Pacific problems: Why the US disagrees on the cost of deterring China

In 2020, Mac Thornberry wanted to answer two questions: How much is the U.S. spending to prevent a war with China, and is it enough?

These were difficult, even for the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee. And he wasn’t the only one asking. Thornberry often traveled to Asia, where U.S. allies had the same questions. Thornberry didn’t know what to tell them.

“What do we have to offer?” he said.

For two years, Congress had asked the Pentagon for a report on how much extra money it needed for the Pacific region, but never received one. So Congress demanded one.

“The attitude was, tell us what you need and we’ll try to help,” Thornberry said during a recent interview. “Well, if they’re not going to tell us, then we’re going to tell them.”

The defense policy bill for fiscal 2021 — named for Thornberry, who was retiring — created the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, a new section of the defense budget. PDI had two goals: to push the Pentagon to spend more on the region and to make that money easier to track.

Four years later, PDI has done only one of those two things, according to experts. It has certainly made China-focused defense spending more transparent, but it hasn’t driven much new spending on the Pacific. In fact, the part of America’s defense budget created to help deter a war with China has no actual money.

“Your priorities are always better reflected in your budget rather than in your rhetoric,” Thornberry said.

Whether those two areas match up may be the most important question in American defense policy right now. The last three administrations have decided China is America’s top threat, and a rising one at that. But it’s less clear how much money it will cost to address it and who gets to decide — Congress, the Pentagon or military leaders in the Pacific?

“I don’t think that we are somehow dangerously short of funding for the Indo-Pacific, whether it’s PDI or not,” Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel, told Defense News in February.

“We’re going in the right direction, but the question is: Are we going there fast enough?”

This was the question that led to PDI.

In 2021, the head of Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Phil Davidson, was in Washington ahead of his planned retirement to testify before Congress . Davidson hadn’t appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee in two years due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Early on, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., presented a set of charts during a short call and response. Wicker read a list projecting the number of Chinese and American weapons in the region by 2025, asking Davidson to check his numbers.

Three Chinese aircraft carriers to America’s one. Six Chinese amphibious assault ships to America’s two. Fifty-four Chinese combat ships to America’s six.

The admiral confirmed each one.

“Our conventional deterrent is actually eroding in the region,” Davidson said.

What concerned him most was not that Beijing had a more powerful military overall; it was a problem of speed and distance. Taiwan — which the Chinese government considers a rogue province and has threatened to take back by force — is about 100 miles from the mainland. It’s more than 5,000 miles from Hawaii, the headquarters of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

It would take three weeks for the U.S. to rush ships to the area from the West Coast, and around 17 days to do so from Alaska, Davidson estimated. If China launched a rapid invasion, it might overwhelm Taiwan before the U.S. had a chance to arrive.

A soldier launches an American-made TOW 2A missile during a live-fire exercise in Pingtung County, Taiwan, on July 3, 2023. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)

“The important factor here is time,” he said.

Davidson’s answer, and that of many committee members, was to push America’s forces closer to Taiwan — the military version of a full-court press. But the U.S. didn’t yet have the necessary infrastructure in place. It would need to construct bases, airfields, radars and other buildings along the Pacific islands that arc around Taiwan.

And this would cost money — lots of money.

PDI was, at first, meant to be the source of that money. To understand why, it’s important to understand how the Pentagon writes its budget.

The process depends mostly on the military services — in particular the Army, Navy and Air Force. These services hold about four-fifths of defense spending each year and direct where that money goes.

Their incentives are different from those of the seven geographic combatant commands, who carry out America’s military goals around the world. Given their roles, the commands often focus on shorter-term needs. Hence, the services often don’t fund everything the combatant commands want.

To lawmakers, the gap seemed especially wide in the Pacific, where China has spent the last two decades upgrading its military.

Noticing this problem, lawmakers as far back as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in 2017 wanted to fund Indo-Pacific Command’s goals with a separate account — something Thornberry also later supported.

It didn’t come together until three years later. In May 2020, the chair and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee announced plans for a Pacific Deterrence Initiative that would reassure U.S. allies and improve its forces.

It had five goals: to improve presence, logistics, exercises, infrastructure and the strength of partners in the Pacific. The bill also added a voice to the budgeting process. Indo-Pacific Command would now give Congress an annual second opinion on America’s military needs in the region.

There was, however, a structural problem. The lawmakers that created PDI didn’t actually get any money for it. The policy bill named for Thornberry gave the Pentagon about $2 billion in authority for the effort but not permission to spend it. That would’ve required a signoff from the defense appropriations committees, who control the nation’s purse.

Those committees balk at initiatives like PDI, according to multiple congressional aides, because passing them makes it harder to write a defense budget — the same reason it’s harder to write a recipe when someone else decides your shopping list.

U.S. Army soldiers and Indonesia airborne troops conduct a joint forcible entry operation at Baturaja Training Area on Aug. 4, 2021. (Staff Sgt. Thomas Calvert/U.S. Army)

“The hope was for the following year that the appropriations and the budget would match,” said Kimberly Lehn, a former aide on the House Armed Services Committee who helped write the PDI legislation.

That didn’t happen, and by the time Davidson testified before Congress a year later, the initiative had become an accounting drill.

Think about it like a home improvement fund. If you want an upgrade — say, a nicer kitchen — then you have two options: Earn more money or spend less money elsewhere. Instead, PDI was, and still is, implemented in reverse. Each year, the Pentagon builds its budget and then reviews it to see what contributes to deterrence in the Pacific. It then labels that as PDI and highlights the total number in its budget request.

“It reflects their decisions, it doesn’t drive their decisions,” said Dustin Walker, a former Senate Armed Services Committee aide who helped write the PDI legislation and now works at the drone-maker Anduril.

This was not the model PDI’s authors had in mind.

“It started basically as a straight copycat of [the] European Deterrence Initiative,” Walker said, referring to an effort that stemmed from Russia’s 2014 seizure and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

The Obama administration wanted to show commitment to NATO allies rattled by war on the continent. The government did so within months using what it originally dubbed the European Reassurance Initiative .

Russian soldiers patrol outside the naval headquarters in Simferopol on March 19, 2014. Russia's Constitutional Court unanimously backed President Vladimir Putin's move to make Crimea part of Russia. (Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images)

U.S. forces in Europe had declined for decades after the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s — down to about 62,000 personnel by 2016 . The smaller size made sense in Europe given there were fewer needs for America’s military muscle. But Russia’s invasion showed how far readiness had fallen, said Tod Wolters, the former head of U.S. European Command.

With the European Deterrence Initiative, the administration wanted to bulk up.

“We knew that we could not go back to Cold War status, with the number of forces that were going to be in the theater. So the question became: How do we make sure that we can rapidly deploy combat power?” said Al Viana, who works in European Command’s force structure and requirements office.

This became the focus of EDI, whose name changed in 2018 when it became clear Russia’s military activities in the region weren’t coming to an end. From 2015 to 2023, the U.S. spent $35 billion on the effort to empower allies and ensure its own forces were more agile. The second goal required funding to run more exercises, rotate more troops, improve infrastructure and store important equipment on the continent.

By the end of fiscal 2014 , European Command had dissolved two heavy combat brigades. However, EDI helped rebuild those forces — deferring cuts to Air Force personnel, supporting a combat aviation brigade and making sure the Army had an armored brigade combat team rotating through the theater. In FY16, the Army’s forces in Europe conducted 26 total exercises per year . By 2023, that number was around 50.

In 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine , the U.S. surged 20,000 extra personnel to Europe. That included an armored brigade combat team — including about 4,000 personnel, 90 tanks and more than 200 other vehicles — which arrived within a week from notification. Without those stocks already stored in the theater, it would’ve taken between four and six weeks, according to U.S. Army Europe and Africa.

“EDI is the place to go and see exactly what we’re doing,” Viana said.

The two initiatives’ different fates come almost entirely down to money. EDI was paid for through an account called overseas contingency operations, more commonly referred to as OCO (pronounced like “cocoa”). That fund started for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, supplementing the annual Pentagon budget.

“EDI was easy because you weren’t fighting with a service,” a senior defense official told Defense News, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the individual was not permitted to talk to the press. “It was free chicken.”

By the start of this decade, Congress had soured on OCO, partly because the Pentagon used it to dodge some budget cuts it faced in the 2010s. Lawmakers called it a slush fund.

This meant the Pacific Deterrence Initiative didn’t get any extra funding. The European counterpart transitioned away from supplemental money in fiscal 2022 , and its funding amounts since then have steadily dropped.

Amphibious armored vehicles attached to a brigade of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps make their way to a beach during maritime amphibious assault training in China's Guangdong province on Aug. 17, 2019. (Yan Jialuo and Yao Guanchen/Chinese Defense Ministry)

The result is that many items Indo-Pacific Command lists in its annual report to Congress — the things the command says it needs to maintain its strength in the region — aren’t funded. So the command just resubmits those unfunded priorities on top of additional needs in the next year’s report. Hence, each year’s dollar amount snowballs.

When Davidson testified before Congress in 2021, his report listed $4.7 billion in requirements. This year, the number was $26.5 billion — $11 billion of which is unfunded. The bulk of that $11 billion would go to construction costs — much higher in the Pacific than on the U.S. homeland — and munitions.

“Our demand signal has been consistent,” George Ka’iliwai, the director of requirements and resources at the command, said in a March interview. “It is what it is because they are our requirements.”

The Pentagon has questioned some of Indo-Pacific Command’s priorities and whether they’re possible to carry out, even with funding. Infrastructure projects, for example, sometimes require negotiations with the host government as well as expensive labor and material costs. Only about a fifth of Indo-Pacific Command’s desired construction projects appear in the FY25 budget request, Ka’iliwai said.

Since its first report, the command has said the missile defense architecture of Guam — a U.S. territory crucial to the military’s Pacific posture — is its top goal. Others, such as infrastructure on Pacific islands or a secure network to communicate with allies, have also appeared each year.

PDI “doesn’t come close to scratching the itch,” the defense source said.

There are a few paths forward. One of them would see Congress give Indo-Pacific Command new money each year, like the account McCain sought in 2017.

There are lawmakers, such as Hawaii’s Case, who support that. But the appropriations committees don’t, and it’s unlikely that will change in the short term, according to multiple congressional aides.

Another option is in the Pentagon’s control. At the start of the budgeting process, department leaders could reserve money for the command’s priorities and build everything else around it. That would resemble how the deputy defense secretary is funding two signature initiatives: the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve, which helps accelerate prototyping; and Replicator, an effort to buy drones faster.

But these programs are loose change compared to what the command says it needs — hundreds of millions of dollars compared to more than $11 billion in unfunded priorities.

The way PDI works now is important, according to another senior defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic. The official argued that a different model for the initiative would make it more difficult for the Defense Department to plan and budget.

“The department has the best ability to find the right trade-offs,” the official said.

Three years after Davidson testified, his successor stepped into a House hearing room this March.

“The risk is still high, and it is trending in the wrong direction,” Adm. John Aquilino noted in his opening statement, later adding that the Pacific is the most dangerous he’s ever seen it.

Sitting next to him, Ely Ratner, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, was more hopeful, citing higher spending and the administration’s “historic momentum” with allies in the region.

The higher spending is easier to see with PDI, which has charted large increases in funding over the last four years. Whether the initiative is working depends on whether you look at the Pacific through the eyes of Ratner or Aquilino. Both agree war isn’t imminent, but they’re split on whether deterrence is getting better or worse.

If it’s eroding, as Davidson argued in 2021, then PDI’s current model may not be enough. If the region is more stable, then the initiative looks better too.

The biggest misconception about PDI, according to the second defense official, is that the Pentagon doesn’t take it seriously.

