The Trump administration’s 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) drives its FY 2020 budget proposal, which aims to fix readiness and increase modernization to prepare for long-term competition with China and Russia. Force structure expands very little. Thus, the Trump administration, like the Obama administration before it, has chosen capability over capacity, but unrelenting operational demands are pushing the services towards a high-low mix in order to cover both.

To pay for these initiatives, the proposed FY 2020 defense budget rises 4.9 percent above the FY 2019 level and continues a five-year streak of increases. However, the budget is projected to be flat in real terms after FY 2020, requiring internal offsets to pay for any future initiatives.

Although widely supported, the NDS has been criticized by some for being underfunded and by others for being too aggressive, while the proposed FY 2020 budget has been criticized for not making sufficient changes to align with the NDS.

The future poses two risks to the administration’s plans: (1) the lack of real growth in future budgets will hamper the launching of further initiatives; and (2) a softening of public, and then political, support could undermine both budgets and an engagement strategy.