Long-Term Implications of the 2025 Future Years Defense Program
Report
CBO analyzes the Department of Defense’s plans for 2025 to 2029 as presented in the 2025 Future Years Defense Program. Under those plans, CBO projects, defense costs would increase by 11 percent between 2029 and 2039.
The Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) is a five-year plan that the Department of Defense (DoD) prepares as part of its annual budget request. In this report, the Congressional Budget Office analyzes the costs of DoD’s plans for 2025 to 2029 as presented in the 2025 FYDP and projects how those plans would affect defense costs through 2039.
The proposed budget for DoD in 2025 totals $850 billion. Adjusted for inflation, that amount is 1.1 percent less than the amount anticipated for 2025 in the previous FYDP and 1.7 percent less than the amount appropriated by the Congress for 2024 (excluding supplemental funding).
According to the 2025 FYDP, DoD’s budget would climb to $866 billion (when adjusted for inflation) by 2029, a total increase of 1.9 percent from 2025. Cumulative costs from 2025 to 2028 would be about $13 billion less than was anticipated in DoD’s previous FYDP (which covered 2024 to 2028). The relative shares of funding for operation and support, acquisition, and infrastructure would change little over the period covered by the 2025 FYDP.
CBO projects that the cost of DoD’s plans would increase by 11 percent over the 10 years following the FYDP period, reaching $965 billion (in 2025 dollars) in 2039. Sixty-four percent of that increase would occur in operation and support, 32 percent in acquisition, and 4 percent in infrastructure.
The costs of DoD’s plans may be underestimated in the 2025 FYDP. If the department’s costs grew at rates consistent with CBO’s economic forecast (in areas such as compensation) or historical trends (in areas such as weapons acquisition), they would be about 4 percent higher from 2025 to 2029 and about 5 percent higher from 2025 to 2039. To accommodate those higher costs, DoD would need to scale back its plans or request larger budgets than are anticipated in the 2025 FYDP.
Costs for Operation and Support, Acquisition, and Infrastructure in the 2025 FYDP and in CBO’s Projections
