Defense Budget

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.

CBO estimates that plans for U.S. nuclear forces, as described in the fiscal year 2025 budget and supporting documents, would cost $946 billion over the 2025–2034 period, $190 billion more than CBO's 2023 estimate for the 2023–2032 period.

In the President’s 2025 budget request, total military compensation is $600 billion, including veterans' benefits. That amount represents an increase of 162 percent since 1980 (and 151 percent since 1999) after removing inflation’s effects.

Under the Navy’s 2025 shipbuilding plan, total shipbuilding costs would average about $40 billion per year (in 2024 dollars) through 2054, CBO estimates, as the Navy built a fleet of 390 battle force ships.

CBO periodically issues a compendium of policy options and their estimated effects on the federal budget. This report presents 76 options for altering spending or revenues to reduce federal budget deficits over the next decade.

Since 2003, CBO has projected the Department of Defense’s costs for the 10 to 15 years beyond those covered in the Future Years Defense Program’s five-year plan. This report describes some of the methods CBO uses to make those projections.

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.

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.

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.

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 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).