The U.S. Defense Budget for FY 2024 has passed

By the way, on 14 December, the U.S. Congress did pass the defense budget for FY 2024. Fiscal Year 2024 begins in October 2023. It is expected to be signed by the president.

The total budget was $886.3 Billion. The Senate voted 87-13 for it and the House voted 310-118. The majority of the opposing votes were from the Republican Party. In the Senate opposed were 6 Republicans, 6 Democrats and one Independent (Bernie Sanders). In the House opposed 73 Republicans and 45 Democrats. It did include a provision that would require an act of Congress or 2/3rds Senate approval if the president wanted to leave NATO. This provision appeared to be in response to previous comments made by Donald Trump. The bill also extended a military aid program to Ukraine, allowing for the gradual release of $300 million to Kyiv. 

The previous year’s defense budget (FY2023) was 813.3 billion. Back for FY 2016 the defense budget was 580.3. There has been a steady increase in the annual defense appropriations since then. In FY 2022, the U.S. defense budget made up 3.47% of the GDP. 

In contrast, the defense budget of Russia for 2023 is $86.4 billion making up 4.1% of GDP. I gather it will be higher now for 2024. The defense budget of China for 2022 was $293 billion, making up 1.7% of GDP. The defense budget of Ukraine for 2023 was $46.8 billion making up 18.2% of GDP. They also received over $100 billion in foreign military aid.

There is also a combined bill in development of $105 billion for aid to Israel and Ukraine. This currently includes $61.4 billion for Ukraine. It also includes $14.3 billion for Israel, $10 billion for humanitarian assistance (including Gaza), 7.4 billion for Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region and 13.6 billion for border security. This may not be the final figures. It has not been passed and is currently being negotiated in the Senate in exchange for tighter U.S. border controls. The House has already gone home for Christmas. I believe a version of this bill will pass in early January.

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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One comment

  1. How can I find out the amount allocated for the AUKUS contract for nuclear submarines for Australia? Or maybe you have the document to hand and can just tell me?

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