As President-elect Biden begins to roll out transition plans, several defense industry executives say they don't expect immediate big changes under a new administration.
Speaking to analysts last week -- one day before the election -- Roger Krone, the chief executive of Leidos, said a Biden administration likely wouldn't grow defense spending as quickly as another Trump administration.
"If you're in support of legacy programs within DOD, that's probably not a great place to be. You want to be in the emerging technologies, I think, regardless of who gets elected," Krone said.
However, the CEO said his company doesn't see short-term budget changes.
"The Biden campaign has come out and said that they're not looking to cut defense, and we think that's true," Krone added, noting that he would also expect some shifted priorities. "I think Biden is going to kind of go back to international alliances and maybe reopen trade."
Krone said he also wouldn't expect immediate tax rate increases.
An increase would "be delayed because the last thing they want to do is tamp down economic growth, because that's how we pull ourselves out of this large unemployment," Krone said. "So I actually think that, you know, 2021 looks a lot like 2020, and 2022 is already in planning."
John Heller, the chief executive of PAE, also said he thinks 2021 will not show marked change. Speaking Friday, before Biden was named the winner, Heller said he doesn't see 2021 as a year "where either party is going to want to make the budget the central issue."
"We're going to see rather similar spending levels in 2021, and we think that bodes well for PAE," he said.
However, in an interview with Inside Defense, Chris Brose, a former top Senate staffer who now serves as chief strategy officer for Anduril, a small defense contractor, said he expects spending to eventually decline. As a result, the next defense secretary will have to make some difficult choices.
"To me, it is all about how we execute the kind of change that senior members of the Defense Department, senior leaders in the military are calling for," he said. "That to me is the sole highest priority, and I think it is put in higher relief when you consider the likelihood that we'll have less spending on national defense moving forward."
"There's a lot of change that's going to have to play out under the next administration's watch," Brose said, also speaking before the election was decided.