PROFILE: The U.S. Doctrine of Immediate Deliveries

A budget that redefines the scale of military efforts

At the same summit, the president mentioned a Pentagon budget that could reach $1.5 trillion—a figure that, if confirmed in upcoming budget votes, would mark the largest annual increase in U.S. defense spending since the end of World War II, according to several available economic analyses.

This amount would be in line with a trend that has already begun: the budget approved by Congress for 2026 already exceeded $1 trillion, a substantial increase compared to previous years that, in a sense, sets the political stage for the 2027 announcement.

An increase that is not without internal resistance

Such a massive budget is never adopted without friction; several elected officials, including some within the president’s own political camp, have expressed doubts about the sustainability of such a rapid increase—a skepticism that serves as a reminder that the doctrine of immediate delivery will, sooner or later, come up against the realities of the parliamentary vote.

A World Record for Military Spending in 2025

This U.S. figure comes amid a global trend already marked by continuous growth: global military spending reached a record $2.9 trillion in 2025, the eleventh consecutive year of growth according to available data, an upward trajectory affecting nearly all major economic powers.

NATO as a whole now accounts for more than half of this global total, with cumulative spending exceeding $1.5 trillion in 2026 for the first time in its history, according to economic reports published this month.

The United States: The Driving Force, but Not the Only Player in This Increase

While the United States remains the leading contributor in absolute terms to this global increase, Europe has also accelerated its own defense spending, with a 14% increase in 2025 to reach a combined $864 billion, according to available economic data—a pace that is gradually bringing the two sides of the Atlantic closer together in their rearmament efforts.

Seven billion dollars allocated for the entire fiscal year

There is something striking about this contrast: an administration capable of announcing $10 billion for shipyards in a single visit, yet allocating barely $7 billion for its total foreign aid over an entire fiscal year. The “immediate delivery” doctrine clearly has its priorities well established.

According to data published by the Pew Research Center on July 21, 2026, U.S. foreign aid has fallen sharply under the second Trump administration: approximately $7 billion had been allocated for fiscal year 2026 as of July 1, a figure significantly lower than levels seen in previous years.

A Redefinition of Priorities Rather Than a Simple Withdrawal

This decline in foreign aid should not be interpreted as a blanket withdrawal of the United States from the international stage: rather, it reflects a redefinition of priorities, in which direct military funding and domestic industrial investment take precedence over more traditional forms of development aid and international humanitarian support.

A Different Approach from Other Forms of Foreign Aid

Against this backdrop of a general decline in U.S. foreign aid, military support for Ukraine occupies a special place: funding for the USAI program has increased from $300 million in 2025 to $500 million in 2026, according to data reported by Militarnyi—a rise that stands in contrast to the overall downward trend in non-military foreign aid.

Humanitarian aid is declining, while military aid to Ukraine is increasing: this divergence is not a budgetary coincidence; it is the very hallmark of this doctrine, which clearly distinguishes between support perceived as strategically beneficial and support perceived as purely charitable.

Doctrinal Consistency Despite Seemingly Contradictory Figures

This doctrinal consistency explains why aid to Ukraine has, so far, bucked the general downward trend in U.S. foreign aid: it is presented, in the U.S. budget debate, as an investment in collective security rather than as mere international generosity—a framing that partially shields it from broader cuts.

General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls, Pillars of the Naval Program

Beyond the public incident at the Pennsylvania summit, General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries remain the two main beneficiaries of the naval program dubbed the “Golden Fleet,” which calls for the acquisition of 18 warships and 16 support vessels—the largest naval budget since 1962, according to available budget documents.

Naming a naval program “Golden Fleet” is no mere rhetorical device; it is a way to sell—to both the general public and elected officials—an industrial ambition that far exceeds the U.S. Navy’s immediate operational needs.

Documented Tensions with Certain Suppliers

These public tensions between the administration and its own industrial suppliers—illustrated by the incident involving General Dynamics—reveal constant political pressure to accelerate production cycles that, in the shipbuilding industry, remain structurally long and difficult to shorten without additional investments in capacity. You cannot shorten a shipyard’s production cycle with a speech, even one delivered in front of cameras; industrial physics, unlike political rhetoric, does not compromise on its timelines.

$53 billion for drone platforms

The proposed defense budget for 2027 also allocates $53 billion for drone platforms and their logistical support in combat zones, as well as an additional $21 billion for munitions and counter-drone systems, according to detailed budget documents released in April 2026.

The shift in funding toward drones and munitions—at the relative expense of other, more traditional platforms such as certain fighter jets—reflects a war that has changed course right before the eyes of Pentagon planners, who are now forced to catch up with a tactical reality already well established on the ground in Ukraine.

A Parallel Expansion of Military Personnel

This budget also calls for an expansion of military personnel by an additional 44,000 for fiscal year 2027, following an increase of more than 20,000 already recorded in 2026—a growth trajectory in personnel that parallels the overall budget increase.

Adoption of the bill remains uncertain in its exact proposed form

No budget proposal, no matter how ambitious it may seem at a press conference, survives the legislative process intact; this one will likely be no exception, and the final figure passed by Congress will probably differ from the one announced in Pennsylvania.

