Compass Points - Zero Increase?

The Marine Corps needs to do more.

Compass Points - Zero Increase?

The Marine Corps needs to do more.

January 28, 2026

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Declining or shining? How is the US Marine Corps doing?

Young Marines today have the same fire and audacity of Marines throughout history. When called upon tomorrow, today’s young Marines will accomplish great things as Marines always have.

Beyond the heart of young Marines, however, the Marine Corps is an organization that needs effective representation in the bureaucratic budget wars inside the Washington beltway. In recent budget news, the US will increase both military end strength and spending.

The US military is growing. That is good news for the US and bad news for the adversaries of the US around the globe. A stronger US military makes a future of peace and stability more likely. US military end strength will increase roughly 30,000. Reporter Douglas Lindsay writing for Military.com says that, “This isn’t “more military” across the board. It’s a strategic bet that prioritizes ground and maritime forces while holding other elements steady.”

A priority on larger ground and maritime forces must mean a larger increase for the Marine Corps, the Nation’s premier soldiers of the sea. Or does it?

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Where the Growth Is and Isn’t

The 2026 end-strength increases are targeted, not uniform:

— Army: 454,000 active-duty (+11,700)

— Navy: 334,600 (+12,300)

— Air Force: 320,000 (+1,500)

— Space Force: 10,400 (+600)

— Coast Guard: 50,000 (up from 44,500)

— Marine Corps: 172,300 (no change)

-- Military.com

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The Marine Corps gets a zero increase? The Marine Corps is the only service with no increase? Who was responsible for going to Congress and beating the drum for the Marine Corps everyday? As the US begins to drawn down forces from fixed bases around the world, a larger force of Marines is more and more useful. Marines can roam the globe, can respond to any crisis anywhere without needing fixed foreign bases.

There are at least two other reasons why the Marine Corps needs an end strength increase. First, the Marine Corps does not actually have a current end strength number of some 172 thousand today. That often quoted number is just an approximation, a momentary snapshot. The actual number of Marines is most likely much less. Marine end strength has been trending downward for years. It is certainly less than 170,000 and may be under 165,000. In addition, if the Commandant’s priority is to continually maintain three MEUs on the world’s oceans, that will take an increase. Often in recent years, the US has had zero MEUs on the world’s oceans.

Besides end strength, how is the Marine Corps doing with dollars? For example, how is the Marine Corps doing in the UPL, the Unfunded Priority List?

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In past years, the leadership at the Pentagon and members of Congress have disparaged the uniformed military unfunded priorities lists (UPLs) despite the fact that these lists are both required by statute and also help Congress fulfill its constitutional duty to raise and maintain our military. 1,2

The FY 2026 budget process and the accompanying UPLs offer a lot to consider in part due to their size and in part because they are playing out in the background of non-normal budget processes. First, they occur after Congress failed to pass an FY 2025 appropriations bill for the Department of Defense (DoD) for the first time ever.3 Next, Congress has passed a reconciliation bill, providing DoD with over $150 billion in flexible FY 2025 funding that is available for several years and of which Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has interestingly characterized $113.1 billion as part of the President’s budget (PB) request for FY 2026.4 Finally, while the President announced nearly $1 trillion in defense funding for FY 2026, the discretionary request is actually about $850 billion, less than what President Biden had proposed.5 With that as the background there are four key insights we can gain from these lists:

• The military leadership took an unconstrained approach, raising the request from ~$29 billion in FY 2025, to ~$51 billion in FY 2026 and fully exposing the insufficiency of the White House OMB topline (table 1a).

• The Air Force and Navy were the most aggressive of the services in using the list, implying that they may not have taken reconciliation funding into account, or if they did, they see it for what it is, a one-time supplemental to fill long existing gaps. Additionally, one must wonder why the land forces are perennial laggards in their requests.6

• INDOPACOM made the largest request at $11.6 billion. Whether or not they considered the over $12.7 billion in budget reconciliation funding when developing this list, it is clearly without constraints as it was last year (table 2a).

• Readiness only makes up about 15 percent of the lists, implying that PB 2026 prioritized near-term readiness over investments, relying on the budget reconciliation bill to make up the investment shortfalls (table 3).7

-- American Enterprise Institute

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The Marine Corps is making an unusually small request under the UPL. The Marine Corps is requesting less than $3b, barely 5% of the total UPL budget. And the Marine Corps may not get even that. Historically, because the Marine Corps has always been so vital to national defense and provided so much in capabilities, it gets a ‘plus-up’ to its budget. Some Commandants in prior decades were renown for getting a plus-up of as much as $1billion every year. In recent years the Marine Corps has often had its annual plus-up reduced to zero.

For both civilian and military organizations inside the federal government, the recipe for more government funding is simple. Go out and accomplish great things. Then go back, make friends inside the Congress and show Congress again and again about all the great things your organization is doing. If the organization is doing enough great things, Congress will increase both your end strength and will plus-up your budget.

Currently the Marine Corps is facing a zero end strength increase and a zero plus-up. The American people love the historic reputation of the Marine Corps. If the Marine Corps is not getting attention from Congress today, it is because the Marine Corps is not out on the oceans of the world accomplishing enough great things. Over the last six years, Marine Corps senior leadership has led the Marine Corps into a dead-end. It is time to turn around.

The Marine Corps must rebuild and enhance its capabilities to arrive first at any crisis and accomplish more in less time than any other service. It is time to stop complaining about lack of amphibious ships and commandeer every ship, boat, vessel, catamaran, and dingy and get back to global crisis response. If the Marine Corps will start to do more and more, it will receive more from Congress. If the Marine Corps continues to do less, it will continue to get zero

Young Marines today have the same fire and audacity of Marines throughout history. When called upon tomorrow, today’s young Marines will accomplish great things as Marines always have. Today’s Marine Corps must find senior leaders worthy of the courage and sacrifice of young Marines.

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Military.com - 01/27/2026

The Military Is Growing Again But Capacity, Not Recruiting, Is The Real Test

By Douglas Lindsay

https://www.military.com/feature/2026/01/26/military-growing-again-capacity-not-recruiting-real-test.html

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American Enterprise Institute

Observations on the FY2026 Unfunded Priorities Lists

By John G. Ferrari and Elaine McCusker

https://aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/WP-UPL-FY26-Final.pdf

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