“Defending the homeland” has always been the point of the national defense strategy, experts argue, but the precursors to the forthcoming update hint that the way the U.S. practices homeland defense could be changing.
While deterring China—the top priority listed in the most recent strategies—is seen as part of the larger project of protecting the homeland, current defense planning guidance is more specific about operations on American soil playing a bigger role.
“We’re already seeing that they view homeland defense in this administration as including border security, counter-drug operations, even domestic law enforcement, right?” Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said Thursday at a Center for a New American Security event. “And so if they are changing the definition of what is included in homeland defense—then, yeah, I think those are very different capability sets, things that the military is not used to doing, it’s not necessarily that good at doing, or appropriate or legal to do in some cases.”
The question is how the budget will reflect that shift in priorities. A CNAS report released Tuesday found that recent years’ defense spending has prioritized innovation over actual deterrence of adversaries, leaving a hole in near-term readiness.
“So what we found is that there is a gap between what’s available now and what’s required now to maintain deterrence in the near- and medium-term, and the emphasis that’s being placed on those long-term objectives,” said Carlton Haelig, a CNAS fellow who co-authored the report.
To reverse that trend, the Pentagon can shift spending to less-expensive, quick-turn acquisitions, and away from exquisite systems that take decades to develop and won’t be ready in time to make a difference on the next battlefield.
The current administration has made some headway on paper, changing policies to allow stockpiling of attritable drones while also standing up a task force to tackle the counter-drone threat.
But with a shrinking defense budget, the Pentagon is on shaky ground to continue making investments in deterrence while also increasing operations stateside, which it professes to prioritize.
“There’s been a lot of reporting about the potential to elevate the homeland,” Philip Sheers, a CNAS research associate and the report’s co-author. “It’s not necessarily a foregone conclusion at all that China cedes priority in that formulation, but there’s rumbling that there will be a different formulation altogether of the strategic priorities of the department in the next strategy.”
While this year’s reconciliation bill brought a one-time infusion of cash, hiking defense spending up to nearly $1 trillion, Harrison argued that this kind of budget trick isn’t sustainable.
“After the midterm elections, all bets are off,” he said, if party control changes in one or both hours of Congress. “If they want to actually keep advancing these, all of the different systems and programs within Golden Dome, it’s got to be in the base budget. And if they’re trying to keep the base budget flat at current levels, including that Golden Dome funding would require really catastrophic cuts.”
But even with all that in mind, he said, it might be naive to look to the NDS as a guide for how the Defense Department spends money.
“At the end of the day, the National Defense Strategy is a piece of paper, and it’s not worth anything unless the administration actually intends to follow it, to use it as a guiding framework,” Harrison said. “I’m not sure that there is any strategy document that will actually frame or constrain or guide what the president chooses to do on a day-to-day basis, so I don’t know that it’ll end up being that important.”
In his opinion, he added, the Office of Management and Budget has been driving the Pentagon’s current budget request more than the Defense Department itself.
“And I don’t think OMB is going to feel constrained at all, or guided at all, by this piece of paper that Bridge Colby is going to produce,” he said.
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