The Defense Department is undergoing a massive effort to modernize and improve its ability to counter well-organized and well-funded adversaries.

This is in stark contrast to DODD’s focus of the previous decades, which was on counter-terrorism operations and capabilities. Executing this transformation requires significant investment toward modernization efforts, innovation adoption and deterrence capabilities.

One of the primary points of competition between the United States and its adversaries is in cyber capabilities. Both of its major adversaries are capable of cyber attacks and infiltration that are more sophisticated than threats posed by independent terror groups of the past.

This has driven significant investment in both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities throughout the department, as well as the development of a cyber resilient information architecture.

Focus on IT and cyberspace

The Information Technology/Cyberspace Activities’ (IT/CA) fiscal 2025 budget estimate of $64.1 billion is a subset of the DoD overall budget request and represents about 7.5% of the department’s entire budget.

More than half of the IT/CA budget is dedicated to operations and maintenance funding and totals $33.4 billion. The next two largest IT funding areas — research, development, testing, and evaluation, and procurement — account for $10.4 billion and $9.1 billion, respectively.

The single largest non-national security mission area is the Enterprise Information Environment, which is receiving $27.2 billion in fiscal 2025. The cyberspace budget has increased by $1 billion from fiscal 2024.

Almost half of this additional funding supports Air Force cyber activities. Army remains the single largest recipient of funding out of the three branch agencies, with the majority of IT funding going into non-cyber investments.