Biden Defense Budget Aggressively Focused on China
The $715 billion Department of Defense (DoD) Budget Request for Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 released by the Biden Administration on May 28 calls for a Pentagon-wide effort to prepare for full-scale war with People’s Republic of China. Unlike in past years, when the Armed Forces were expected to prepare for a multitude of threats – ranging from terrorist strikes to regional conflicts in the Middle East and Asia – this year’s budget request subordinates all other such concerns to the overriding task of confronting the PRC. Even Russia – once partnered with China as a “great-power adversary” – has been downgraded as a secondary threat when compared to that purportedly posed by China.
As explained by the Pentagon, China’s military poses the greatest threat to U.S. security and so constitutes the “pacing challenge” – the most fearsome peril that U.S. forces must be capable of overpowering in any future war. If capable of defeating China, the logic goes, America’s Armed Services (the “Joint Force”) will be more than adequate to overcome any lesser threat, including Russia and North Korea.
“China poses the greatest long-term challenge to the United States, and strengthening deterrence against China will require DoD to work in concert with other instruments of national power,” the DoD’s Defense Budget Overview for FY 2022 asserts. “A combat-credible Joint Force will underpin a whole-of-nation approach to competition and ensure the Nation leads from a position of strength. Accordingly, DoD will prioritize China and its military modernization as our pacing challenge.”
Because China has modernized its armed forces in recent years, the Pentagon further argues, the United States must spend many hundreds of billions of dollars to procure new high-tech weaponry aimed at overpowering even the most advanced Chinese hardware. In some cases, this might mean abandoning older weapons systems developed for counterinsurgency operations in order to release funds for the acquisition of more modern technology.
“To meet the strategic challenges posed by an increasingly assertive China,” the Budget Overview states, the DOD will “shift resources away from vulnerable platforms and weapons systems that are ill-suited to advanced threats and to redirect investments to cutting-edge technologies and capabilities that will determine our military and national security advantage in the future.”
In particular, the Biden budget prioritizes investments in long-range missiles – some capable of reaching hypersonic speeds (greater than 5 times the speed of sound) – and additional warships, both crewed and uncrewed. Among the new missiles on the Pentagon’s wish-list are some whose range would exceed the limits in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1987, from which the Trump administration withdrew in August 2019.
As noted in the Budget Overview, the “FY 2022 PB [presidential budget] request “improves the Joint Force’s long-range strike capability and capacity, which multiple DoD-internal and -external analyses have identified as critical to U.S. warfighting capability and a credible deterrent for the Indo-Pacific region. This includes…land-based conventional fires capabilities with ranges exceeding the 500km limit previously imposed by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty; and hypersonic capabilities, such as the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike capability. The FY 2022 PB request also expands both shipbuilding activities and shipbuilding capacity, which are necessary to maintain U.S. maritime superiority in the Indo-Pacific, given the centrality of this domain to operations in theater.”
Specifically, the proposed budget request includes $6.6 billion in FY 2022 “to develop and field multi-Service, multi-domain [i.e., air, sea, ground] offensive Long Range Fires,” with the aim of producing air-launched hypersonic missiles by FY 2022, deploying an Army hypersonic missile battery by FY 2023, and deploying ship-launched hypersonic missiles in FY 2025. (Many additional billions will be needed to move these programs forward beyond FY 2022.)
Another $22.6 billion is slated for shipbuilding in FY 2022, aimed at adding two new attack submarines to the fleet plus one new guided-missile destroyer and the first of a new class of advanced frigates, the Constellation, plus several additional warships.
Other priorities in the FY 2022 budget include increased spending on emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and cyber – investments that are claimed by the DoD to be essential in overcoming alleged Chinese advantages in these areas.
As part of its effort to counter China’s growing military capabilities, the Budget Overview notes, “DoD is leveraging our technological advantages and investing in cutting-edge technologies that will deliver new warfighting advantages to our forces, including artificial intelligence, hypersonic technology, cyber, and quantum computing, among others.”
The FY 2022 request includes $112 billion for Research, Development, Test & Evaluation (RDT&E) – the largest amount ever requested for this purpose (and an amount equal to over half of the entire Chinese military budget for 2021). Much of this amount will be devoted to the further development of weapons already slated for production, such as the F-35 stealth fighter and the Columbia-class nuclear submarine, but substantial amounts are also designated for research on emerging technologies. For example, $874 million is to be allocated to research on artificial intelligence (a 50% increase over FY 2021), $398 million on 5G wireless communications, and $3.8 billion on advanced hypersonics development. In addition, $20.6 billion is allocated for military space activities and $10.4 billion for cyberspace operations – both under the pretext that China poses an extraordinary threat in these areas.
In addition to all this, the FY 2022 Pentagon budget includes $5.1 billion for the “Pacific Deterrence Initiative” (PDI), a program demanded by Congress in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021. These funds, the DoD notes, are intended to “build forces that are resilient, ready and postured to respond quickly and effectively against aggression; and [to] help strengthen Indo-Pacific alliances and partnerships that are central to the U.S. vision of a free, open, and rules-based Indo-Pacific regional order.” Most of the funds will be used to supplement those identified above to enhance U.S. firepower in the region, especially through the deployment of long-range missiles, but some will also be used to increase joint training with U.S. allies in the region and provide them with additional military aid.
A thorough examination of the Pentagon’s FY 2022 budget request would reveal many additional items aimed at enhancing the U.S. military’s capacity to overpower China in any future military confrontation. For example, the budget includes $52.4 billion for new fighter aircraft and other Air Force systems, much of which ultimately will be devoted to air operations in the Pacific theater.
Now that the Biden administration has submitted its FY 2022 military budget, it will be up to Congress to determine which of these requests will be enacted into law and which set aside. Judging by the current, anti-Chinese mood on Capital Hill, the final defense budget is likely to include more measures aimed at fighting China, not less. It is likely, then, the final pricetag for the FY 2022 budget will be greater than the $715 billion proposed by the White House.
Whatever final amount Congress ultimately agrees on, there is no doubt that military and political leaders in China will view this request as evidence of a single-minded drive to prevent China’s rise and erode its defensive capabilities in the Western Pacific — an assessment that will no doubt prompt them to enhance their own military capabilities, prompting calls for even more China-oriented military spending by U.S. lawmakers and an ever-accelerating arms race with no end in sight.