FY2021 Defense Budget Request: An Overview

The FY2021 President’s budget request includes $753.5 billion in budget authority for national defense. National defense is one of 20 major functions used by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to aggregate budget data, and the largest in terms of discretionary spending. The national defense budget function (identified by the numerical notation 050) comprises three subfunctions: Department of Defense (DOD)–Military (051); atomic energy defense activities primarily of the Department of Energy (053); and other defense-related activities (054), such as FBI counterintelligence activities.

The $753.5 billion national defense request includes $740.5 billion in discretionary budget authority and $13.0 billion in mandatory budget authority, according to OMB. The request is $3.7 billion (0.5%) less than the FY2020-enacted amount of $757.2 billion. Adjusting for inflation, the FY2021 request is $738.8 billion in constant FY2020 dollars, $18.4 billion (-2.4%) less than the enacted FY2020 amount, according to a CRS analysis of OMB data.