Trump is a disrupter. Trump is an outsider who stormed Washington. Trump rattled the bureaucracy. Trump unsettled the Pentagon. Trump challenged the generals. Trump refused to play by the rules of America’s permanent security establishment.

Cold truth: Extraordinary at first glance. Fiction on closer inspection.

For the record: Under Trump’s first term, military spending surged past $700 billion annually — levels that even hawkish Cold War planners would have found extraordinary. In his second term, the pattern has continued. The weapons systems keep getting funded, the procurement contracts keep flowing, and the defense contractors keep posting record profits.

The Sentinel program – $141 billion with the total lifecycle cost pegged at $264 billion. Trump signed an executive order in April 2025 mandating cancellation scrutiny for any program more than 15 percent over budget. Sentinel was 81 percent over — more than five times his own threshold. Trump’s Pentagon nominees then certified........

© Pakistan Observer