Defense Budget

CBO estimates that construction of 18 medium landing ships would cost between $6.2 billion and $7.8 billion in 2024 dollars. CBO’s estimates range from two to roughly three times the Navy’s current estimates.

Between 1980 and 2022, the shipbuilding composite index grew an average of 1.2 percentage points faster per year than the GDP deflator did. Looking ahead, a gap of roughly 1 percentage point would be consistent with historical experience.

CBO compares the housing standards used to determine the military’s basic allowance for housing (BAH) with the housing rented by comparable civilians. CBO also compares BAH rates with the rental costs paid by those civilians.

In the President’s 2024 budget request, total military compensation is $551 billion, including veterans' benefits. That amount represents an increase of 134 percent since 1999 after removing the effects of inflation.

CBO estimates that eliminating the maintenance backlogs of roughly 20,000 buildings that the Navy uses and maintains in the United States would cost $17 billion. Renovating and modernizing the buildings would cost an additional $32 billion.

This tool allows the user to see the effects on the Department of Defense’s total operation and support costs and on the size of the military of adding or subtracting tanks, ships, aircraft, and other units.

Under the three alternatives in the Navy’s 2024 plan, total shipbuilding costs would average about $34 billion to $36 billion per year (in 2023 dollars) through 2053, CBO estimates, as the Navy built a fleet of 319 to 367 battle force ships.

CBO analyzes the Department of Defense’s plans for 2024 through 2028 as presented in the 2024 Future Years Defense Program. Under those plans, CBO projects, defense costs would increase by 10 percent between 2028 and 2038.

CBO analyzes funding for special and incentive pay for active-duty service members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps and explores how those types of pay have been used to address personnel shortfalls.

The Defense Logistics Agency buys fuel and charges the military services for it. But volatile fuel costs can cause changes in rates that create budgetary challenges for the services. CBO examined new ways to budget for and price fuel.

CBO estimates that plans for U.S. nuclear forces, as described in the fiscal year 2023 budget and supporting documents, would cost $756 billion over the 2023–2032 period, $122 billion more than CBO’s 2021 estimate for the 2021–2030 period.

CBO issues a volume describing 17 policy options that would each reduce the federal budget deficit by more than $300 billion over the next 10 years or, in the case of Social Security options, have a comparably large effect in later decades.

CBO issues a volume that contains short descriptions of 59 policy options that would each reduce the federal budget deficit by less than $300 billion over the next 10 years.

CBO estimates that the total cost to eliminate the deferred maintenance backlog for buildings in use on Army bases in the United States, and to renovate and modernize the Army’s buildings, would be $54 billion (measured in 2020 dollars).

CBO examines how the discretionary spending proposals in the President's 2023 budget compare with CBO’s most recent baseline budget projections, which span 2022 to 2032.

CBO analyzes DoD’s plans for 2022 as presented in the Biden Administration’s 2022 budget request and projects how those plans would affect defense costs through 2031. Those costs would increase by 10 percent over that period, CBO projects.

CBO examined three broad options for reconfiguring the military if funding for the Department of Defense was reduced by $1 trillion (in 2022 dollars), or 14 percent, over the next 10 years.

This update of CBO’s 2016 primer on the structure of the U.S. military describes the size, functions, and operation and support costs of every major element of the armed forces.