US Amy getting much needed boost to its budget
After 8 years of decline the US Army is getting a boost to its budget with a priority toward readiness and upgrades.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army’s fiscal 2018 budget request funds a 1,018,000 total force and prioritizes munitions stockpiles and modernization of armored brigade combat teams.
The White House’s defense budget request is expected to be unveiled at the Pentagon on May 23.
Defense News has learned the Army’s base budget request in 2018 will be $137.1 billion. The request in 2017, the last one of the Obama administration, funded the Army at $123.1 billion.
For full FY18 budget coverage, click here.
The European Reassurance Initiative, or ERI, funding in 2018 continues to rise from previous years, with a request for $4.8 billion. The Army’s portion of that is roughly $3.2 million, according to a defense official.
The ERI, the umbrella under which funding for European support has been funneled following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, was more than quadrupled from 2016 in the 2017 request going from $789 million to $3.4 billion.
The Pentagon’s overseas contingency operations request amounts to $64.5 billion. The Army’s slice of that is $28.9 billion.
This year’s budget request release comes months late. Congress passed a 2017 omnibus spending bill May 1. The defense portion of the bill totaled $598.5 billion, which contained less than half the $30 billion defense supplemental U.S. President Donald Trump sought, but $19.9 billion more than in the last year of the Obama administration.
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The Army was given a boost of $4.5 billion above what it had planned for in 2018 during the Obama administration, the official said.
Half of the funds will go toward paying to keep the Army’s force size at 1,018,000, which is the end-strength mandated in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. Within that, funding will be supplied for training and equipment to support the troops, not just payroll, the official said.
While the Army would like to grow the force beyond 1,018,000, it could not shirk modernization of the force to increase the size of the total force beyond that.
So the other half of the $4.5 billion will prioritize shoring up a growing shortage of munition stockpiles, restoring what the Army has expended in various contingencies, and modernizing Desert Storm-era ABCTs, the official said.
US Army's 2018 budget request stockpiles munitions, modernizes armored brigades