The Bunker: Bottomless line…

This week in The Bunker: Incredibly, a ravenous Pentagon can’t be sated with a $1.5 trillion annual budget; apparently, when it comes to the Iran war, no one really knows what time it is; massively, a big budget boost for robot-wars; and more. Heads-up: The Bunker will be away next week — see you back here May 20.

IT’S NEVER ENOUGH

$1.5 trillion doesn’t cut it at today’s Pentagon

Last week, the Pentagon’s top officials trooped to Capitol Hill, helmets in hand, to argue that they need $1.5 trillion for the Defense Department in 2027. That’s a 42% boost over this year’s sum, and one that will be impossible to spend smartly and responsibly. But that hardly seems to matter in today’s national-security space. The strategy these days is “spend,” not “think.”

Yet even this eyewatering ask isn’t sufficient in this hyperventilating, hyped-threat world. As Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Air Force General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were pleading with lawmakers for more moola, the Air Force and the Navy were making clear that what the Pentagon brass were proposing wasn’t enough:

-- The Air Force wants to replace at least some of the planes it has lost during the war with Iran. But it says it won’t be able to pay for them out of next year’s proposed $339 billion budget. That’s $92.5 billion more than its 2026 tab. (In 2001, the entire U.S. military spent $332 billion). Instead, the service’s top general said April 30 that it will seek a so-called supplemental for an unspecified amount to replace an unspecified number of warplanes destroyed in the conflict. The Air Force has lost around 25 drones and at least nine crewed aircraft (three of those warplanes were F-15Es shot down by a lone Kuwaiti F-18 pilot — mysterious friendly fire — shortly after the war began more than two months ago. We’re still waiting for an explanation).

-- The Navy wants to spend nearly $378 billion next year. But it still is seeking $602 million more from Congress in the form of a traditional “unfunded priorities list” — known to taxpayers as a “wish list” — than it’s getting from its Defense Department overseers. Items on the Navy’s wish list include a $121 million periscope repair shop in Washington state, and $86 million for stormwater management at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. “The six-item list is a fraction of last year’s $7.4 billion Navy unfunded request,” Sam LaGrone of USNI News reported. (Refreshingly, other services and commands apparently haven’t made such requests.)

The Bunker’s never been good at math. But it wonders why, if the Navy’s 2026 wish list totaled $7.4 billion, the service needs any kind of a wish list at all in 2027? After all, it’s asking for $70 billion more in 2027 than it got in 2026.

WAR’S TIME CLOCK

Does anybody really know what time it is?

President Trump, like The Bunker, joined the working world back when punching a time clock was a rite of passage. The Bunker spent years inserting oaktag cards into time clocks, and hearing that satisfying “ca-chunk” as he began and ended his workday. It created an analog record of the hours he was at work (if not technically working). Tellingly, there’s no record that Trump ever did so. Nonetheless, time clocks were impressive devices for concretely measuring time in those pre-computer days. These days, the concept of time — especially when it comes to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran — has shifted from yesteryear’s fixed precision to today’s ever-fluid-and-flexible fourth dimension.

On March 1, a day into the war, Trump said he expected the war to last “four to five weeks.” The next day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth projected “four weeks, two weeks, six weeks.” But after such rosy projections failed to materialize — we’re now in the war’s 10th week — Trump and Hegseth have abandoned precise words like “weeks.” Instead, they prefer ever-time-shifting terms like “soon” and “relatively quickly.”

Consummate dealer that he is, Trump tried to flummox time by agreeing to a two-week ceasefire April 8. Given Iran’s refusal to capitulate, Trump extended it indefinitely on April 22. But Tehran still hasn’t foresworn its nuclear ambitions — Trump’s key reason for the war — so the president, despite his bluster, is desperately playing for time. For both economic and political reasons, Trump wants to avoid restarting a shooting war. So both nations are stalemated in economic warfare, blockading unfriendly vessels from the Strait of Hormuz. Now they’re taking potshots at one another, and risking that shaky ceasefire as gas prices continue to creep up around the world.

Trump cites his temporal ceasefire jujitsu to justify his refusal to secure congressional approval for the war within 60 days of hostilities (reached May 1), as is required under the War Powers Resolution of 1973. That law requires a president to “terminate” such a conflict after 60 days if he lacks congressional approval.

“The hostilities that began on February 28, 2026, have terminated,” Trump informed Congress in a May 1 letter. Many believe that Trump’s decision to pull the plug on the time clock is legally dubious. But that’s nothing new — presidents of both parties have been ignoring the edict for more than 50 years.

