Trump Administration’s 2021 Defense Budget Request Proposes 3% Military Pay Raise

The Trump administration’s 2021 defense budget request proposes a three percent military pay raise, just slightly below the 3.1 percent in 2020, which was the highest pay raise in a decade.

There was a 3.4 percent pay raise in 2010, but since then, the pay raise had dropped to between one percent and 2.6 percent.

In addition, it requests a one percent pay raise for defense civilians for 2021, after a 3.1 percent increase in 2020.

The overall budget request for 2021 is $740.5 billion, approximately $2 billion higher than in 2020. “FY 2021 DoD budget request is relatively flat with no real growth compared to FY2020 enacted appropriation,” said a budget briefing document.

Broken down, $636.4 billion is for the Pentagon’s “base” budget, $68 billion is for the Pentagon’s warfighting budget, known as “Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO), and $35.1 billion is for the defense items in the Department of Energy and other agencies.

The OCO budget includes $16 billion for the “base” budget, and $53 billion for items relating to its warfighting budget.

There is an emphasis in the budget on nuclear modernization and homeland missile defense, geared at protecting the U.S. from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

The administration is requesting $28.9 billion for nuclear modernization, and $20 billion for missile defense.

The administration is also requesting $18 billion for the space domain. The budget request also boasts the largest research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) “ever.”

It is requesting $3.2 billion for hypersonics, $1.5 billion for microelectronics/5G, $1.7 billion for autonomous systems, $0.8 billion for artificial intelligence.

“This budget invests in bringing the capabilities of tomorrow to life,” said Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist at briefing on Monday.

 

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