This presentation updates the analysis of current defense plans contained in the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO’s) April 2007 Web document The Long-Term Implications of Current Defense Plans: Detailed Update for Fiscal Year 2007 to account for changes incorporated in the President’s budget for fiscal year 2008 and in the 2008 Future Years Defense Program (FYDP).

The presentation provides additional data not found in CBO’s December 2007 publication The Long-Term Implications of Current Defense Plans: Summary Update for Fiscal Year 2008. Both of those documents respond to standing requests from the Senate Budget Committee.

This presentation does not incorporate changes to the FYDP resulting from Congressional action on the President’s 2008 budget request.

Charts in this detailed update use the concepts “steady state” and “half-life” for the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) investment plans and weapon systems. Those concepts and how CBO estimates their values are explained more fully in Appendix A at the end of the presentation.

The updated displays in this presentation differ in some instances from those in previous presentations. In some cases, CBO has altered the display format to include additional historical data; in other cases, it has revised its historical database of procurement quantities and funding, as well as its projections of the inventories of weapon systems that the military services plan to sustain. CBO also, in some instances, departs from previous presentations by using different color schemes for the displays.

All budgetary projections in this presentation are in billions of 2008 dollars of total obligational authority, and all years are federal fiscal years. Numbers in the text may not sum to totals because of rounding. See Appendix B at the end of the presentation for an explanation of selected acronyms and abbreviations.

The text accompanying the charts composing this Web document assumes that the reader is familiar with DoD programs and their content.