Several economic analysts quoted in the financial press consider it unlikely that this $1.5 trillion budget will be adopted exactly as proposed by the administration, as part of the planned increase would require the use of a budget reconciliation bill, the outcome of which remains politically uncertain.

Funding Partially Contingent on Cuts Elsewhere

This massive budget increase would be partially funded by a 10% reduction in non-defense discretionary spending, affecting health care, scientific research, and education—a budgetary trade-off that could spark significant political resistance during the final vote.

A Power That Invests in Military Spending Rather Than in Aid

This doctrine of immediate deliveries—combining a dramatic increase in the military budget with an equally dramatic decrease in non-military foreign aid—paints a picture of a power redefining its relationship with the world: less generous in direct assistance, but investing heavily in its own military production capacity and in certain partnerships deemed strategically prioritized.

A country that chooses to invest in its shipyards rather than in its humanitarian aid programs is making a choice about its civilization, not just a budgetary choice; history will judge whether this choice strengthens or weakens the United States’ position in the world to come.

A doctrine that remains, for now, documented but not yet solidified

At this stage, this doctrine remains better documented in its concrete manifestations than formally theorized by the administration itself: no official statement has presented, under a single name, the coherent whole that this portrait attempts to reconstruct from scattered but converging facts.

Congress Divided Over the Defense Budget

Despite the ambition expressed at the Pennsylvania summit, as of mid-July 2026, the U.S. Congress remains deeply divided over the passage of the 2027 defense budget: On July 14, a procedural vote in the Senate aimed at moving forward the annual defense authorization bill failed by a vote of 50 to 46, with Democrats opposing it en bloc.

A budgetary doctrine may be born in a summit speech, but it lives or dies in the halls of the Capitol; this July 14 impasse serves as a reminder that announcement and adoption remain two very different stages in the life of a military budget.

The House of Representatives Is Also Stuck on Its Own Schedule

In the House of Representatives, a similar procedural vote failed on June 30 by a vote of 224 to 198, delaying consideration of the authorization bill until after the July 4 recess; a new, revised procedural vote is scheduled for July 21, according to specialized legislative reports.

A Budget Reconciliation That Is Still Hypothetical

The Armed Services Committees of both chambers have approved versions that authorize approximately $1.15 trillion, an amount in line with the president’s base discretionary request, but which excludes the additional $350 billion that the administration hopes to pass through a separate budget reconciliation process—the outcome of which, according to several lawmakers, remains highly uncertain.

Nearly a quarter of the $1.5 trillion figure touted in Pennsylvania relies on a congressional procedure that even some Republican lawmakers consider far from certain; the “immediate delivery” provision also faces its own uncertainties regarding implementation.

Lawmakers from both parties are publicly expressing reservations

Democratic Senator Jack Reed warned that this budget could undermine the bipartisan support traditionally given to the annual defense bill, particularly because it is partly funded by cuts to social programs, while twelve Democrats voted against advancing the bill in the House committee—an unusually high number for this type of historically consensus-driven vote.

A public plea to convince Congress

The head of the Pentagon himself took to the pages of the American press to publicly defend this $1.5 trillion budget, asserting that the greatest threat to national security lay in underinvestment in the military rather than in rising public debt—a statement that illustrates just how much this doctrine now requires an active communications campaign to survive the legislative process.

When a Secretary of Defense has to publish an op-ed in a major daily newspaper to defend his own budget, it’s a sign that the battle is now being fought as much in the public arena as in congressional committees.

A Series of Meetings with Members of Congress

According to specialized legislative reports, the Secretary of Defense has stepped up his direct meetings with members of Congress in an effort to rally their support for this budget—an internal lobbying effort that underscores, once again, just how politically contentious the adoption of this doctrine remains, despite the scale of public announcements.

Indirect pressure on Europe to take on a greater role

This U.S. budget policy, combined with repeated calls from the Pentagon for European allies to assume a greater role within NATO, is accompanied by an announced review of U.S. forces stationed in Europe—a move that, according to several defense analysts, could shift part of the NATO burden to European capitals in the coming years.

Washington is investing heavily at home while asking its European allies to do more at home; this dual demand, which makes sense on paper, nevertheless creates real diplomatic tensions at every NATO summit.

Uncertainty Driving Some Allies to Accelerate Their Own Plans

According to several diplomatic sources, this uncertainty regarding the U.S.’s long-term commitment to Europe is already prompting some European allies to accelerate their own independent rearmament plans—a trend that could, over time, reshape the traditional balance of contributions within the Atlantic Alliance.

A summit in Pennsylvania, a shipbuilder publicly called out, a budget that could exceed 1.5 trillion dollars, foreign aid reduced to its bare strategic minimum: taken together, these elements paint a picture of an America that has chosen to measure its power in terms of submarines delivered rather than dollars in aid distributed.

This portrait does not claim to judge whether this doctrine is the right one; it simply notes, with figures to back it up, that it exists, that it is already shaping the budget priorities for 2026 and 2027, and that it will continue to shape the way the United States presents itself to the rest of the world. It remains to be seen whether U.S. shipyards will ever be able to deliver as quickly as the president demands; as for the doctrine itself, there is already no doubt about it.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist