Heritage Foundation's
Project 2025

Chapter 4 - Department of Defense

• Prioritize a denial defense strategy against China
• Increase allied conventional defense burden-sharing
• Expand and modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal
• Increase counterterrorist operations globally
• Reform the planning, programming, budgeting, and execution (PPBE) process
• Strengthen America's defense industrial base
• Optimize the DOD acquisition community
• Champion, engage, and focus the American innovation ecosystem
• Improve rapid deployment of technology to the battlefield
• Develop a framework to protect the RDT&E enterprise from foreign exploitation
• Emphasize exportability with U.S. procurements
• End informal congressional notification for arms sales
• Minimize barriers to collaboration in international arms sales
• Reform the Foreign Military Sales contracting process
• Improve military recruiting and retention efforts
• Restore standards of lethality and excellence in the military
• Eliminate politicization and restore faith in the force
• Increase support for military families
• Reduce the number of generals
• Improve the intelligence process within the Defense Intelligence Enterprise
• Expand integration of intelligence activities
• Restore accountability and public trust in defense intelligence
• Eliminate peripheral intelligence obligations
• Rebuild and expand the U.S. Army
• Focus on deployability and sustained operations for the Army
• Transform Army culture and training
• Invest in and expand Navy force structure
• Reestablish the Navy General Board
• Establish a Navy Rapid Capabilities Office
• Accelerate purchase of key munitions
• Enhance warfighter development in the Navy
• Increase Air Force spending and budget accuracy
• Reduce near-term and mid-term risk for the Air Force
• Invest in future Air Force programs and efforts
• Transform the Marine Corps force structure
• Reform the Marine Corps personnel paradigm
• Align Navy amphibious shipbuilding with Force Design 2030
• Reverse the defensive posture in Space Force
• Reduce overclassification in Space Force
• Implement policies suited to a mature Space Force
• Ensure U.S. Cyber Command is properly focused
• Increase U.S. Cyber Command's effectiveness
• Rationalize cyber strategy and doctrine
• Make irregular warfare a cornerstone of security strategy
• Counter China's Belt and Road Initiative globally
• Establish credible deterrence through irregular warfare
• Prioritize nuclear modernization
• Develop the Sea-Launched Cruise Missile-Nuclear (SLCM-N)
• Account for China's nuclear expansion in U.S. strategy
• Restore nuclear infrastructure
• Reorient arms control policy
• Strengthen homeland ballistic missile defense
• Increase development of regional missile defense
• Change U.S. missile defense policy to defend against Russian and Chinese missiles
• Invest in new track-and-intercept capabilities for missile defense