An ambitious U.S. military modernization program fueled by five years of unchecked spending growth is about to collide with a rising backlash from the White House and a new Democratic majority in the House to slow the pace of spending growth.Despite a 22.5% increase in budget authority since fiscal 2015, the Defense Department is only at the beginning of a long-term plan to boost the lethality and resilience of air and space forces against strategic competitors in China and Russia, while simultaneously pressuring "rogue" states in North Korea and Iran and fighting nonstate groups in Syria, Africa and elsewhere.But the pressure is building on defense-spending growth even as military leaders seek to rapidly introduce new classes of hypersonic and directed-energy weapons, integrate new concepts for airborne battle management and air superiority and revitalize all legs of the nuclear triad simultaneously.
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