“This is not a gradual slope of increase,” the official said of Pacific funding. “This is a significant and dramatic increase in investment, and we are more committed than ever.”

The PDI request for this year is $9.9 billion — more than $800 million over last year’s. But up until soon before the Pentagon released its FY25 budget request, it wasn’t, according to the first defense official and a congressional aide.

To show the Pentagon was focused on the threat from China, defense leaders tagged more items under the initiative at the last minute to raise its dollar figure, the first defense source and a congressional aide told Defense News. Among the late entries was the drone program Replicator.

At the recent March hearing, a member of Congress asked Ratner whether the $9.9 billion includes everything the Pentagon needs “for the PDI to be as effective as possible.”

“Congresswoman,” Ratner responded, “the PDI is simply an accounting mechanism.”

Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.

2020 年，麦克·索恩伯里想要回答两个问题：美国为防止与中国发生战争花费了多少钱，以及这些钱是否足够？

这些问题即使对众议院军事委员会的共和党领袖来说也难以回答。而且，提出这些问题的并非只有他一人。索恩伯里经常前往亚洲，美国的盟友们也提出了同样的问题。索恩伯里不知道该如何回答他们。

“我们能提供什么？”他问道。

两年来，国会一直要求五角大楼提交一份关于太平洋地区所需额外资金的报告，但始终没有收到。因此，国会主动要求五角大楼提交一份报告。

索恩伯里在最近的一次采访中说：“他们的态度是，告诉我们你们需要什么，我们会尽力帮忙。但是，如果他们不肯告诉我们，那我们就告诉他们。”

2021财年国防政策法案——以即将退休的索恩伯里命名——设立了“太平洋威慑倡议”（Pacific Deterrence Initiative，简称PDI），这是国防预算的一个新组成部分。PDI有两个目标：一是推动五角大楼增加对该地区的投资，二是使这些资金更容易追踪。

四年过去了，据专家称，PDI只实现了上述两项目标中的一项。它确实提高了针对中国的国防开支的透明度，但并未推动太平洋地区的新增支出。事实上，美国国防预算中用于遏制与中国战争的部分实际上并没有资金。

索恩伯里说：“你的预算比你的言辞更能体现你的优先事项。”

这两个领域是否契合，或许是当前美国国防政策中最重要的问题。过去三届政府都认定中国是美国面临的最大威胁，而且威胁还在不断上升。但应对这一威胁究竟需要多少资金，以及最终由谁来决定——是国会、五角大楼还是太平洋地区的军事领导人——目前尚不明确。

“我不认为我们在印太地区的资金方面存在严重的短缺，无论是否涉及印太地区发展倡议（PDI），”众议院拨款委员会国防小组的成员、来自夏威夷的民主党众议员埃德·凯斯在2月份告诉《防务新闻》。

“我们正朝着正确的方向前进，但问题是：我们前进的速度够快吗？”

正是这个问题促成了PDI的诞生。

2021年，印太司令部司令菲尔·戴维森海军上将提前来到华盛顿，准备在国会作证。由于新冠疫情，戴维森已经两年没有出席参议院军事委员会的听证会了。

会议伊始，密西西比州共和党参议员罗杰·威克在简短的问答环节中展示了一系列图表。威克宣读了一份清单，预测到2025年该地区中美武器的数量，并请戴维森核对数据。

中国拥有三艘航空母舰，而美国只有一艘。中国拥有六艘两栖攻击舰，而美国只有两艘。中国拥有五十四艘作战舰艇，而美国只有六艘。

海军上将逐一确认了此事。

戴维森说：“我们在该地区的传统威慑力实际上正在减弱。”

最令他担忧的并非北京整体军力更强，而是速度和距离的问题。台湾——中国政府视其为叛离省份，并威胁要武力收复——距离大陆仅约100英里，而距离美国印太司令部所在地夏威夷则超过5000英里。

