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Trump’s new plan: Stop defense cuts & military draw-down Trump proposes ending sequester, using military build-up to create jobs
(about 17 hours later)
Donald Trump is looking to end defense spending cuts and allocate even more funds in the more than $600 billion US military budget, his campaign says. The tycoon wants to bolster the Army with new ships, planes and submarines. Donald Trump is looking to end defense spending cuts and allocate even more funds to the $600 billion-plus Pentagon budget. The billionaire businessman wants to bolster the military with new troops, ships, planes and submarines.
The Republican presidential hopeful is going to announce his military plan in a speech on Wednesday, according to a campaign senior official, who briefed the media on the eve of the event.  The Republican presidential hopeful announced his military plan in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, presenting a ten-point “Peace through strength” program in a speech to the Union League of Philadelphia.
Trump would be proposing a “major investment” in the US military, which he has repeatedly referred as a “disaster” in his statements.  “I will ask Congress to fully eliminate the defense sequester,” Trump said, explaining that this would give the Department of Defense certainty about funding and allow better planning for the future – something often heard from the Pentagon.
“I will ask Congress to eliminate the sequester and immediately re-invest in our military,” Trump said in a speech at a rally in Greenville, North Carolina earlier on Tuesday.  “Without defense, we don’t have a country,” Trump added. 
However, his campaign would not say how Trump plans to bypass what is known as the Budget Control Act of 2011, Bloomberg reported. The provision, adopted over five year ago, set limits on defense spending up until the fiscal year for 2021. It also imposed major sequestration cuts for the Department of Defense, which according to the Center of Strategies and International Studies (CSIS), would total roughly $1 billion over 10 years.  The Republican nominee laid out plans to increase active-duty US Army personnel to 540,000 troops, add 13 more battalions to the US Marine Corps, and expand the US Navy from 276 ships and submarines to 350.
At the Pentagon, such “across-the-board” budget cuts are seen as potentially threatening to national security.  He also pledged to ensure the US Air Force would have at least 1,200 fighter aircraft, the minimum necessary for its continuing missions according to the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Still, America’s defense spending places it at the forefront of the list of the world’s most militarized states, with a budget equal to that of the next 10 states combined.  “We will also seek to develop a state of the art missile defense system,” Trump said. That effort would involve buying new destroyers capable of missile defense, but also modernizing the navy’s aging Aegis cruiser fleet at a cost of $220 million apiece. This, the tycoon said, would translate into more jobs for Americans. The military modernization would be a “50-state effort.”
According to Reuters, Trump wants to allocate funds for upgrading the US military with new ships, planes and submarines; to bolster missile defense systems and to improve combat troops training. Taking another stab at his rival for the White House, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump pledged to enforce all classification laws for sensitive government documents, improve US cyber-warfare defenses and even “invest heavily in offensive cyber capabilities.”
The biggest obstacle to Trump’s plan is the sequestration, known as the Budget Control Act of 2011. Adopted over five year ago, the sequester set limits on government spending up until the fiscal year for 2021, with total cuts to the Department of Defense amounting to $1 billion over 10 years, according to the Center of Strategies and International Studies (CSIS). 
Trump did say he would ask Congress to offset the Pentagon spending through cuts to government bureaucracy that “just gets in our way,” while protecting Americans’ hard-earned benefits.
Another source of funding would be NATO, where only five members are living up to the military spending requirement. Germany, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Japan would also be asked to pay for the defense provided by the US, Trump said.
America’s defense spending places it at the forefront of the list of the world’s most militarized states, with a budget equal to that of the next 10 states combined. 
“Our active-duty armed forces have shrunk from 2 million in 1991 to about 1.3 million today,” Trump said in a speech in April. “The Navy has shrunk from over 500 ships to 272 ships during this same period of time. The Air Force is about one-third smaller than 1991. Pilots flying B-52s in combat missions today. These planes are older than virtually everybody in this room.”“Our active-duty armed forces have shrunk from 2 million in 1991 to about 1.3 million today,” Trump said in a speech in April. “The Navy has shrunk from over 500 ships to 272 ships during this same period of time. The Air Force is about one-third smaller than 1991. Pilots flying B-52s in combat missions today. These planes are older than virtually everybody in this room.”
In his campaign video posted on YouTube in January, Trump was vowing to “make our Military so big, powerful and strong that nobody - absolutely nobody - will mess with us.”In his campaign video posted on YouTube in January, Trump was vowing to “make our Military so big, powerful and strong that nobody - absolutely nobody - will mess with us.”
Yet, he has also pleated to make the US army “so strong” again without increasing the military budget, because he is going to “look for savings and spend our money wisely.” On Wednesday, Trump painted Clinton as “trigger-happy and unstable when it comes to war.”
Also on Wednesday, Trump plans to criticize his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, for "military adventurism" in regard to her mishandling of Libya and the Middle East as secretary of state, Reuters reported. “Sometimes it has seemed like there wasn’t a country in the Middle East that Hillary Clinton didn’t want to invade, intervene or topple,” Trump said, adding later, "Everywhere she got involved, things got worse."