2019 President's Budget Request for Defense-wide

Source: See endnote 2.

Missile Defense Agency

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is a research, development, and acquisition organization focused on protecting the homeland from ballistic missile threats (known as national missile defense) and on protecting U.S. military installations and allies overseas from ballistic missile threats (known as regional or theater missile defense). Both the Trump administration and Congress have prioritized missile defense in recent years, increasing funding for MDA in the 2017 appropriation and through amendments to the president’s 2018 budget request. The requested 2018 and 2019 funding increases are driven in part by the growing ballistic missile threat from North Korea. The administration requests $9.9 billion for the agency in 2019, a very substantial increase of 26 percent over the original 2018 president’s budget request.³ MDA plans to spend the bulk of this funding on research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E).⁴ It will also spend about a quarter of its 2019 funding request on procurement of both national missile defense systems, like Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD), and theater missile defense systems, like Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD). The forthcoming DoD Missile Defense Review should shed additional light on the department’s priorities in this space, but this budget request makes clear that missile defense is a high priority for the Trump administration.

Special Operations Command

Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is a functional combatant command charged with supporting, directing, and overseeing U.S. special operations forces globally. The services provide personnel, platforms, and operational support to SOCOM, but many platforms, munitions, and research and development projects unique to special operations are funded under SOCOM in the Defense-wide account. The Department requests over $13 billion for this purpose in 2019. This request is about $1 billion more than the 2018 request, continuing a trend of growth in SOCOM funding. The majority of these funds, over $9 billion, directly support special operations forces’ operations and training.⁵ Most of the remainder goes toward procurement of special operations-specific weapons systems and modifying general purpose platforms for use by special operations forces, both of which are enabled by SOCOM’s dedicated procurement authority. 

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) mission is to identify and develop breakthrough national security technologies. DoD established DARPA following the 1957 Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite to ensure that in the future, the United States “would be the initiator and not the victim of strategic technological surprise.”⁶ DoD requests over $3 billion in RDT&E funding for DARPA in 2019, about the same as the 2018 request.⁷ While the details of DARPA’s projects are largely classified, research areas include biomedical technology, advanced aerospace systems, network-centric warfare technology, advanced electronics, and sensor technology. Many of DARPA’s research projects have eventually made their way into the commercial sector; the Global Positioning System, or GPS, is one of the more notable examples. 

Conclusion 

While much of what the Defense-wide account funds can be classified as back-office functions, substantial portions of this budget category go directly to the heart of DoD’s mission. DoD can and should find more efficient ways to do things like human resources management and accounting, but capricious cuts to the Defense-wide account based on the mistaken perception that it is all overhead risk damaging the department’s warfighting efficacy, as these three examples demonstrate.

Up next: some conclusions about the 2019 defense budget request and next steps. Check CNAS.org/PB19 or sign up to have fresh analysis delivered directly to your inbox.