Trump Boosts Missile Defense Spending Plans.

President Donald Trump's fiscal year 2019 budget request calls for major increases in missile defense spending relative to his last budget blueprint.

His 2018 submission anticipated $8 billion in funding for the Missile Defense Agency in 2019. His most recent budget outline, submitted Feb. 12, requested $9.9 billion. That would be a $1.9 billion, or 24 percent, increase over last year's plan.

"This has been a significant year with respect to potential adversaries testing and advancing their ballistic missile capabilities," Gary Pennett, MDA's director of operations, said during a briefing at the Pentagon. The new budget request is "consistent with the president's commitment to expand and improve our missile defense capabilities."

Approximately $850 million of the additional money proposed for 2019 would go toward procurement. The budget calls for a total of $2.4 billion in procurement spending by the agency in the next fiscal year, more than double what the administration initially requested for 2018, according to budget documents.

"The primary plus-up is in the area of procurement," said Tom Karako, a missile defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It is spread around among the different families" of capabilities. The ground-based midcourse defense system, which is designed to protect the homeland, made out particularly well in the 2019 request, he said.

In fiscal years 2019 to 2022, the Missile Defense Agency would receive $4.8 billion more than the previous budget...