On December 18, President Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY26 into law (P.L. 119-60) marking 65 consecutive years of annual authorizations. The Senate passed the bill easily with a vote of 77-20 on December 17 and the House passed the bill by a vote of 312-112 the week before.
Chart I. Source: Department of Defense, House Armed Services, Senate Armed Services *Non-emergency and non-reconciliation.
The NDAA, written by the Armed Services Committees, primarily authorizes spending levels and sets policy for the Department of Defense (DOD) but provides no actual appropriation. The spending levels proposed for authorization by the House and the Senate differed significantly again this year as the Senate authorized $879 billion for the Department of Defense (051) whereas the House more closely matched the President’s request of $848 billion. Neither of these figures include the $152 billion provided to DOD by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (P.L. 119-21).
The final FY26 NDAA authorizes $855.7 billion for DOD. Ultimately, the topline for the Department will be decided in the FY26 appropriations bills which also have a disconnect between the House ($850 billion) and Senate ($871 billion) as to what that topline should be. If the NDAA is any indication, the DOD topline for FY26 will probably be in the vicinity of $860 billion. With the continuing resolution expiring on January 30, actual spending levels should be finalized shortly.
TAKING CARE OF PEOPLE
The NDAA sets the pay levels for DOD. This year’s NDAA’s provides a 3.8% overall pay raise for servicemembers. To help improve servicemembers lives, it also authorizes:
- $1.5 billion for new construction of barracks and family housing,
- $491 million for the design and construction of new childcare facilities,
- $335 million to renovate military hospitals and construct new medical facilities, and
- $206 million to build new schools for children of servicemembers.
We focused a lot of our efforts this year on fixing the Pentagon’s broken acquisition process which is failing our warfighters. The FY26 NDAA includes a series of reforms to put commercial first, eliminate regulatory burdens, end bureaucratic inertia, and put in place a system that will deliver capability to the warfighter at speed and scale.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL),
December 10, 2025
HOW THE PENTAGON BUYS
Defense acquisition has long-been a thorn in the side of Congress. Both industry and warfighters complain that the system is too slow and rigid to meet emerging and evolving threats. The FY26 NDAA, not unlike prior NDAA’s, provides acquisition reform language and includes many of the reforms that were proposed in the Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery (SPEED) Act. The NDAA:
- Creates a new and accelerated requirements process designed to look to industry for innovative solutions rather than prescribing systems,
- Centralizes the management of acquisition programs under a single portfolio acquisitions executive (PAE) in order to speed decision-making,
- Ensures that life-cycle sustainment decisions are made early enough in the acquisition process to avoid costly readiness issues and unbudgeted long-term maintenance shortfalls,
- Forces the Pentagon to examine commercial off the shelf solutions prior to beginning costly programs from scratch, and
- Removes barriers to subscription-based services such as private satellite imagery.
The following General Provisions may be of interest:
- 1515 – Requires cybersecurity training for DOD personnel to include content related to the cybersecurity challenges created by the use of artificial intelligence.
- 1531 – Mandates modifications to the High-Performance Computing Roadmap with specific language related to data centers including their physical space, water, and power requirements.
- 1532 – Provides for the guidance on the use of certain artificial intelligence by requiring the exclusion and removal of covered artificial intelligence from systems and devices of the DOD. The exclusion also includes contractors.
- 1534 – Creates a task force on artificial intelligence environments to identify, coordinate, and advance DOD-wide efforts to develop and deploy artificial intelligence sandbox environments necessary to support experimentation, training, and development.
- 1608 – Addresses the spaceport of the future initiative and future launch capacity with a study to assess the operational capacity, infrastructure, and long-term sustainability of space launch sites at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg with respect to heavy and super heavy launches.
- 1651 – Modifies the National Missile Defense Policy to recognize Golden Dome to provide for the common defense of the U.S. by deploying and maintaining a next generation missile defense field.
- 1652 – Directs the DOD to submit to Congress a report on the development and the deployment of the new Golden Dome architecture including a summary air and missile threat assessment, budgets for the system, test schedules.
- 1653 – Prohibits privatized or subscription-based missile defense intercept capabilities.
These technologies continue to change rapidly. NDAA provides Congressional direction to DOD. Regardless of the topline, this guidance will shape how the Department will operate.