“For decades, presidents have expanded their power to unilaterally use military force, and Congress has met those abuses with a consistent shrug,” notes David Janovsky, acting director of The Constitution Project here at the Project On Government Oversight. “The resulting one-way ratchet of emboldened presidents and a weakened Congress has brought us to today, where a president has led the country into a months-long war with significant consequences, including the injuries and deaths of American service members and Iranian civilians, disruptions to the global economy, and significant harm to our nation’s reputation, all without articulating a strategy or even a credible justification to the public.”

We find ourselves in a strange war, where time — like the American public, Congress, and U.S. allies — is just something else to be ignored.

QUASI-AUTONOMY

Who needs humans-in-the-loop, anyway?

President Trump likes going to war autonomously, with no prior consultations or explanations offered to allies, Congress, or the American people. So it should come as no surprise that Defense Secretary Hegseth is embracing similar autonomy when it comes to weapons. Hegseth told Congress April 29 that the U.S. military soon will have a new “sub-unified command” — don’t you just love Pentagon lingo? — dedicated to autonomous warfare.

We pause here for two quick definitions:

-- A sub-unified command is a multi-service piece of one of the Pentagon’s 11 major combatant commands. They are broken down by geography (like U.S. European Command) or function (like the nuclear weaponeers at U.S. Strategic Command). Existing subordinate commands include the Joint Special Operations Command (a part U.S. Special Operations Command), and the Cyber Defense Command (part of U.S. Cyber Command). Now you know why those Pentagon organizational charts tend to look like Lego bricks, post-tornado.

-- Autonomous warfare involves weapons that, once launched, can identify, track and attack targets without a human “in the loop” who actually decides to pull the trigger. The growing use of artificial intelligence in targeting and decision-making risks minimizing, if not eliminating, humans from life-and-death decisions to shoot.

This is good news for those who believe the Pentagon has been too slow to adapt to the changing ways of war. It suggests that Hegseth wants to shift attention and resources away from the Defense Department’s long-standing fervor for industrial warfare to a more innovative approach, primarily driven by drones and other lessons gleaned from the Russo-Ukrainian war.

“Drones are so central to the future of warfare and where we get them from, that we have to be able to both make the exquisite ones better than anybody else, and also the attritable swarm,” Hegseth said. “It is front and center in this budget.” That’s why the Pentagon is seeking nearly $54 billion for its Defense Autonomous Warfare Group in its 2027 budget, a 24,070% increase over this year’s $226 million.

Of course, the Pentagon is still pumping billions into those old-fashioned warplanes flown by humans. Next year the Air Force wants to buy 38 F-35s fighters (at a cost-to-be-named-later), as well as seeking $5 billion to develop its successor, the F-47. It is planning to double the size of its F-15EX fighter-bomber fleet, and it is just beginning upgrades to its B-52 bombers that will cost $48.6 billion. Proving that the beast can never be satisfied, Hegseth also told Congress last week that the Air Force “will require a lot more” than its planned buy of 100 B-21 bombers.

There. So now you know why the Air Force can’t afford to pay for the handful of planes it has lost in the Iran war despite its proposed $339 billion budget.

WHAT WE’RE READING

Here’s what has caught The Bunker’s eye recently

→ The politics of Pentagon promotions

Kevin Eyer, a retired Navy captain, dives deep into how senior U.S. military officers advance through the ranks, in Real Clear Defense May 5.

→ Leaky ship

The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency found more than 800 security violations by defense contractors last year, the Government Accountability Office reported April 24.

→ Not a leaky ship (PDF)

The Pentagon inspector general, in an April 23 report, said that the Navy’s Submarine Safety (SUBSAFE) programs aboard three Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines shows that they “have the structural integrity to prevent flooding and that their critical systems can effectively control and recover from such an event.” That’s the haunting legacy of the nuclear-powered attack sub USS Thresher, whose sinking led to the SUBSAFE program. The Bunker was an impressionable 10-year-old when the Thresher went down off Cape Cod, practically in his backyard, on April 10, 1963. All 129 souls aboard were lost. He’s never forgotten the foreboding fear that swept through his Rhode Island neighborhood, just outside a Navy base. And those interminable hours after contact with the Thresher was lost before its grim fate was confirmed. Gratified to know the Navy hasn’t, either.

Thanks for visiting The Bunker this week. Once again, we’re taking next week off and will return to your inbox May 20. Consider forwarding this on to someone you know so they can subscribe here.