Pentagon Seeks $10 billion for Military Aid in FY 2016 with Focus on Middle East and Africa Share This /

This blog is an except from a Fact Sheet published on Security Assistance Monitor on April 24, 2015 and is available for download here.

Combining the State and Defense Department’s FY 2016 requests, the administration is seeking to provide at least $18.7 billion in security assistance worldwide in FY 2016, a 5 percent increase from FY 2015 and a 13.2 percent increase from FY 2014 (see Figure 1). These totals come from a new Security Assistance Monitor fact sheet released today as part of a briefing we’re sponsoring entitled “Assessing Proposed U.S. Security Assistance to Africa, Latin America & Middle East.”

Notes:  The State Department data excludes INCLE funding going to the judiciary, demand reduction and alternative crop production. Using the most recent year for which data is publicly available, the Defense Department data includes a total of $543 million in estimates, $72 million for FY 14 and $235 million for both FY 2015 and FY 2016. 

Within the administration’s request for FY 2016, there are several regional and global trends worth highlighting:

• The Defense Department is requesting $2.1 billion for the relatively new Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund (CTPF), which is a 61 percent increase over the amount Congress approved for FY 2015 ($1.3 billion);
• The State Department seeks a 60 percent increase in the total amount of Nonproliferation, Antiterrorism, Demining and Related Program (NADR) funds from $604 million in FY 2015 to $997 million in FY 2016;
• The State Department is requesting a 160 percent increase in Foreign Military Financing to Tunisia from $25 million in FY 2015 to $65 million in FY 2016, which help pay for its purchase of U.S.-supplied Black Hawk helicopters;
• Of the total request for security assistance to Europe and Eurasia in FY 2016 ($264 million), an estimated 36 percent ($95 million) would go to just three countries: Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine;
• As part of the CTPF, the Defense Department plans to spend $47 million on the White House’s Security Governance Initiative (SGI) for six North and West African countries, which is aimed at improving security force systems, processes and institutions. This request is on top of the State Department’s request for SGI of $16.9 million.

Although the Defense Department is less transparent than the State Department on where its security assistance is going, it is possible to obtain a picture of some major global trends in its security assistance. For FY 2016, the Defense Department is requesting to spend an estimated 22 percent ($2.28 billion) of its total $10.42 billion in MENA countries (see Figure 5), which represents a 20 percent share increase over total aid levels for FY 2013.  This increase also excludes $262 million slated for the Maghreb and the Sahel countries through the Counterterrorism Partnership Fund as it is not possible to separate how much funding is going to North African countries. There is also a significant increase in Defense Department assistance to Sub-Saharan Africa, from $112 million (1 percent) in FY 2013 to $1.13 billion (11 percent) in FY 2016.

Notes:  The Defense Department data includes a total of $2.4 billion in estimates for FY 2013 and $2.8 billion in estimates for FY 2016. Estimates are derived using the most recent year for which data is publicly available. When the accurate number is known for the global total but not regionally, the Monitor uses the percentage for the most recent year known to determine the estimate.

The fact sheet is intended to provide an overview of some of the major global and regional trends as proposed in the Obama Administration’s request for security assistance for FY 2016. As the administration’s request is the start of the congressional appropriations process in which there could be many changes and amendments to the request for security assistance, this fact sheet will be updated as new information becomes available.