Trump seeks $1.5tn for defence alongside domestic spending cuts

The White House is asking Congress to boost the US defence budget to $1.5tn (£1.1tn), a sweeping rise that would mark the largest expansion in military spending since World War Two.

It includes funding for the Trump administration's proposed Golden Dome missile defence system, as well as a boost in domestic production of naval vessels, including new Trump-class battleships.

The administration said it would pair the proposed increase with a call for cuts across domestic agencies, including eliminating some climate, housing and education programmes.

The request, which will need to be approved by the US Congress, is separate from the $200bn that the Pentagon has sought for the war in Iran.

A summary of the budget posted online notes that the cuts will be achieved by "reducing or eliminating woke, weaponised and wasteful programmes, and by returning local responsibilities to their respective governments".

US President Donald Trump has long signalled a desire to increase the defence budget and boost domestic defence manufacturing.

At a private event at the White House earlier this week - which was caught on camera - Trump said that military spending should be a national priority going forward.

"It's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all of these individual things, they can do it on a state basis," the president said, adding that the focus should be on "military protection".

Non-defence spending in the proposed budget has fallen by 10%, or about $73bn.

Trump's proposed budget would mark a 42% increase over the previous fiscal year, totalling $445bn.

Of the total, approximately $1.1tnwould be in discretionary spending for the Pentagon, the highest on record.

Another $350bn - specifically for the industrial defence base - would come from a process known as budget reconciliation, a procedural shortcut that lets some legislation pass the Senate with a simple majority of 51 votes.

The budget also requests pay rises for troops and $65.8 billion in shipbuilding funding, including for what Trump has referred to as a "Golden Fleet" of next-generation vessels.

These include the heavily-armed Trump-class battleships unveiled in December.

Trump said at a news conference announcing the battleship that the construction of the first of the vessels, the USS Defiant, would begin soon, with the first ships operational in two-and-a-half years.

Administration officials have repeatedly warned that the US currently lags behind China in both shipbuilding capacity and total output.

Additionally, the budget also includes an unclear amount funding for the $185bn Golden Dome, which officials have said will include multiple layers of land, sea and space based sensors and interceptors designed to protect the US from next-generation missiles and drones.

The Congressional Budget Office, however, has put the potential price tag at $542bn over 20 years on the space-based systems alone.

Experts have said the total cost could eventually soak up a large chunk of the massive US defence budget.