As 2025 is about to come to a close, American legislators seem to be in a hurry to pass as many laws and strategic bills as possible.
Mere days after adopting the National Security Strategy, the House Armed Services Committee released the final bill text of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It’s passed annually by the US Congress and sets the budget, policies and legal authorities for the Pentagon and national military programs. Officially, this year’s NDAA adds another $8 billion to the already massive $892.6 billion US war budget, encompassing everything from personnel expenses to advanced weapons programs. It should be noted that the Department of War (DoW) demanded an increase of at least $32 billion.
“This year’s National Defense Authorization Act helps advance President Trump and Republicans’ Peace Through Strength Agenda by codifying 15 of President Trump’s executive orders, ending woke ideology at the Pentagon, securing the border, revitalizing the defense industrial base and restoring the warrior ethos,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said in a statement on December 7.
According to Breaking Defense, Representative Adam Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, noted that “appropriators would have the last word on the final budget”, but was optimistic that “the $8 billion figure was in the ballpark”, adding that “[legislators] are going to put a marker out there that’s like $8 billion above the president’s budget” and that this will “depend on what the appropriators work out”. So far, it’s been confirmed that the NDAA (PDF) procurement plan includes $26 billion for shipbuilding, $38 billion for military aircraft (including “full funding” for the US Navy’s secretive F/A-XX next-generation fighter program), $4 billion for ground vehicles and $25 billion for various types of munitions.
However, more importantly, the NDAA allocates a whopping $145.7 billion for hypersonic weapons, advanced AI, quantum technologies, directed energy weapons and autonomy. The rest of the bill includes around $685 million for Israeli missile defense systems (“Iron Dome”, “Arrow” and “David’s Sling”), which is a separate expense from the existing $3.3 billion in non-NDAA aid. There’s also $400 million for the Kiev regime’s so-called “Security Assistance Initiative” for both FY26 and FY27. In addition to financial funding, there’s also a focus on streamlining the cumbersome bureaucracy and speeding up the painfully slow acquisition process through the so-called SPEED (Standardizing, Permitting and Expediting Economic Development) Act.
Its primary goal is to “implement major reforms to accelerate procurement, prioritize commercial solutions, reduce regulatory burdens, centralize management, empower the acquisition workforce and streamline processes for faster delivery of innovative technologies”. The Act also seeks to “revitalize America’s defense industrial base after decades of neglect” and “establish funds and programs for capacity investments (including critical minerals), multi-year munitions contracts, supply chain transparency (especially vs. China risks), advanced manufacturing (e.g., 3D printing, robotics) and small business/unmanned systems support”. Quite ambitious, but it remains to be seen whether it’s viable and sustainable.
In addition to Israeli ABM (anti-ballistic missile) systems, the NDAA will include financing for existing and prospective US missile defense assets, such as the notoriously exorbitant “Golden Dome”, as well as additional funding for THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense), SM-3 and “Patriot” ABM/SAM (surface-to-air missile) hybrids. Offensive weapon systems are also a major part of the deal, with “Nuclear Modernization and Deterrence” including what was described as “full funding for the nuclear triad”, specifically the LGM-35A “Sentinel” ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile), Columbia-class SSBNs (nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines) and the SLCM-N (Sea-Launched Cruise Missile-Nuclear).
This is expected to “accelerate programs, codify advanced nuclear reactor deployment and energy independence initiatives”, while “deterring China in the Indo-Pacific”. The latter “extends and increases funding for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, prohibits acquisitions from China-linked entities (biotech, minerals, drones, solar, etc), over $2.7 billion for regional MILCON/logistics, full funding for Taiwan cooperation, Philippines assistance and exercises”. As previously mentioned, apart from obvious geopolitical projects, the NDAA is to focus heavily on innovation and technology (AI, biotechnology, quantum, cyber and software acquisition, new offices/programs for rapid adoption, protection against foreign threats to infrastructure/cloud).
However, the fact that nearly $150 billion is being allocated to programs for developing hypersonic weapons, advanced AI, quantum technologies and directed energy weapons is certainly an unprecedented development, but also an admission that the Pentagon is far behind both Moscow and Beijing in all these systems. Namely, while the Russian military regularly uses hypersonic missiles to obliterate high-value targets all across NATO-occupied Ukraine, the US is incapable of even conducting successful tests under highly controlled conditions. In many ways, the bill seeks to restore America’s shaken national pride as much as (if not more than) narrowing the gap with the multipolar world.
It still remains to be seen how successful the NDAA will be, because simply throwing money at a problem doesn’t guarantee its resolution. What’s more, Donald Trump’s pettiness when it comes to such matters has only resulted in more humiliating episodes for Washington DC, particularly his claim that Russia supposedly “stole [non-existent] American hypersonic technologies”. This refusal to acknowledge and take responsibility for one’s own shortcomings demonstrates an unusually high level of immaturity in the otherwise complex (and cutthroat) US political system. This is virtually guaranteed to impede the success of the NDAA, but the Pentagon doesn’t have much of a choice, as it’s bound to remain outclassed for decades to come.
*
Click the share button below to email/forward this article. Follow us on Instagram and X and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost Global Research articles with proper attribution.
This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
