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Opportunities for Commercial Companies from Congress’s $150B Spending Plan to Modernize the Defense Industrial Base

By Steve Empedocles, CEO, Clark Street Associates, emped@csa.co

Article | April 28, 2025

Although many media accounts have emphasized the desire of the Trump Administration to cut spending, a recent Bill released by Congress plans to spend $150 billion to enhance our military readiness. Almost $50 billion of this will be spent modernizing military depots, or city-sized facilities that maintain and repair DOD vehicles like ships and planes, using advanced technologies, as well as the non-weapons segments of the industrial base that supports the deployment of these technologies. Many of these advanced technologies will come from commercial companies. This funding, which is substantially more than the grant funding given to commercial companies under President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), can be used to develop, deploy and build manufacturing for these technologies, creating new, enormous funding opportunities for these companies.

This creates an opportunity for commercial advanced technology companies to help shape the funding opportunities that will develop over the next 6-12 months, maximizing their chance of winning these funds. This analysis provides insight to help companies make informed decisions about what they can be doing right now to ensure they don’t miss the window of opportunity to leverage this government funding to accelerate the development, manufacturing and deployment of their commercial technologies.