The Trump administration recently revealed that it is requesting a $1.5 trillion defense budget for FY2027, confirming Trump’s initial announcement of that topline number at the beginning of 2026. So far, only the broad strokes are publicly available, but there’s enough there to get the gist of what the administration wants.

One would think that the additive manufacturing (AM) industry is in a better position than ever to make the case that policymakers should continue to increase prioritization of AM, but nothing involving the defense budget is ever straightforward. Before the $1.5 trillion was ever officially announced, Matt Vallone, a defense market intelligence analyst who has experience working in the US Congress, wrote an article, “Why a $1.5 Trillion Defense Budget Request Might Slow the Pentagon’s Reform Efforts”, which highlights the maddening amount of complexity underlying the process.

First off, it should be noted that, according to Vallone, the roughly 50 percent year-over-year increase in the defense budget that the Trump administration is requesting “would be the largest increase in defense spending since the Korean War…” All of the difficulties involved in getting the bill passed, as well as in trying to determine how the bill might affect relevant industries like AM, largely stem from this historic increase, alongside the fact that it’s being requested during a war that, so far, gets more unpopular with Americans by the day.

Then, there are also the realities that the US is spending more on servicing the debt than ever before — since 2024, the US has indeed spent more on debt interest payments than it has on defense — and the Congress is more divided along partisan lines than ever before, which has already made passing a budget on time virtually impossible for the US government. Vallone points out that, under these sorts of conditions, it is the disruptors who are likely to suffer the most:

“It would be reasonable to expect that the FY2027 request will put significant funding into the priority areas and would seek to make these programs as accessible as possible to non-traditional defense providers. …

…However, submitting a request that will likely be subject to such significant cuts will play to the advantage of traditional defense suppliers. In what will almost certainly be epic lobbying battles across the FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act and the defense appropriations bill, programs that have hot production lines, employees who are actual constituents, and established Congressional relationships will be much better positioned. …New startups and novel solutions would be back-footed relative to incumbents as they lack the on-the-ground support of existing, rather than potential, workforces.”

Essentially, Vallone is arguing that by asking for such a large increase upfront, the Trump administration will likely end up seeing a good chunk of that number cut. That’s not a problem on its own, but because it would leave members of Congress in control of deciding which parts of the budget request fall by the wayside, the companies with existing Congressional relationships — generally those who prefer the status quo — will disproportionately benefit. Vallone draws a comparison to the Obama administration’s second term:

“…a high budget number followed by much lower appropriations can impact the capital flow into the sector. …in 2013, a sharp drop in contracting relative to expectations led to deep uncertainty and investors pulling back. Small businesses that staff up under the impression that they are in the budgetary program of record, only to see their line item slashed to sustainment levels, will face difficulties paying bills and justifying future rounds of investment.”

Of course, this is exactly the kind of difficulty that has long plagued AM companies working with the US military. It is especially frustrating under current circumstances because it threatens to stifle one of the rare publicly available instances of good planning by the US military in the lead-up to Iran: its pivot towards incorporating lower-cost weapons systems enabled by advanced manufacturing techniques, including AM.

Image courtesy of Frankenburg Technologies, via Chosun Daily.

A recent article in Korea’s Chosun Daily describes how the Trump administration has built on the Biden administration’s focus on developing the capabilities to produce cheaper drones, as well as developing lower-cost missiles for countering cheap enemy drones, in large part via 3D printing:

“Estonia-based startup Frankenburg Technologies, observing Russia sending Iran’s Shahed drones during the Ukraine war, is developing a missile capable of speeds over 600 miles per hour (approximately 965 km/h). While its range is short at up to 1 mile (approximately 1.6 km), it has the advantage of costing tens of thousands of dollars in the low range and taking only a few hours to manufacture. European missile companies MBDA, Sweden’s Saab, and Cambridge Aerospace have also joined the competition. They simplify manufacturing by using 3D printing and AI design instead of complex manual labor, reducing costs by using commercial components found in smartphones and home appliances instead of expensive missile-specific parts.”