戴维森估计，美国从西海岸紧急调集船只前往该地区需要三周时间，从阿拉斯加出发则大约需要17天。如果中国发动快速进攻，可能会在美国有机会抵达之前就占领台湾。

2023年7月3日，在台湾屏东县的一次实弹演习中，一名士兵发射了一枚美国制造的TOW 2A导弹。（Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images）

他说：“关键因素是时间。”

戴维森的回答，以及许多委员会成员的回答，是将美军兵力向台湾推进——这相当于军事上的“全面进攻”。但美国当时尚未具备必要的基础设施。它需要在环绕台湾的太平洋岛屿上修建基地、机场、雷达站和其他设施。

而这将花费一大笔钱。

PDI最初被设定为这笔资金的来源。要理解个中缘由，就必须了解五角大楼是如何编制预算的。

这个过程主要取决于各军种——特别是陆军、海军和空军。这些军种每年掌握着大约五分之四的国防开支，并决定着这些资金的用途。

它们的激励机制与负责在全球范围内执行美国军事目标的七个战区司令部不同。鉴于其职责，这些司令部通常更关注短期需求。因此，各军种往往无法满足战区司令部的所有需求。

在立法者看来，太平洋地区的差距似乎尤其大，中国在过去二十年里一直在该地区提升军事实力。

早在 2017 年，亚利桑那州共和党参议员约翰·麦凯恩就注意到了这个问题，希望用一个单独的账户来资助印太司令部的目标——索恩伯里后来也支持了这一点。

直到三年后才最终落实。2020年5月，参议院军事委员会主席和资深成员宣布了一项“太平洋威慑倡议”计划，旨在安抚美国盟友并提升其军事实力。

该法案设定了五大目标：提升在太平洋地区的军事存在、后勤保障、演习水平、基础设施建设以及增强合作伙伴的力量。此外，该法案还赋予印太司令部在预算编制过程中更大的发言权。印太司令部现在每年都会就美国在该地区的军事需求向国会提供第二意见。

然而，这里存在一个结构性问题。创建“政策与发展倡议”（PDI）的立法者实际上并没有获得任何资金。以索恩伯里命名的政策法案授权五角大楼为此项目拨款约20亿美元，但并未授权其动用这笔资金。动用这笔资金需要国防拨款委员会的批准，而这些委员会掌握着国家的财政大权。

据多位国会助理透露，这些委员会对像 PDI 这样的倡议持反对态度，因为通过这些倡议会使国防预算的制定更加困难——就像别人决定你的购物清单时，编写食谱就更难一样。

2021年8月4日，美国陆军士兵和印尼空降部队在巴图拉贾训练区进行联合强行进入行动。（美国陆军参谋军士托马斯·卡尔弗特/美国陆军）

“我们原本希望第二年的拨款和预算能够匹配，”曾参与起草 PDI 法案的众议院军事委员会前助理金伯利·莱恩说道。

这种情况并没有发生，一年后戴维森在国会作证时，这项计划已经变成了一项会计演习。

可以把它想象成一笔房屋装修基金。如果你想升级——比如说，一个更漂亮的厨房——那么你有两个选择：要么多挣点钱，要么在其他方面少花钱。然而，太平洋威慑指数（PDI）的实施方式却恰恰相反，而且至今仍然如此。每年，五角大楼都会编制预算，然后进行审查，以确定哪些项目有助于增强太平洋地区的威慑力。之后，它会将这些项目标记为PDI，并在预算申请中突出显示其总额。

“这反映了他们的决定，而不是驱动他们的决定，”曾任参议院军事委员会助理、帮助起草 PDI 法案、现在在无人机制造商 Anduril 工作的达斯汀·沃克说道。

这并非PDI作者们设想的模型。

沃克说：“它基本上是直接模仿欧洲威慑倡议。”他指的是源于俄罗斯 2014 年吞并乌克兰克里米亚半岛的一项举措。

奥巴马政府希望向因欧洲大陆战争而感到不安的北约盟国表明诚意。为此，美国政府在几个月内就推出了最初名为“欧洲再保证倡议”的方案。

2014年3月19日，俄罗斯士兵在辛菲罗波尔海军总部外巡逻。俄罗斯宪法法院一致支持总统弗拉基米尔·普京将克里米亚并入俄罗斯的举措。（Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images）

