WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, addressed the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) Global Security Forum on Tuesday May 13, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Below are the Senator’s remarks as prepared for delivery:
“If I told you that the West’s greatest strategic adversary was outpacing America in critical sectors like shipbuilding, hypersonic weapons, and unmanned systems…
“If I told you this adversary was helping the largest state sponsor of terrorism skirt sanctions and pour more resources into the proxies who sow chaos across the Middle East, target U.S. personnel, and shut down a major artery of global trade…
“If I told you that both of them – along with an erratic, nuclear-armed hermit kingdom – were helping a neo-Soviet imperialist wage an unprovoked war in the backyard of America’s closest allies and trading partners…
“And if I told you that this has been going on for years…You might expect to see a greater sense of urgency in Washington.
“Instead, the chasm between the threats we face and what we’re doing to meet them is wide. And it ought to terrify us.
“A Chinese authoritarian calls American hegemony the product of ‘fascist forces.’ A Russian despot calls the former a ‘dear friend.’ And yet, as our adversaries drew closer together, influential members of both parties have chosen to pick fights with our allies and partners or consoled themselves with the naïve fantasy that we can retreat to Fortress America while spending a historically tiny fraction of our GDP on defense.
“Now that I have your attention… I’m grateful for the opportunity to be with all of you today. There’s a great deal to discuss. We’re here, in particular, to talk about innovation. That’s time well spent.
“America won the Cold War thanks in part to the way we exploited our technological military and economic advantage over the Soviet Union. Back then, we recognized that investing in technological superiority to deter conflict was less costly than fighting one. As a share of GDP, defense spending hit 37% at the height of World War II, 13.8% during Korea, and 9.1% during Vietnam. The Reagan buildup hit 6%. All told, the Cold War drove an annual average of 7.5%. That level of spending didn’t just keep the peace; it ushered in an unprecedented period of prosperity for the United States and the free world. It was worth it.
“Today, we’re spending less than half of what we did during the Reagan build-up – 3% -- and we’re getting less for it. Every year, a smaller and smaller percentage goes to buy actual military capabilities.
“In and out of government, talented people are still thinking about what tomorrow’s battlefield will look like, and what it will require of America’s military and of our allies. And there are conversations worth having about harnessing these talents more effectively. About keeping American and Western technologies at the cutting edge. About making sure that future capabilities don’t die on the vine (or in the Valley of Death).
“The bureaucracies and processes that slow the development, acquisition, and integration of new weapons systems are in desperate need of reform. But advanced, autonomous systems have not supplanted the traditional ways of war. Presence, personnel, logistics, and mass still matter. And neglect for the fundamental realities of hard power has left us playing from behind in some important ways.
“Today, we must do multiple things at once. First, our approach to innovation across industry must be: yes, and we should continue to encourage new entrants into the defense ecosystem. But we shouldn’t be blind to their challenges of fielding novel combat-capable systems at scale.
“Of course, many technologies don’t pan out. Many startups fail. They are worth the investment and the risk. Legacy defense manufacturers are also still critical, and it’s naïve to pretend otherwise. But that doesn’t mean glossing over the need for the primes to pick up the pace.
“We need talented engineers, patriotic developers, and highly-skilled employees on the job across the defense enterprise. It’s yes, and. If we pretend otherwise, the only ones who stand to gain are America’s adversaries.
“A lot of ink has been spilled about the technologies and concepts transforming modern war…about unmanned and autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, disinformation, and the gray zone. But the experience of modern war in eastern Europe and the Middle East reminds us that the depth of our magazines remains as decisive as any single cutting-edge capability. Quantity has a quality all its own.
“One of the greatest strategic challenges we’re facing today is the prospect of high-end conflict or simultaneous conflicts in different theatres that would strain the depth of our arsenal and the resilience of our supply lines. Victory would depend on delivering at scale and in time. Our magazines aren’t deep enough to fight such a war. And if we don’t make overdue investments in expanding our production capacity, we may not have the time to manufacture it.
“So, when we talk about innovation, let’s talk about innovating our mass and our speed. Let’s talk about our supply chains. The only capabilities that can make a difference on the battlefield are the ones that can get there at the speed and scale of relevance. This, of course, is not hypothetical. Just look at Ukraine. Necessity is the mother of invention, and our friends have developed what arguably the world’s foremost drone innovation sector. But even more remarkable is the sustained speed with which Ukrainian producers are honing and refining unmanned systems in real time. As Russian countermeasures emerge and render previous capabilities obsolete, they’re producing new iterations to stay on the cutting edge.
“American manufacturers – whether new startups or legacy primes – should ask themselves if they could keep up with such a pace. On the shortcomings of our defense industrial base, there’s plenty of blame to go around. Congress has a clear constitutional role in which we are all too often delinquent. Regular order appropriations are what give industry and the department the certainty they need to plan for the future. And we haven’t been holding up that end of the bargain. But the department has more authorities than it sometimes cares to acknowledge – middle-tier acquisition pathways, Other Transaction Authority, and the Defense Production Act, to name a few. And when these tools aren’t used the way they were designed, it’s unreasonable to expect improved outcomes on acquisitions and procurement of actual military capabilities.
“Our industry partners, for their part, are right that inconsistent demand signals make their work harder. Services for too long have short-changed purchases of critical munitions.