The article cites a 2024 Axios article that quotes Bill LaPlante, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment in the Biden Administration, testifying to a Senate subcommittee about the Houthis drone capabilities:

“If we’re shooting down a $50,000 one-way drone with a $3 million missile, that’s not a good cost equation. The technology is changing every couple of weeks, and the tactics are changing, and it’s going to be a constant fight.”

Obviously, LaPlante’s comment could’ve just as easily been a direct response to what’s happening on the ground in the Middle East right now.

Testing the SPARTA drone. Screenshot from ARL/YouTube, via NextGenDefense.

Meanwhile, beyond private enterprise, the US military’s own manufacturing strategies have also benefited from incorporating AM as a core philosophical principle rather than simply as a new production technique. All throughout last year, the US Army was steadily building up its AM capacity, but it was also simultaneously refining that capacity into the cornerstone of a holistic framework for lowering the costs of workforce training. The Army has succeeded in leveraging that framework to respond more quickly to organizational needs as they arise, to the extent that the branch can factor feedback from soldiers on the frontline into the design process. That’s the story behind the SPARTA (Soldier Portable Autonomous Reconnaissance Transitioning Aircraft) drone that was unveiled recently at Alabama’s Best Drone Warfighter Competition.

The SPARTA weighs a little over two pounds and, with a frame that can be 3D printed overnight, it’s around $1000 per unit:

“Our team at ARL has been working on new types of small unmanned aerial system designs for several years,” Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Mechanical Engineer Dr. John Hrynuk said in an Army press release. “When soldiers visited ARL last spring, they expressed the need for a lightweight, modular drone that could be easily assembled, repaired, and adapted in the field.”

Whatever ends up happening with the FY2027 budget, the Army’s AM-enabled innovation boost has already been enhanced in 2026 by the opening of a new Additive Makerspace at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey. Similar facilities, including the II Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) Campus at Camp Lejeune, have yielded numerous examples of real cost savings for the military, while also harnessing and encouraging innovation within Army ranks.

Image courtesy of the US Army.

The Iran conflict is already demonstrating that the US should be moving further in the direction of cost reduction that supports long-term agility, and away from locking the budget in on commitments to questionable behemoths like the F-35, which is everyone’s favorite punching bag for good reason, but is also far from the only example of the Pentagon sticking with an outdated spending strategy. It should also be pointed out that, due to successive generations of endless drift and unabashed bloat, the US defense budget has effectively become a threat to US national security, not only by spending on the wrong things when it comes to defense, but equally, because the US is having trouble affording everything else that a government should be providing for its taxpayers.

Trump did an excellent job highlighting this himself when he made a comment that already seems likely to define his second term: “We can’t take care of day care. We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We’re fighting wars. ..We have to take care of one thing. Military protection. We have to guard the country.”

The moment Netanyahu and Trump decided to start a war with Iran, the decision about whether the war would end was no longer in their hands. Similarly, once Trump’s comments at a White House luncheon about the military budget were leaked to the press, the debate over the budget was no longer in the hands of the executive branch. This gives the disruptors, including the AM industry, a crucial opening they wouldn’t have had otherwise. As may be expected, Democrats, who are currently anticipated to take control of Congress after this year’s midterm elections, have pushed back hard on the White House’s budget request, but so have Republicans. If the AM industry can organize and campaign members of Congress with the legitimate argument that AM can and should be used as a spending reduction tool, the status quo might not steamroll its opposition as it has in the past.

At the same time, AM companies should treat the morass of the process as an opportunity to rethink their dependence on the defense sector. A primary point to consider is that you don’t even have to forego targeting government money as a pillar of your business strategy: you can simply refocus on sectors like energy, medical, semiconductors, etc., instead. Something along the lines of, “If we can quantify all the savings AM yields in the defense budget, that money should be set aside for AM spending by other agencies, which could lead to additional savings,” has the makings of an argument that could actually win in 2026.

Disruptors don’t get an opening at the public policy level like the one that looks to be on the horizon for the next few years. If such an opening does appear, don’t waste it.

Featured image: Groundbreaking of the Additive Makerspace at Picatinny Arsenal, Courtesy of the US Army