I think the implication is what the US military is buying is getting smaller, cheaper and smarter, not that the US military is downsizing.

Wish I could use that same logic in my budget requests. Yeah, the department is still spending a lot of money, but each library we buy is more specialized now!

That's actually a decent comparison. "We're spending just as much, but we're deploying lots of smaller containerized applications instead of one giant on-prem monolith."

That’s lower than inflation, making it a reduction in real terms.

The article is exploring the idea of moving away from large, multi-year, multi-billion platforms (like aircraft carriers). And it is doing so from the lens of most-effective warfighting capabilities, not from a budget reduction mindset.