“I don’t know of an example where the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee has rejected a request for multi-year procurement authority for munitions. On the other hand, the services have – for reasons of their own – downplayed the munitions requirements of combatant commanders.
“To be fair, under perennial budgetary constraints from above, it’s not surprising that the services have made tough decisions to protect their core modernization and acquisition programs.
“Since Russia’s 2022 escalation of its war against Ukraine, the global demand for essential capabilities like long-range munitions and missile defense interceptors has only gone up – even if upward trends in annual defense budgets have lagged. And producers of these capabilities do bear responsibility of their own for not having planned sooner to meet the inevitable demand.
“But let’s be absolutely clear: nothing undermines the prospects of innovation and reform like anemic topline spending. Nothing signals more unmistakably that America is unserious than asking allies to double their investments in hard power while we propose to cut our own.
“If the administration recognizes – as it says it does – the grave stakes of major-power competition, OMB’s budget proposal for the coming year fails to show it. And no amount of budgetary sleight of hand will be able to prove otherwise. That said, this administration can still avoid the self-inflicted crises of credibility that dogged its predecessor. Our adversaries and allies alike are still watching closely for real signs of political will and measurable shifts in the balance of hard power.
“American politicians have criticized partners who used special funds to mask shortcomings in annual defense spending. Well, we should be careful not to mistake our budget reconciliation for long-term commitment, either.
“I support the use of reconciliation to make a significant, one-time investment in defense. But pretending that this procedure – or, for that matter, a year spent under a continuing resolution – can make up for failures on predictable, full-year appropriations is as dangerous as it is profoundly unserious. Reconciliation spending may fund short-term operations or investments, but without sustained annual growth, it risks creating massive cliffs in sustainment, personnel, and procurement costs.
“We’re all familiar with the headwinds of rising mandatory costs and inflation, the real drivers of our budget deficit. This is also true at the Defense Department, where such costs eat up a larger and larger share of the defense budget, crowding out procurement, readiness, and modernization costs. Making urgent, nimble, innovative discretionary investments won’t get any easier if we cut the topline in real terms or force the defense enterprise to innovate for today’s challenges with yesterday’s dollars. But you know as well as I do that the consequences of missing opportunities for innovation here at home aren’t limited to here at home. Coming up short on America’s topline commitment to the national defense sends an unmistakable signal to the allies and partners who, for decades, have bet big on American technologies and American leadership.
“We should not be surprised to see our friends rethinking their integration with American-made platforms… or, for that matter, American-led security architecture. Least of all, I must say, when we pick fights with them over trading balances. This is particularly true in Europe, where we seem to be punishing NATO allies even though they’ve finally made exactly the kind of defense investments President Trump demanded in 2018.
“In response to Putin’s aggression, European allies are becoming the stronger, more capable partners the President had urged them to become. NATO allies are sharing more of the burden of collective security. And in the near term, that’s meant a gusher of foreign investment in American-made capabilities. By the tens of billions of dollars, allies have flocked to buy American – an endorsement of American leadership.
“Even as our allies develop more high-end technologies of their own, close partnership is as essential as ever. I was proud to support the expansion of the trans-Atlantic alliance to include Sweden and Finland – not as hungry customers for American technologies but as highly-capable industrial economies that recognize the value of interoperability and coproduction.
“There’s little question that our adversaries are working hard to split American and its European allies. If we’re making their job easier, we’re doing something wrong. As history begs us to recall, we don’t get to pick and choose which conflicts will threaten our interests and for how long they will last. And we will rely on friends to help us deter and contain aggression in the coming years, from the Indo-Pacific to Eastern Europe. Going it alone will only increase costs for taxpayers and risks to our warfighters. We should be working more closely with allies worldwide to protect our economies and supply chains from the PRC. If we push these friends away, we shouldn’t expect them to keep buying American.
“Our allies’ desire for interoperability is a tremendous asset. Take the CH-47 Chinook helicopter – an aging airframe in need of a major update. More than a decade ago, the Canadian government, which has long been delinquent on defense spending, footed the development costs for a new variant, saving U.S. taxpayer dollars and putting an important, updated platform on the apron for the U.S. Army.
“But let’s be clear: if we let the single most important metric of America’s will to fight and win wane further, we should not expect many allies and partners to make major investments of their own like this…certainly not like the hundred-plus billion in orders under contract right now with U.S. defense producers from our friends in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.
“Our friends understand, as our own leaders once did, that the threats to our shared interests are not contained neatly within continents. Just as Asian allies feel threatened by Russia’s war in Ukraine, Baltic and Nordic allies are guarding against China’s meddling in northern waters. As Russia and China deepen their strategic cooperation, France and the United Kingdom are projecting power into the Indo-Pacific.
“We should welcome, not discourage, our allies’ contributions to global security.
“If America chooses to deny unmistakable ties – between the threats we face and between the West’s interests – we will live in a lonely state of denial. The time to signal our enduring commitment is right now.
“I ought to close on an uplifting note. We have no shortage of bright minds thinking about how to deter and defeat threats to America and to the systems we lead that underpin our peace and prosperity. And for decades now, one of the best has been behind the wheel here at CSIS. I’d like to add my name to the well-deserved chorus of praise for Dr. John Hamre and his leadership – both in and out of government. When the time comes to hand off the reins of this proud institution, he’ll be able to do so with great pride and with confidence that while the challenges we face are urgent and grave, we have the talent and capacity to meet them – much of it right here in this room.
“Thank you all.”
