WASHINGTON and SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — The Defense Department has made an 11th-hour push for congressional appropriators to add a multiyear munitions deal worth “tens of billions of dollars” to the fiscal 2026 budget, according to the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Dela., told reporters at the Reagan Defense Forum this weekend that he and Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who leads the defense subcommittee, had been briefed by Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg on the proposed request about two weeks ago.
Coons said he was taken aback by what he called such a “massive” request coming so late in the budget negotiation process and accompanied by a worrying lack of specifics about exactly what the billions of dollars would be buying.
“The deputy secretary comes up and says, ‘Oh, by the way, we are weeks past when you were supposed to have finished this year’s [appropriations] process. Here’s a new multiyear, multi-billion dollar, multi-munitions request, and we’ll get back to you with the details,'” Coons said.
“It reflects a lack of seriousness about the role of Congress in oversight and in funding,” he added later in the roundtable. “I appreciate the briefing. I respect the desire to do multiyear [buys]. I respect the desire to deepen our magazines.”
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When asked about the multiyear munitions request, a senior adviser for McConnell pointed to a Dec. 2 Wall Street Journal op-ed in which McConnell wrote that Pentagon officials had “in recent weeks” acknowledged a $20 billion to $30 billion shortfall in critical munitions. The defense subcommittee chairman added that the Pentagon “failed” to use its FY26 budget request to begin addressing the issue.
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“Pentagon leaders now seem eager to support multiyear procurement to address the challenges ahead, but these plans are wishful thinking without additional funding,” McConnell wrote.
The adviser, David Popp, told Breaking Defense that the defense subcommittee appreciates the department’s “growing” interest in addressing munitions industrial base issues.
“Chairman McConnell has warned about this issue for some time, and the SAC-D bill includes $7B to fund additional munitions procurement and production capacity expansion,” Popp said. “Without a higher topline in FY26 and future years, it is difficult to see how the Department can afford this. So the Chairman looks forward to seeing a defense allocation that meets the Department’s urgent requirements.”
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In response to specific questions about the munitions request and briefing to Senate appropriators, the Pentagon declined to comment for this report. However, during the forum, Pentagon top weapons buyer Michael Duffey spoke broadly about the benefits of multiyear procurement authority and the hope of getting Congress onboard.
“We have regular, frequent engagement with industry. They helped surface some of the concerns they had about what was preventing them from moving fast,” he said during another roundtable with reporters on Saturday. “And one of the main things, of course, was, how do they have certainty of demand? Especially if we’re going to really encourage their investment in the expansion of production capacity, that’ll certainly be enabled by a multi year procurement authority.”
Broadly, Coons and McConnell have expressed frustration with the flow of information from the Defense Department over the past year, which they have said has hindered the FY26 appropriations process. The White House did not release the defense budget request until June — leaving appropriators to come up with their versions of the defense spending bills relatively independently — and even then, lawmakers complained that this Pentagon has not provided the same level of detail in budget justification documentation as previous administrations.
Coons and his staff have also criticized the department for being responsible for $10 billion in “misaligned funds” that the department expected to receive in the reconciliation bill and did not request in the FY26 budget — errors that meant the appropriations had to shift funding around in order to ensure department priorities like Columbia and Virginia-class submarines were actually fully funded.
During the roundtable on Saturday, Coons characterized Feinberg as “really energetic and focused,” commending his efforts to push defense contractors to address longstanding performance problems.
He had harsher words about the Pentagon’s approach to working with appropriators.
“Multiyear munitions contracting so that we can get prices down and volumes up [is] great. Showing up in mid-November with a request like this for the first time — what?” Coons said. “Run your damn shop like a bunch of grown ups.”
Ashley Roque in Simi Valley, Calif., contributed to this story.