Defense IT and Cyberspace Activities FY 2025 Budget Highlights

In mid-March, the Biden Administration submitted its fiscal year (FY) 2025 budget request. While the Department of Defense (DoD) released limited discretionary budget information around the same time, the Pentagon held back all but the most basic details of their information technology (IT) and cybersecurity budgetary plans, until very recently.

Defense IT and Cyberspace Budget for FY 2025

Nearly two months after the initial discretionary budget release, the DoD has released their FY 2025 Information Technology and Cyberspace Activities (IT/CA) Budget Request Overview, providing basic details of what they are currently spending and want to receive for both their IT and cyber-related efforts in the coming fiscal year.

In the IT/CA budget overview, DoD provides department-wide top-line numbers for the four categories that comprise their total IT budget. One category – the Unclassified IT Budget for non-National Security Systems (NSS) – represents DoD spending on IT initiatives listed within the IT Portfolio data available on the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) IT Dashboard. For the remaining three categories – Unclassified IT Budget NSS, Classified IT and Classified Cyber – simple topline numbers are all that DoD provides, sustaining the trend of DoD withholding from public view all but the most basic IT program information for roughly 60% of their IT budget.

Across the four budget categories, the DoD is requesting $64.1B for FY 2025, down 1.2% from the $64.9B estimated for FY 2024 and 5.7% above the $60.6B spent in FY 2023. It is noteworthy that Classified Cyber progressively accounts for 20%, 22% and 23% of the total DoD IT budget for FY 2023, 2024 and 2025, respectively. (See chart below.) Only twice over the last several budget cycles has Cyber accounted for 20% or more of the actual total spent on DoD IT: 20% in FY 2022 (as reported in the FY 2024 request) and 22% in FY 2020 (as reported in the FY 2022 request). With the latest data we see that for the two years of FY 2022 and FY 2023, Cyber accounted for sustained 20% of the total DoD IT. We will need to wait and see how the dust settles on FY 2024 before we know if this is a sustained trend.

The DoD provides some high level component-specific budget data as well, although not as granular nor fully aligned to the other categories. The $64.1B in FY 2025 Total IT/CA dollars are spread across Defense-wide efforts and the three military departments (MILDEPs), with the Army receiving $18.3B (29%), Navy receiving $13.0B (20%) and Air Force getting $11.1B (17%). Defense-wide receives $21.7B (34%) of the FY 2025 total. (See chart below.)

DoD FY 2025 Cyberspace Activities Budget

The DoD sub-divides their cyberspace activities (CA) budget into three portfolios – cybersecurity, cyberspace operations, and research and development (R&D). The total CA budget for FY 2025 of $14.5B represents a modest $64M increase over the FY 2024 Adjustments level of $14.4B, but that FY 2024 level is $936M more than what DoD requested for FY 2024 last year’s budget. The FY 2025 Request would also be nearly $2.1B (+17%) and $3.7B (+35%) above the FY 2023 and FY 2022 Actual levels, respectively. (See chart below.)

The DoD further segments the Cyber Operations budget category among funding for Cyber Mission Force (CMF), US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM HQ) and an All Other category. The overall Cyber Operations budget sees a modest $84M (+1.3%) increase for FY 2025 from the FY 2024 Adjustments level. However, the funding changes are uneven across the three categories, with only the All Other category receiving an 11% increase while CMF is reduced by -11%. CYBERCOM HQ as a category in the IT/CA budget was zeroed out in FY 2024 and remains so for FY 2025. (See chart below.)

Where much of DoD’s IT and cyber budget information is cryptic and brief, the total CA budget is the one area where DoD provides some year-to-year budget comparisons among the MILDEPs, and it is here where we see some changes enacted for FY 2024 and FY 2025. In FY 2024, DoD is enacting a $2.7B (+64%) increase in the Defense-wide CA budget while reducing the Air Force and Navy CA budgets by a combined $862M, and -18% and -9%, respectively. Army is getting a $138M (+5%) increase.

For FY 2025, the DoD is reversing those trends slightly, giving the Air Force and Navy each an 8% boost and trimming the Army by $425M. The Defense-wide CA budget would receive a 1.6% bump to sustain the FY 2024 increase. (See chart below.)

DoD gives no further detail into the budget reallocations in the IT/CA budget document. The only publicly available details into their cyber spending priorities come in their department-wide FY 2025 Budget Request Overview, which was released with the main White House budget back in March. Below is a summary of the CA-related priorities from the overview that include dollar amounts:

• Cybersecurity (These account for $3.1B of the $7.4B total request)
  • Next-gen Encryption, $1.3B
  • Network Security (Unclassified, Secret, Top Secret, etc.), $367M
  • Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) transition efforts, $977M
  • Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM) Modernization, $299M
  • Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) and the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) cybersecurity programs, $158M
  • Strategic Cybersecurity Program, $48M
• Cyberspace Operations (These account for $6.0B of the $6.4B total request)
  • Joint Cyber Mission Force (CMF) personnel, $2.9B
  • Non-joint cyber warfighting capabilities, $1.4B
  • Persistent Cyber Training Environment (PCTE) and CMF Training, $177M
  • Hunt forward and enhanced sensing and mitigation, $262M
  • Niche cyber weapons and Indo-Pacific and European theater deterrence, etc., $465M
  • Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture (JCWA) synchronization efforts, $820M

DoD gives the proposed FY 2025 amounts for the above items but does not provide any relative increases or if reductions elsewhere are offsetting these dollars.

DoD vs. Civilian Cybersecurity

As a whole, the federal Civilian departments have requested nearly $13B for cybersecurity in FY 2025, versus the $7.4B in total cybersecurity-centric budget dollars among the four DoD components. Further, although some portion of the $6.4B DoD Cyberspace Operations budget may correlate to comparable cybersecurity activities at some Civilian agencies, without significant visibility into those activities it becomes difficult to compare the two segments.

Taken together, the total FY 2025 budget for federal cybersecurity comes in at no less than $20.4B across the Civilian and Defense segments.

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For more analysis on the FY 2025 Federal Budget check out our report, FY 2025 Federal Budget Request: Priorities and Opportunities.