The President’s recent assertion that the United States requires a $1.5 trillion defense budget beginning in FY27 is more than a headline-grabbing number. It is a signal—about urgency, priorities, and how this administration intends to move policy through a system that rarely moves quickly.

The President framed the proposal in familiar terms: speed, strength, and scale. In public remarks, he argued that such funding is necessary to ensure the United States maintains overwhelming military superiority and can move fast in an increasingly unstable world.

Shortly thereafter, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, made the procedural reality explicit. To get anywhere near that topline, Congress will need hundreds of billions of dollars in additional defense funding through reconciliation, potentially beginning as early as late FY26. Reconciliation is increasingly viewed as necessary to execute the administration’s defense priorities on the timeline demanded.

That acknowledgment matters. I previously predicted in this newsletter that a second reconciliation bill was likely—not because of ideology, but because reconciliation remains the fastest mechanism available to influence outcomes and the administration proved it as a workaround to a grid-locked Congress. No 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Simple majority. Speed over deliberation. With a clear Senate majority, the path is open for now.

But before we fixate on how fast we can add money, we should ask a harder question: Are we executing the defense budget we already have?

Execution First: The Money Isn’t Flowing

Across the defense ecosystem—primes, mid-tiers, and small businesses alike—a consistent message is emerging:

• Funds are slow to flow
• Decision authority is unclear
• Contract actions are delayed
• Follow-on work is increasingly opaque

One peculiar signal keeps surfacing inside DoD via multiple, unrelated conversations. Paraphrased bluntly, staff are told, “We need to find more ways to work with Palantir.”

When a single company becomes a recurring solution to structurally different problems, it suggests not just preference, but concentration—and a contracting environment where pathways to award are narrowing rather than expanding.

Small businesses, in particular, report that while rhetoric about growing the industrial base is everywhere, cash flow reality tells a very different story. This contradiction matters, because you cannot expand the industrial base while simultaneously starving its newest entrants of predictability and capital.

Unobligated Dollars: Policy by Inaction

We are now in FY26 execution, and as with every fiscal year before it, billions of dollars went unobligated at the end of FY25 and were returned to the Treasury.

One example is instructive. A significant R&D funding pot was reprogrammed under presidential authority to pay troops during a shutdown. That pot existed only because the funds were not executed as intended in the first place.

This is not an isolated case. Variations of this story repeat across the Department of Defense, particularly in RDT&E and procurement accounts.

So when we argue for $1.5 trillion, we should say plainly:

We are not fully executing the budget we already have and execution failures are now shaping policy outcomes.

Unspent money is not neutral. It gets redirected, repurposed, or cited as evidence of “excess” capacity that does not actually exist at the operational level.

Small Business: Blunt Instruments in a Precision System

From the small business perspective, recent actions have only reinforced uncertainty. The Friday-afternoon cancellation of the entire 8(a) program, coupled with the suspension of roughly 7,000 companies by the SBA for prior misconduct tied to poorly administered Paycheck Protection Program loans, sent a chilling signal across the market. Add to that the failure to reauthorize SBIR as a viable entry point, and the message becomes muddled at best. It is not that some cleanup isn’t warranted, it’s that we continue to use blunt instruments to fix highly specific problems inside an already complex acquisition system.

The predictable result is the infamous frozen middle: contracting officers, program managers, and small firms alike either afraid to act or unable to act, precisely at the moment when speed, experimentation, and new entrants are supposedly national priorities.

Readiness: Availability Is the Real Metric

If this debate is about military capability, then availability (not inventory) is an equally important lens.

Total ship count is misleading. What matters is how many platforms are actually ready to deploy.

Based on repeated public testimony from senior Navy leaders, GAO assessments, and CRS analysis, surface ship and submarine readiness consistently sits in the mid-60 percent range. In practical terms:

• Roughly one-third of the fleet is unavailable at any given time
• Maintenance backlogs and shipyard constraints are primary drivers
• Submarine availability is often equal to or worse than surface forces
• Carrier availability typically supports 2–3 deployable carriers globally, with others in maintenance, training, or sustainment cycles

This is not mismanagement, it is math. Aging platforms, deferred maintenance, workforce shortages, and industrial capacity limits all converge here.

When we say, “we need more ships,” what we usually mean is we need more ships that can actually get underway.

The Gerald R. Ford Example: Readiness Is Fungible Until It Isn’t

The recent movement of the USS Gerald R. Ford from the Mediterranean toward the Caribbean illustrates this tension vividly. We are no longer covering major regions of the world with contingent force deployments. In doing so we reveal openings for adversaries.

Such movements carry real cost:

• Maintenance windows shift or compress
• Crews remain at elevated operational tempo
• Long-term availability risk increases

Reports that scheduled maintenance for FORD, years in planning at a cost of millions, may be adjusted to support her appearance at Fleet Week in New York City, a high-visibility annual event but one with a vivid character of a victory lap wrapped as a political message. The movements reinforce a deeper truth:

Readiness is constantly being traded between near-term visibility and long-term sustainability.

That cost rarely shows up immediately. It shows up years later, when availability slips further and options narrow. We are still recovering readiness from 20 years of middle east warfare.

Submarines and Special Operations: Quiet Constraints

Submarines sit at the center of deterrence and availability is the binding constraint. While force structure targets hover around the mid-60s, deployable capacity is materially lower due to extended maintenance availability and shipyard delays.

Submarines cannot be surged. When they’re unavailable, they are simply unavailable.

The same logic applies to Special Operations Forces, which policymakers often reference when discussing precise, time-sensitive missions—regime pressure, leadership removal scenarios, and other discreet operations.

SOF readiness metrics are largely classified, but public posture statements and CRS reporting consistently highlight:

• Sustained high demand
• Limited force expansion
• Readiness constrained by personnel tempo and enablers, not equipment

Budget growth alone does not fix human sustainability.

The Core Contradiction

Put plainly: we are discussing a historic increase in defense spending before we have demonstrated the ability to execute the budget we already have, sustain readiness, or clearly assign accountability for delivery.

We say we want:

• A larger defense budget
• A stronger industrial base
• Greater readiness

Yet we are operating with:

• ~65% fleet and submarine availability
• Persistent maintenance backlogs
• Unobligated balances returned to Treasury
• Contractors unsure who actually holds decision authority

That is not a funding problem. It is an execution problem.

What This Debate Is Really About

The debate over $1.5 trillion is not about whether the threats are real. They are.

It is about whether more money translates into more usable force, or simply more obligation authority layered onto a system already struggling to deliver.

Until execution, availability, and accountability are addressed directly, the topline number risks becoming the wrong proxy for readiness.

While we are rebuilding the defense acquisition aircraft in flight, we are losing altitude in the near term.

That’s a risk we can’t afford.

Pass me that Vice-Grip, will ya?

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