Increase or reduce military spending?

Bob Sheak, September 12, 2026

Trump wants to spend unprecedented sums of money on the military. According to a Whitehouse report, President Trump is committed to rebuilding our military to secure peace through strength’ but, as documented later in this post, much of this spending is wasteful or is going to ineffective weapon systems (https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/rebuilding-our-military-fact-sheet.pd).

The proposed 2027 military budget

Trump’s FY 2027 Budget proposes “$1.15 trillion in discretionary (28% increase) and $350 billion in mandatory bringing total resources for defense to $1.5 trillion (including a 44% increase for the Department of War (DOW).” This includes an order of 41 ships, “the largest demand signal to the maritime industrial base since the administration o Franklin D. Roosevelt. It includes billions for building the Golden Dome, a controversial and probably ineffective system on the West Coast to intercept incoming nuclear weapons from enemies. The budget proposals also calls for the elimination of millions of dollars in “egregious spending related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and other ‘woke’ programs that are part of “the more than $1.6 billion in reductions that the Administration has already identified.”

Spending on the Iran War

Meanwhile, Trump’s government is spending a huge amount of money in the Iran war. Roman Kukhalashvili reports that as of September 10, 2026, the government had spent 42,573,971,775 on the Iran War, with the spending rapidly increasing (https://militaryspend.org/us-iran-war).

US national debt climbs above $40 trillion

This unprecedented post-WWII spending is increasing the national debt.

Steve Benen, reporting for MSN, Aug 20, 2026, is among those who consider this issue (https://finance-yahoo.comeconomy/policy/articles/u-national-debt-reaches-40-130421237.html).

Benen points out that “eight years ago, Donald Trump appeared on Sean Hannity’s radio show and reflected on the nation’s fiscal health. ‘We have $21 trillion in debt … a number that is unthinkable,” the president said in July 2018.

But that will go down very quickly.’”

But in early August of 2026, “Americans learned that this year’s budget deficit had reached nearly $1.8 trillion, which is already higher than all last year’s deficit, and that’s with two months still remaining in the fiscal year. This week, the public received some related news: The United States’ national debt, which Trump considered “unthinkable” when it reached $21 trillion, has now crossed the $40 trillion threshold.”

Trump’s misleading promise

Benen writes, “we’re racking up debt faster than earlier independent analyses, thanks almost entirely to the cost of GOP tax breaks, the war in Iran and the White House’s failed tariffs agenda. The article added, “The faster accumulation of debt comes at a perilous moment. An array of concerns, including inflation, the war in Iran and rising debt levels around the world, are driving investors to dump government bonds.”

Benen continues. “Trump promised voters a very different outcome: As a candidate in 2016, the Republican told voters he had unique expertise in budgetary issues, which would enable him to eliminate the deficit and start paying off the debt. Trump delivered the opposite results, adding nearly $7.8 trillion to the national debt in just one term. As a candidate in 2024, he repeated his earlier promises, before again delivering the opposite results: Trump has added nearly $4 trillion in debt since returning to the White House a year and a half ago.

“Trump and congressional Republicans are to blame: There’s no great mystery here. The debt is growing quickly as a direct result of GOP policies. Military spending is one major part of the rising debt, reducing it is one major part of a solution.

Cutting military spending

In their new book, The Trillion-Dollar War Machine, William D. Hartung and Ben Freeman analyze how wasteful and inefficient the military budget is and how to make it less so.

Where the spending goes

“More than half of the Pentagon budget goes to private firms, not military personnel.” (p. 3)

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars “cost US taxpayers a staggering $8 trillion, according to estimates by the Cost of War project at Brown University. Much of that spending went directly to Pentagon contractors. The ‘Big Five’ contractors alone – Lockheed Martin, Raytheon (now RTX), Boeing, General Dynamics and Northrup Grumman – split an astonishing $2.1 trillion in Pentagon contracts in the two decades after the 9/11 attacks as they benefited from soaring military budgets”

(p. 3)

They lobby big time – “…in 2024 alone, Pentagon contractors spent more than $148 billion on lobbying and had more the 945 lobbyists work on their behalf, nearly two-thirds of whom have gone through the ‘revolving door,’ which prior experience in the legislative or executive branch. Taken together, today’s war machine fields almost two lobbyists – and more than $275,000 in lobbying spending – for every individual member of Congress. Given that nearly all representatives and senators have a salary below $200,000 per year” (p. 4)

