The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has sent the Trump administration’s FY2026 “Skinny Budget” to Congress, and it’s a whopper. Overall, it cuts billions of dollars of spending, but for the first time, the proposed defense budget tops US$1 trillion.
It far exceeds armaments spending anywhere in the world. And it is supposed to protect US territory and to assure American military dominance globally. But does it?
Note that a “Skinny Budget” is just that – an outline that lacks detail about where the money will go. Details are left for the “real” budget submission that will be sent to Congress later this year.
Note, too, that while the proposed expenditures are for 2026, they create obligations that will last for years and in some cases decades. New programs, except under unusual circumstances, will be paid for in future budgets for their projected lifespan.
Chasing Gadgets
The new budget has big money for the B-21 “Raider,” a $700 million unarmed platform that is supposed to replace the B-2 “Spirit” bomber, which costs $2 billion per unit. But don’t believe the B-21 price tag because it will be far more, probably coming close to the B-2’s outlay.
Why not keep the B-2 for the long term and drop the B-21? Because common sense and cost saving are apparently not part of the US Air Force’s arsenal.
The US Army, after what it has seen in Ukraine, is making changes. One good sign is getting rid of the new M-10 Light Tank, which was too heavy to cross many European bridges and to be airlifted into conflict areas. Nor was it survivable.
The delivered current cost is $15 million per unit. Apparently, 80 have been sent to the Army, and the sunk cost in the program is reportedly $7.2 billion – money down the drain.
The Army is also divesting itself of other redundant or ineffective systems. The Skinny Budget, however, does not explain what will happen to the Abrams M-1 tank. Projected to be a game-changer in Ukraine, it failed to be that after being sent without active protection systems on board. Or even the extra armor that was welded onto some Abrams deployed in Europe.
The Russians enjoyed bagging the Abrams and showing off captured ones in a Moscow park.
The Army has cancelled a planned Abrams tank upgrade but says it is pursuing a “new” tank, which will mostly be an old tank with new paint and some added gadgets.
For example, it wants to replace Israel’s highly regarded Trophy active protection system (which is now an add-on for a hundred or so Abrams tanks) with an undocumented and unproven “new” integrated one.
The Trophy could be integrated just with software, but the Army spendthrifts want a new active defense system and a new tank. This will likely cost tens of billions of dollars, render the existing tank fleet obsolete and unsupported, and may not improve the tank’s survivability in any meaningful way.
The Army would be better off spending its money on drone protection, but that is not as sexy as a new tank. Meanwhile, the existing inventory of 5,000 Abrams tanks (3,600 in storage) will not be maintained and will never see a battlefield.
Golden Dome
There is some good news. The Skinny Budget goes all in on supporting President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome strategic defense system. The so-far notional plan recognizes that the US needs continental air defenses against long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
The Russians have demonstrated with their Oreshnik hypersonic missile against a target in Ukraine that their longer-range hypersonic strategic systems, particularly Avangard, are an unprecedented threat. The Golden Dome is at least a partial solution to the threat.
Given current technology and the problem of locating hypersonic missiles and glide vehicles (e.g. Avangard), “traditional” air defenses won’t work. Once a hypersonic threat is at top speed, it generates a type of plasma shield that makes radar detection and tracking almost impossible.
Even systems that can intercept in space, such as the US Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI) or the Israeli Arrow 3, are limited. The US is said to be redesigning the interceptor for the GBI, but that is years away.
Today, the US has only 44 GBI interceptors, while the number of working interceptors is unclear. Of these, 40 are in Greely, Alaska, and four are at Vandenberg AF Base in California, ostensibly to protect against North Korean long-range missiles.
The rest of the US is not protected in any legitimate manner. The US does have AEGIS cruisers and destroyers (why the Navy is prematurely dumping Ticonderoga-class cruisers and reducing sea-based air defenses is inexplicable) and has installed AEGIS onshore in Poland and Romania, as well as THAAD in the Middle East and South Korea. These, at best, are air defense stopgaps.
Golden Dome almost certainly has to be a space-based system made up of armed satellites that can take down Russian or Chinese hypersonic missiles in the boost phase, when they are not yet hypersonic and at least technically vulnerable.
Historical note: This was the Reagan-era plan for a system known as Brilliant Pebbles. The armed satellites were proposed by nuclear scientist Edward Teller and astrophysicist Lowell Wood in 1983. More than a thousand of these satellites were called for at the time.
Present note: The only organization with the ability to put masses of satellites in orbit is Elon Musk’s SpaceX. SpaceX has pioneered reusable rocket boosters, and its Starlink system has already put more than 7,000 satellites in orbit.
The plan is to increase Starlink to 42,000 satellites in the next decade. Neither Russia nor China nor any other US company can match SpaceX’s launch capabilities.
Drone threats
Golden Dome is an ambitious, if undefined, new program. But it does not include defense against other territorial threats, especially drone attacks that can be supported by non-state actors and hostile countries.
As the Ukraine war demonstrates, the Russians and Ukrainians can attack each other with long-range drones. Ukraine hit Moscow, including Putin’s Kremlin office, with drones that flew 1,688 kilometers to their target. Any US enemy can do the same, either from land (including drones launched from inside the US) or from the sea.
The US has no comprehensive air defense system and is badly exposed to an enemy attack, including against sensitive government installations, nuclear power plants, reservoirs and dams, and the population itself. Imagine, for instance, a drone crashing into the Super Bowl.
As it stands, the Skinny Budget is a mixed bag that needs a lot of work. This time around, the problem is not just money but where it is spent and how well it will protect the United States, its people and its assets.
Stephen Bryen is a special correspondent to Asia Times and former US deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. This article, which originally appeared on his Substack newsletter Weapons and Strategy, is republished with permission.
