The budget bill was signed on Friday 9 February. With $700 billion, the US defense budget for 2018 is the highest in its history. And it is expected to reach $716 billion in 2019.
The war in Afghanistan is "swallowing" huge amounts of money (Picture source: US DoD)
That's far more in military spending than the US' combined two nearest competitors, Russia and China. In fact, the US spends more on national defense than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United Kingdom, India, France and Japan combined.
The Pentagon will receive $94 billion more this budget year than last year, which represents a 15.5% jump. It will benefit to all the components of the armed forces, addressing namely a need for more hi-tech missile defense and the start of a complete recapitalization of the nuclear weapons arsenal, but also new aircraft, combined ships, logistics, etc. The real beneficiaries in the military spending spree are the big weapons corporations, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing and General Dynamics.
US Defense Secretary acknowledges the spending jump is the largest increase since the 2002 initiation of the War on Terror by US President George W. Bush — from $345 billion that year to $437 billion the next. James Mattis says such an increase is needed to pull the military out of a slump in combat readiness at a time of renewed focus on the stalemated conflict in Afghanistan and, of course, the threatening situation created on the Korean Peninsula by Kim Jong-un. Combat troop numbers are becoming too small to defend the country from attack. "I cannot overstate the negative impact to our troops and families' morale from all this budget uncertainty," Defense Secretary Mattis asserted hours before the US House and Senate approved the enormous spending outlay, cited by Abc15.com.
As Sputnik International reports, President Trump's foreign policy appears to be increasingly offensive, sending more combat missions to Somalia and Yemen while adding several thousand additional troops to the ongoing American war in Afghanistan, and wielding sharp rhetoric that has many fearing a coming ground war with the DPRK, as the White House continues to demand that Pyongyang give up nuclear weapons.
But the eye-watering defense cash cow approved by Washington on Friday goes well beyond the $668 billion 2018 Pentagon budget originally requested by the Trump cabinet, as some $71 billion of the increase is required to prop up expensive wars in Afghanistan and in other parts of the world.
