The Pentagon's budget also supports continued buys of multimillion dollar platforms like the Air Force's F-22A tactical fighter, one nuclear submarine, two new Navy destroyers and the further development of a national missile defense system.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld unveiled the Defense Department's FY-07 budget request today during a press briefing at the Pentagon. Rumsfeld said the new capabilities the U.S. military needs to fight global terrorism must be funded along with more traditional programs like fighter aircraft, submarines and ground combat vehicles. “We, as an institution, have to not stop doing what we were doing and start doing something new,” he said.

The $439.3 million request is a 7 percent increase over the amount Congress appropriated for DOD in FY-06.

Pentagon Comptroller Tina Jonas said the budget invests $181 million in military language programs in 2007 and $579 million between FY-08 and FY-11. “The budget provides the resources to increase language competency for general forces and in languages like Arabic and others,” she said. “It expands the language training for special operations and intelligence units, increases pay and recruitment of native speakers to serve as translators and interpreters for operational forces.”

Congress will be asked to support the purchase of 32 unmanned air vehicles between FY-07 and FY-11, aircraft that will increase U.S. intelligence-gathering capabilities, Jonas said. These UAVs would allow for persistent, 24-hour-per-day surveillance, she added. The FY-07 budget request includes $1.7 billion for UAV buys and research programs and $9.9 billion between FY-08 and FY-11.

Jonas said the FY-07 budget will “substantially increase the size and capability” of special operations forces the United States needs for irregular warfare operations. “We fund an additional 14,000 special operations forces, growing from 50,000 in fiscal year 2006 to 64,000 in fiscal year 2011,” she said. “We grow 4,000 in this current budget.”

The FY-07 to FY-11 budget request includes $5.1 billion for these special operations troops plans, including money for the recently established Marine Corps Special Operations Command.

None of the money in the 2007 budget request Congress will review would pay for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The administration will soon send Congress a supplemental budget request for the remainder of 2006 to cover those campaigns, which are costing U.S. taxpayers about $6.8 billion a month, Jonas said. That number is higher than monthly costs a year ago because the Pentagon is now factoring in the price tag to replace and repair equipment destroyed and damaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, she added.

Congress recently appropriated a $50 billion down payment toward FY-06 operations. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that maintaining a presence with the current force level in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost approximately $85 billion for the fiscal year.

“That would suggest the administration would require a supplemental of $35 billion,” Steven Kosiak, a budget expert with the non-partisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, told InsideDefense.com last week.

The FY-07 budget request also includes $3 billion in investments set aside to implement the immediate recommendations of the 2005 Quadrennial Defense review, a senior defense official told InsideDefense.com . Jonas said the money to support the QDR starts to show up in force in the FY-08 budget.