WASHINGTON — The Defense Department’s unfunded priority lists have hit Capitol Hill, but in a departure from precedent, two of the military services and several combatant commands said they have no unfunded requirements due to the size of the $1.5 trillion defense budget request for fiscal 2027.
According to UPL submissions obtained by Breaking Defense, the Army, Navy and Air Force included about $3 billion in unfunded requests, all for military construction projects. US Southern Command included $229.9 million in its wish list, up from its $60 million request in FY26.
All told, those figures are paltry compared to the batch of unfunded requests for FY26, which totaled around $50 billion and included big ticket items like F-35s and development funds for the Navy’s sixth generation F/A-XX fighter.
However, the lack of unfunded priorities makes sense in the context of the Defense Department’s record-shattering $1.5 trillion budget request for FY27 — a 44 percent increase from the FY26 budget, which itself made history as the first defense budget to hit $1 trillion.
Indo-Pacific Command head Gen. Samuel Paparo told lawmakers last week that he had no unfunded requirements due to the size of the budget. In the UPL letters, that sentiment was echoed by the leaders of the Marine Corps, Space Force, Strategic Command, Space Command, Africa Command and Central Command, who told Congress that they had no unfunded requirements for the year. (Breaking Defense first reported on April 29 that SPACECOM would submit an empty UPL.)
“I believe this budget, aligned to the National Defense Strategy, represents the best balance of resources to support these critical efforts. Therefore, at this time, the Marine Corps Unfunded Priority List has no items to report,” wrote Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith in a April 23 letter to the heads of the congressional defense committees.
Of the services that did submit unfunded priorities lists, the Air Force came in with the most expensive wish list in FY27, comprising 41 MILCON projects at a total of $1.7 billion. It’s top priority is a relatively small one: $26.3 million for “fuel tanks with receipt pipeline and hydrant system” to be built in Tinian, in the Northern Mariana Islands.
More expensive priorities include a $182 million multi-domain operations complex for Beale Air Force Base, Calif., and a $110 million E-7 Wedgetail squadron operations facility at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla.
The Army included $731 million in its MILCON wishlist, including $157 million for “JRTC rotational unit billeting” at Fort Polk, La., and $147 million for dining facility at Fort Wainwright, Alaska.
Meanwhile, the Navy requested a total of $602 million, spread across six MILCON projects. It’s top priority is a $50 million request to accelerate construction of a “Submarine Support Storage, Maintenance, and Operations Facility” for Naval Submarine Base New London, Conn., from its original schedule of FY28 to an earlier date of FY27. The facility is set to provide centralized, climate-controlled storage for maintenance equipment associated with the Virginia-class submarine, which is currently stored in various locations around the base.
However, the most expensive item on the Navy wishlist is a $169 million Naval Ocean Processing Expansion for Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Wash., which will “provide additional space to accommodate planned personnel growth, house modernized equipment for the new undersea surveillance mission, and provide facilities for TUSC [Theater Undersea Surveillance Command] to conduct test and evaluation functions and program management for new surveillance systems.”
SOUTHCOM broke its unfunded priorities into four broad areas: $56.5 million for strengthening command and control, $162.9 million for ongoing efforts against designated terrorist organizations, $16 million for developing and fielding modernized forces, and $14.5 million for securing “strategic key terrain.”
