of the Pentagon’s total 2022-2023 funding growth.
The combined USAF-Space Force funding request of $234 billion for FY 2023 reflects a 14 percent growth in combined DOD funding for fiscal years 2022 and 2023.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon requested $231 billion in FY 2023 funding for the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps, up 4 percent or approximately $9 billion from the enacted FY 2022 funding level of $222 billion for the two service branches.
McAleese said the FY 2023 defense budget proposal includes a request of $145.9 billion for procurement, $276 billion for modernization accounts and $310 billion for operations and maintenance accounts.
In March, McAleese presented an analysis of the White House $5.8 trillion FY 2023 budget request, which includes a proposed budget of $773 billion for DOD.
The proposed DOD budget for FY 2023 shows a 4 percent growth, or approximately $31 billion, from the enacted FY 2022 funding level of $742 billion.
