But it will take much more time to mature new technologies and shift funding away from today’s expensive weapons projects, which are strongly supported in Congress, to a new portfolio including killer lasers, hypersonic missiles and new generations of ships, combat vehicles and warplanes.

“[W]e must be prepared for the high-end fight against peer competitors,” David Norquist, the Pentagon comptroller, said as he presented the Pentagon’s fiscal 2020 budget proposal to reporters on Tuesday. Norquist has been serving as deputy defense secretary since Patrick Shanahan was elevated to acting defense secretary in January.

“Future wars will be waged not just in the air, on the land or at sea, but also in space and cyberspace, dramatically increasing the complexity of warfare,” Norquist said. “This budget reflects that challenge, pulling together all the pieces of the National Defense Strategy that have been built over the past two years.”

McCarthy pointed to the Army’s under-development Next Generation Combat Vehicle and Future Vertical Lift projects. Those projects are not supposed enter production for several years.

“As the funding lays in over time and you get through the modernization process, ultimately they synchronize towards the back end of this FYDP,” he said.

One challenge for the Pentagon is that it is still buying large numbers of ground vehicles to be used in counterterrorism or counterinsurgency fighting, in combat zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria rather than war with China or Russia.

For instance, the Army is “looking hard at the requirements … just how many” new Humvee-replacing Joint Light Tactical Vehicles it actually needs, McCarthy said. Add up the number of Humvees, Joint Light Tactical Vehicles and infantry squad vehicles the Army already owns and “we have well north of 100,000 vehicles,” he said. “We’re trying to hone in on the exact number of requirements of vehicles and that’s why the [JLTV] buy will be truncated over time.”

Big Tech Items

Trump is asking Congress for a bit more money for next-generation weapons of use in a potential war with China and Russia. The 2020 budget proposes a nearly 9 percent increase in the Pentagon’s research and engineering budget, which came in at $104 billion, or roughly $9 billion more than last year.

So what’s on the Pentagon’s new tech wish list? The Army, Navy, and Air Force are all building their own next-generation hypersonic missiles. That technology gets a bump in investment to $2.6 billion, up from about $2.4 billion enacted last year, said Michael White, assistant director for hypersonics. But the actual ask is some $10 billion over the next five years. A big portion of that will go toward testing, with the next flight test projected in about one year, according to White.  Meanwhile, the Missile Defense Agency is asking for $157 million to develop satellites to better track and defend against enemy hypersonics (also part of the $2.6 billion request.)

One big item that stands out is $3.7 billion for “unmanned autonomous new tech.” That could include everything from next-generation fighter drones that fly alongside aircraft to new robot submarines. They figure heavily into the Pentagon’s expectations for future wars that will increasingly be fought by robots operating in environments that are thick with electromagnetic interference and missiles, and so will have to operate highly autonomously.

There’s a ton of new money for unmanned items. The Army will request $115 million for new “robotic development” versus $74 enacted last year. The Navy will request $21 million for an “advanced tactical unmanned aircraft system” versus $9 million enacted last year. There’s $54 million for core undersea unmanned tech, versus $ 27 million enacted last year; and some $68 million for large sub drones; up $8 million from last year. There’s $671 million for “unmanned carrier aviation” — read that to mean the new Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance node, or Tern, drone and others — versus $519 million enacted last year.

The Air Force budget for drones and unmanned tech is a bit more subtle. Funding for many individual unmanned programs is down compared to last year. But there’s a $1 billion request, versus $430 million enacted last year, for “next-generation air dominance,” which means so-called sixth-generation aircraft not yet in existence, in which pilots are optional. It also may include “wingman drones” and the like.  Money for the new long-range strike bomber also jumped from $2.3 billion to more than $3 billion.