US bid to 'outcompete' China yields Pentagon's largest-ever defence budget
The Pentagon made its largest-ever budget request on Monday, citing China as a "pacing challenge".
The 2024 budget called on Congress to provide US$842 billion in defence spending, marking a 3.2 per cent increase over 2023 and a 13.4 per cent increase over 2022. The announcement came a week after China presented a military budget of $230 billion, a 7.6 per cent jump from last year.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement on Monday that the budget would allow the Pentagon to "invest in capabilities that will ensure we maintain a ready, lethal, and combat-credible joint force with a laser focus on China as the department's pacing challenge and addressing the acute threat posed by Russia".
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Austin added that the new budget would make "major investments" to "sustain" America's military advantage over China. He identified such areas as including "integrated air and missile defences and operational energy efficiency" as well as "our air dominance, our maritime dominance, and in munitions, including hypersonics".
Beijing already possesses hypersonic missiles that travel five times faster than the speed of sound, but Washington is still developing the technology.
China also holds an edge in its 335 front-line warships, compared to 305 for the United States. But unlike Washington, Beijing has not fought a war since 1979.
The Pentagon's request included a record investment in new technologies known as research, development, test, and evaluation appropriations, totalling US$145 billion. Austin said the proposed budget would further allocate US$170 billion for procurement, the largest in US history.
The expanded budget would help expand American munitions production and procurement capacity to deter and prevail over aggression in the Indo-Pacific, according to US deputy secretary of defence Kathleen Hicks.
"Our greatest measure of success and the one we use around here most often is to make sure the PRC leadership wakes up every day, considers the risks of aggression, and concludes today's not the day," said Hicks, referring to China by the initials of its official name.
"And for them to think that today and every day between now and 2027, now in 2035, now and 2049 and beyond."
American intelligence agencies believe China may invade Taiwan by 2027. Beijing considers Taiwan a renegade province, and the self-ruled island has become a geopolitical flashpoint between the two global powers.
Despite stating the US has adhered to its long-held policy of strategic ambiguity regarding Taiwan, US President Joe Biden on several occasions has pledged to defend it should China attack.
Last month, CIA director William Burns claimed during an event at Washington's Georgetown University that US intelligence showed Chinese President Xi Jinping had "instructed the People's Liberation Army to be ready by 2027 to conduct a successful invasion".
In the meantime, the US has sought to shore up its defence capabilities in its own forces as well as those of its allies in the Indo-Pacific.
Hicks said the US in the last few months had seen "great allies and partner developments" in the region, including Japan's commitment to double its defence spending and a recent US pact with the Philippines to access four more military bases along with five existing locations.
The defence budget request also coincided with Biden's trip to California to announce the sale of nuclear submarines to Australia, a key Indo-Pacific ally.
Hicks described the deal through Aukus - a trilateral security pact between Australia, Britain and the US - as a "generational opportunity to strengthen our combined security, boost our defence industrial capability, enhance our ability to deter aggression, and promote our shared goal of a free and open Indo-Pacific".
She added that the budget represented the department's largest Pacific deterrence initiative yet at US$9.1 billion.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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