New Defense Budget [TABLE SUMMARY]

Congress overcame its perpetual gridlock and actually passed a Defense budget. In today’s political climate, a budget for the entire fiscal year was no sure thing.  For example, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is only funded to February.

This is good news for Defense vendors who have suffered under budget uncertainty. Take a look at table below for winners and losers.

 

Who gets it	How much	Comments
Department of Defense	$554.1 billion	President wanted $554.3 billion $3.3 billion more than 2014 base appropriations More than half of the overall federal budget
Pentagon Procurement	$93.8 billion	$1 billion more than 2014
Defense R&D	$63.7 billion	$700 million more than 2014
Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) (Afghanistan)	$64 billion	$21 billion less than the 2014
Anti-Islamic State Operations	$3.4 billion	President wanted $5.6 billion
Military Pay Raise	Capped at 1%	DoD wanted 1.8% Civilian contractors might be laid off
DoD Operation & Maintenance	$161.7 billion	$1.8 billion more than 2014 O&M, traditional budget whipping boy, may have escaped its usual ax, because of worries about military readiness
A-10 Attack Plane	$338 million	Congress blocks A-10 retirement plans The Warthog lives!
Iron Dome Program	$351 million	President only wanted $176 million
European Reassurance Initiative	$810 million	Includes $175 million for Ukraine and Baltics
Navy’s E/A-18G Electronic Warfare Jets	$1.4 billion	Enough to buy 15 in 2015

A few other highlights

• The F-35 fighter program gets $240 million more than requested in order to buy four additional jets.
• The budget maintains the American aircraft carrier fleet at 11.
• The National Guard and Reserve gets $1.2 billion more than requested for equipment.

Information for this blog post came from DefenseNews and Forbes.