Inside the Pentagon highlights

Some must-reads from this week's issue of Inside the Pentagon:

1. The Defense Department is requesting $574.5 billion in base spending for fiscal year 2018 and $64.5 billion in Overseas Contingency Operations funding, which in total include $208.6 billion in acquisition spending on major weapon systems, according to documents released by the Pentagon.

Full story: Pentagon sends budget request to Congress; seeks $208B in modernization

2. The Defense Department's fiscal year 2018 budget is accompanied by a "placeholder" forecast that assumes no real growth over five years, a blueprint the Pentagon expects to update with the FY-19 budget proposal next year to reflect the results of a Trump administration-led defense strategy review, according to a senior DOD official.

Full story: Trump directs no-growth defense plan, pending strategy review

3. Pentagon officials this week defended the fiscal year 2018 budget request against GOP lawmakers' complaints that the request is only 3 percent more than that planned by the Obama administration.

Full story: Pentagon defends budget request amid Capitol Hill criticism

4. The once-secretive Strategic Capabilities Office is seeking $1.1 billion -- the second largest unclassified pot of research and development funding in the Defense Department's fiscal year 2018 budget -- to develop new, and the Pentagon hopes, surprising ways of using existing systems to bolster conventional deterrence against China and Russia.

Full story: SCO seeks $1.1B in FY-18, exponential increase to support 'new era of power projection'