Trump is seeking the biggest defense budget surge in 75 years as the Pentagon stays committed to ‘exquisite’ weapons

President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget request for the upcoming fiscal year represents the biggest increase in generations and seeks to transform the industry, according to analysts at JPMorgan.

While Congress is unlikely to fund everything the administration wants, the proposal still signals where Trump’s priorities are as the budget process begins.

“A global security environment that is less reliant on norms and more reliant on force continues to put upward pressure on defense spending; at the same time, the Trump administration is seeking to remake the U.S. defense industrial base, and there is more capital entering the sector as well,” JPMorgan said in a note on Monday.

To be sure, getting a defense budget through Congress could drag on, perhaps even past the midterm elections. If Democrats take control, massive defensive spending could be a political nonstarter, especially as Trump looks to cut social programs to partly offset hikes elsewhere.

For now, the top-line Pentagon budget calls for a 44% increase in fiscal year 2027, which begins this October, including a 77% jump in investments.

“To contextualize, this would be the biggest single year increase since the budget increased 3.4x to $48B in 1951 on the heels of NSC 68 and the Korean War,” JPMorgan said, referring to a seminal National Security Council paper from 1950 that singled o...