The arms makers

CEOs make tens of millions. Hartung and Freeman write: “Millions of dollars of the new money flowing to the arms makers will be diverted to pay for exorbitant executive salaries. The top five contractors pay their CEOs an average of more than $20 million per year. Adding in other key executive at these firms brings the total to above $287 million per year, enough to create more than 2,800 jobs in the green energy sector or hire more than 6,100 new soldiers” (p. 70)

Trump’s two big projects in his second term, though there are other ineffective weapon systems in the works

Hartung and Freeman make important points.

The F-47 combat aircraft

“…the next generation combat aircraft known as the F-47, which will involve a down payment of at least $20 billion to develop and buy the initial round of planes, with untold billions beyond that depending on how many the Pentagon chooses to build and how many problems arise in building the aircraft. The F-47 award is a win for a big traditional firm, Boeing….” (p. 7). It has a “dismal record of cost overruns and performance problems.”

The Golden Dome project – “a frequent talking point of President Trump – could develop into one of the most wasteful programs in Pentagon history, soaking up enormous amounts of taxpayer money without adding much to the defense of the United States….if it gets up and running, it could consume hundreds of billions of dollars in the decades to come pursuing the impossible dream of an impenetrable shield against everything from hypersonic weapons and next-generation drones to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).” (p. 7)

Other problematic weapons

ICBMs would not make the US safer

Hartung and Freeman write, “with a ‘dyad’: a nuclear force make up of nuclear-armed bombers and ballistic missile-firing submarines but no ICBMs” (43)

“Former Secretary of Defense William Perry….coauthored a book with Tom Collins of the Ploughshares Fund that recommends phasing out ICBMs rather than building new ones. Their rational is that doing so would eliminate the need to launch nuclear weapons upon warning of an attack, which undergirds a ‘use ‘em or lose ‘em’ mentality that increases the risk of an accidental conflict. At they further note, ICBMs are not needed for defense. ‘The U.S. nuclear submarine force is sufficient for assured deterrence and will be for the foreseeable future” (p. 60)

The F-35 fighter

“Today…the F-35 is doing none of its required missions well. It’s too fast to provide effective support for troops on the ground, too light to carry large numbers of bombs, inferior to prior-generation planes in aerial dogfights, and so difficult to maintain that is spends almost half its time in the hangar being repaired” (p. 63)

The Boeing KC-46 refueling tanker

“…a poster child for the war machine’s shoddy performance and massive cost overruns is the Boeing KC-46 refueling tanker. At a cost of $6.9 billion more than original estimates, the KC-46 program is already seven years behind schedule yet still plagued by technical problems” p. 74) ….

Boeing V-22 Osprey

“Another example of poor production and faulty maintenance is the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey, an aircraft that is supposed to be able to both hover like a helicopter and fly like a plane” – “As of December 2023, about four hundred of the aircraft were in use by the Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. Yet the Osprey has proven to be as dangerous to its crew members as any adversary, perhaps even more dangerous. The aircraft has been involved in ten fatal crashes that have killed a shocking sixty-four people” (76)

Ways to rein in the influence of the war machine

Hartung and Freeman offer this “preliminary” list.

“…campaign-finance reform; tighter restrictions on the revolving door between government and the arms industry; greater transparency about the activities of the arms lobby, including full transparency of its contribution to think tanks and academia; candid disclosures whenever the US military or Pentagon contractors are involved in the production of movies, TV shows, video games, or any other form of entertainment; increased investment in other areas of urgent national need as alternatives to economic dependency on the Pentagon; and, most importantly, a new vision of America’s role in the world that favors dialogue and diplomacy over war and preparations for war” (p. 262)

Concluding thoughts It’s not often that we are fortunate enough to have an in-depth, expert analysis of the military-industrial complex or war machine. But this is what Hartung and Freeman give us in their book. It is an incisive rebuttal to those who support Trump’s huge military budget or believe that only war and war preparedness keep us free from foreign domination. But, to the contrary, they provide the evidence and rationale for something very different, a reenergized peace movement, a focus on diplomacy, and a smaller more efficient milita