When congressional hawks look to increase the Pentagon’s budget again this year, one of the first places they say they’ll turn to is the Navy’s ships account.
The defense committees are likely to add aircraft, ground vehicles and other military systems to the fiscal 2024 budget above the number President Joe Biden requested. But if recent history and lawmakers’ words are a guide, then Navy ship programs will stand out as the most likely recipients of largesse and the new warships, or older vessels kept in service instead of being retired, could add billions of dollars to the defense budget total.
In fact, Congress wrote, and the president signed into law, defense spending bills in each of the last two fiscal years that added about $4 billion for ships the Navy did not officially seek.
