Over the past week, the Department of Defense’s (DoD) military services and combatant commands have sent their budget “wish lists” to Congress, including several tech-focused programs that failed to make it into the official fiscal year (FY) 2025 defense budget request.
Every year, the chiefs of staff of the military services and combatant commands are required to submit to Congress an unfunded priority lists — also known as “wish lists” — laying out projects they want to be funded.
This year’s unfunded priorities lists, first obtained by POLITICO, have so far totaled over $10 billion. Here are some of the tech-focused priorities the services and combatant commands have added to their wish lists:
The U.S. Army outlined $2.2 billion in priorities that did not make the cut for the Pentagon’s FY 2025 budget request. The top line item in the request is for $449 million in funding needed to protect troops from drone threats. The request also included $185 million to accelerate the procurement of the Coyote counter drone system, which according to the service branch will increase deployed forces “kinetic capability to counter adversary” unmanned aerial systems.
The U.S. Northern Command’s list has just one line item, requesting just under $35 million to support a ‘better information environment” for several key programs including digital transformation.
The U.S. Space Force submitted a $1.15 billion wish list to Congress requesting money for several infrastructure projects, space launches, and a handful of high-dollar classified programs. One of the top lines — unclassified — items on the list is a request for $160 million to establish a “working capital fund” to be used for purchasing commercial satellite communications.
The U.S. Space Command (SPACECOM) also submitted a wish list with a similar bump as Space Force, requesting an additional $1.2 billion to fund — mostly classified—programs which it described as related to “Space Situation Awareness Operations.” SPACECOM also requested $90 million to deal with classified “counter-space” capabilities.
Notably, the U.S. Cyber Command declined to ask for any additional funds this year, instead urging Congress to support the funding already requested in the official FY 2025 budget.
For the last few budget cycles, the total amount asked for on these lists has been on a steady decline. In FY 2024 the total was about $16.4 billion, in FY 2023 it was $21.5 billion, and in FY 2022 it was $23.8 billion.
In addition, several lawmakers and defense officials have voiced their concerns over these lists and the challenges they present to the defense appropriations process.
During FY 2024 budget talks last year Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D- Mass., Mike Braun, R-Ind., Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Angus King, I- Maine, called on DoD to “rein in its use of these unfunded priorities lists.”
DoD Comptroller Mike McCord sent the senators a letter acknowledging a measure of ineffectiveness to these unfunded priorities lists and endorsed a proposal by the senators to repeal the statutory requirement — the Streamline Pentagon Budgeting Act which has yet to be taken up by Congress.
“The current statutory practice of having multiple individual senior leaders submit priorities for additional funding absent the benefit of weighing costs and benefits across the Department is not an effective way to illuminate our top joint priorities,” McCord wrote.