自上世纪90年代初苏联解体以来，美国在欧洲的驻军规模持续下降数十年，到2016年已降至约6.2万人。考虑到欧洲对美国军事力量的需求减少，这种规模的缩减在当时是合理的。但美国欧洲司令部前司令托德·沃尔特斯表示，俄罗斯的入侵表明美国的战备水平已经下降到何种程度。

通过欧洲威慑倡议，美国政府希望增强自身实力。

“我们知道，鉴于即将部署到战区的兵力规模，我们不可能回到冷战时期的状态。因此，问题就变成了：我们如何确保能够迅速部署作战力量？”欧洲司令部部队结构和需求办公室的阿尔·维亚纳说道。

这成为“欧洲防御倡议”（EDI）的重点，该倡议于2018年更名，因为当时很明显俄罗斯在该地区的军事活动并未停止。从2015年到2023年，美国投入350亿美元用于增强盟友能力并确保自身部队更加灵活。第二个目标需要资金用于在非洲大陆开展更多演习、轮换更多部队、改善基础设施以及储存重要装备。

到2014财年末，欧洲司令部解散了两个重型作战旅。然而，欧洲发展倡议（EDI）帮助重建了这些部队——推迟了空军人员的裁减，支持了一个作战航空旅，并确保陆军有一个装甲旅战斗队在战区轮换部署。2016财年，陆军驻欧部队每年共进行26次演习。到2023年，这一数字约为50次。

2022年，俄罗斯全面入侵乌克兰时，美国向欧洲增派了2万名人员。其中包括一个装甲旅战斗队——约4000名官兵、90辆坦克和200多辆其他车辆——在接到通知后一周内便抵达战场。据美国陆军欧洲和非洲司令部称，如果没有这些已在战区储备的物资，则需要4到6周的时间才能完成部署。

“EDI 是了解我们具体工作内容的最佳去处，”维亚纳说。

这两项计划命运迥异，几乎完全取决于资金。EDI 的资金来自一个名为“海外应急行动”的账户，通常简称为 OCO（发音类似“可可”）。该基金最初用于阿富汗和伊拉克战争，是对五角大楼年度预算的补充。

一位不愿透露姓名的高级国防官员告诉《防务新闻》：“EDI之所以容易，是因为你不用跟某个服务部门较劲。简直是白捡的。” 他表示，由于未获授权接受媒体采访，所以要求匿名。

到本世纪初，国会对海外应急行动计划（OCO）的态度已经变得恶劣，部分原因是五角大楼利用该计划来规避2010年代面临的一些预算削减。议员们称其为秘密基金。

这意味着太平洋威慑倡议没有获得任何额外资金。欧洲的对应项目在2022财年停止了补充拨款，此后其资金数额持续下降。

2019年8月17日，在中国广东省，隶属于中国人民解放军海军陆战队某旅的两栖装甲车在海上两栖突击训练中驶向海滩。（闫嘉洛、姚冠辰/中国国防部）

结果是，印太司令部在提交给国会的年度报告中列出的许多项目——该司令部声称维持其在该地区实力所必需的项目——都没有获得资金。因此，司令部只能在下一年的报告中，将这些未获资助的优先事项与新增需求一起重新提交。于是，每年的资金需求都像滚雪球一样越滚越大。

戴维森2021年在国会作证时，他的报告列出了47亿美元的需求。而今年，这一数字飙升至265亿美元——其中110亿美元资金尚未到位。这110亿美元的大部分将用于建设成本（太平洋地区的建设成本远高于美国本土）和军需品。

“我们的需求信号一直都很稳定，”该司令部需求与资源主管乔治·卡伊利瓦伊在三月份的一次采访中说。“情况就是这样，因为这些就是我们的需求。”

五角大楼对印太司令部的一些优先事项及其可行性提出了质疑，即便有资金支持也难以实现。例如，基础设施项目有时需要与东道国政府进行谈判，而且人工和材料成本高昂。卡伊利瓦伊表示，印太司令部希望开展的建设项目中，只有大约五分之一出现在2025财年的预算申请中。

自首次发布报告以来，该司令部一直表示，关岛（对美军在太平洋地区的战略部署至关重要的美国领土）的导弹防御体系是其首要目标。其他目标，例如太平洋岛屿上的基础设施建设或与盟友通信的安全网络，也每年都会被提及。

这位国防消息人士表示，PDI“远远无法解决问题”。

前进的道路有好几条。其中一条是国会每年给印太司令部拨付新的资金，就像麦凯恩在2017年寻求的那样。

有些议员支持这项提议，例如夏威夷州的凯斯。但拨款委员会并不支持，而且据多位国会助理透露，这种情况短期内不太可能改变。

五角大楼可以掌控另一种选择。在预算编制之初，各部门领导可以预留资金用于司令部的优先事项，并围绕这些优先事项来安排其他一切。这类似于国防部副部长为两项标志性计划提供的资金：一项是“快速防御实验储备计划”，旨在加速原型机的研发；另一项是“复制者计划”，旨在加快无人机的采购速度。

但与指挥部声称需要的资金相比，这些项目只是九牛一毛——数亿美元与超过 110 亿美元的未拨款优先事项相比，简直微不足道。

另一位因话题敏感而要求匿名的国防部高级官员表示，PDI目前的运作方式至关重要。这位官员认为，如果采用不同的模式，国防部的规划和预算编制工作将更加困难。

“该部门最有能力找到合适的权衡方案，”这位官员说。

戴维森作证三年后，他的继任者于今年三月走进了众议院听证室。

“风险仍然很高，而且正朝着错误的方向发展，”约翰·阿奎利诺海军上将在开幕致辞中指出，随后他又补充说，太平洋是他见过的最危险的地区。

坐在他旁边的负责印太安全事务的国防部助理部长伊莱·拉特纳则更加乐观，他指出，政府增加了开支，并且与该地区的盟友取得了“历史性的进展”。

从太平洋发展倡议（PDI）的数据中可以更清晰地看出支出增加的情况，该倡议的数据显示，过去四年资金大幅增长。这项倡议是否有效，取决于你从拉特纳还是阿奎利诺的角度来看待太平洋问题。两人都认为战争并非迫在眉睫，但在威慑力是增强还是减弱的问题上存在分歧。

如果正如戴维森在2021年所论证的那样，该地区正在衰落，那么PDI目前的模式可能就不够用了。如果该地区更加稳定，那么这项倡议看起来也更有价值。

第二位国防官员表示，关于 PDI 的最大误解是五角大楼并不重视它。

这位官员在谈到太平洋地区的资金投入时表示：“这并非渐进式增长，而是投资的大幅增长，我们比以往任何时候都更加坚定地致力于此。”

今年的国防采购指令（PDI）申请金额为99亿美元，比去年增加了8亿多美元。但据一位国防部官员和一位国会助理透露，直到五角大楼发布2025财年预算申请前不久，情况并非如此。

据《防务新闻》报道，一位国防消息人士和一位国会助理透露，为了表明五角大楼重视来自中国的威胁，国防领导人在最后一刻将更多项目纳入该计划，以提高其金额。其中就包括无人机项目“复制者”（Replicator）。

在最近 3 月份的听证会上，一位国会议员问拉特纳，99 亿美元是否包括五角大楼“使 PDI 尽可能有效”所需的一切。

“议员女士，”拉特纳回应道，“PDI 仅仅是一种会计机制。”

诺亚·罗伯逊是《防务新闻》的五角大楼记者。他此前曾为《基督教科学箴言报》报道国家安全新闻。他拥有弗吉尼亚州威廉斯堡威廉与玛丽学院的英语和政治学学士学位。