By Emelie Rutherford
The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) marked up the fiscal year 2010 defense authorization bill yesterday, spending most of the daylight hours debating unsuccessful Republican attempts to restore missile-defense funding the Obama administration wants to reduce.
The panel also concurred with Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s plan to scrap the manned-ground vehicle portion of the Future Combat System (FCS) Army modernization program, yet reduced the size of a cut to the administration’s funding request that was proposed last week at the subcommittee level.
The HASC was expected to continue marking up the bill until later last night or early this morning, and as of Defense Daily‘s deadline it approved funding under the jurisdiction of just two subcommittees: the Air and Land Forces and the Terrorism and Unconventional Threats panels.
The bill the committee took up yesterday morning would authorize $550.4 billion for the fiscal year 2010 budgets of the Department of Defense (DoD) and nation-security programs of the Department of Energy, and $130 billion for FY ’10 war funding.
The administration’s proposed $1.2 billion reduction to missile defense spending, compared to FY ’09 levels, dominated daytime debate.
HASC Democrats helped to shoot down by a near-party-line 27-34 roll-call vote an amendment offered by Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) that would have restored the $1.2 billion dip and bolstered programs targeted for cuts: the Airborne Laser (ABL), Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI), and Multiple Kill Vehicle.
HASC Strategic Forces panel Chair Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) defended the bill’s $9.3 billion in authorized missile defense funding. She said that is the same amount the administration requested, and emphasized the monies would focus on countering near-term short-and-medium range missile threats in theater.
“This budget is not a cut,” she said. “We spend $10 billion on missile defense. The fact that it is less than the investment last year I think shows some prudence of an administration that is looking to balance priorities.”
Franks dubbed the $1.2 billion reduction “dangerous and shortsighted.”
“At a time when…when the threat from Iranian and North Korean long-range ballistic missiles to the American homeland has increased… this bill reflects a decrease in our ballistic missile defense budget,” he said. His rejected amendment proposed shifting the $1.2 billion from defense-environmental-cleaning funds in the bill.
HASC Strategic Forces subcommittee Ranking Member Michael Turner (R-Ohio) also failed in an attempt to shift $120 million in the bill to fund the deployment of a full 44 ground-based missile interceptors in Alaska and California. The Pentagon reduced its planned number of deployed interceptors from 44 to 30, and Tauscher and other Democrats supported keeping the number at 30. Turner’s amendment to add the funding failed, while a substitute amendment from Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.)–stating it is the sense of Congress to support protecting the country against “limited” ballistic missile attacks–passed in another near-party-line 35-27 roll-call vote.
Turner and other Republicans argued work that had begun on deploying some of the 14 interceptors should be continued because of North Korea’s recent missile testing. Turner further charged Pentagon leaders have made inconsistent comments about how many interceptors are needed.
“Our concern is, one, that we need to move forward with this capability, two, that if we don’t undertake this as the threat escalates, we’re not going to have the time to be able to respond to build this system out,” Turner said. “North Korea has made it clear of its interest in continuing to pursue a nuclear-weapons program, at the same time pursue long, medium and short-missiles that put the Untied State and its allies at risk.”
Tauscher and Democrats countered no military requirement justifies the need for deploying 44 such interceptors.
“(MDA Director) Gen. (Patrick) O’Reilly, Secretary of Defense Gates, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs (Adm. Michael Mullen), the senior defense and military officials all have said that 30 long-range BMD interceptors are more than sufficient to deal with the long-range threat from rogue states in the near and mid-term,” Tauscher said. “And I think rather than fixate on a number that was neither validated as a requirement or based on current threat assessment, we need to ensure that we have a system that works.”
Turner’s failed amendment proposed offsetting the $120 million increase with funds pegged for dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program and for environmental cleanup.
The HASC was expected to vote against additional missile-defense amendments from Republicans last night, after Defense Daily‘s deadline. Those GOP amendments called for: shifting $400 million in the bill to fund either the so-called third site in Europe made up of radar in the Czech Republic and long-range interceptors in Poland or an alternative missile defense system; limiting further contract termination activities for KEI; and restoring $237 million of a $424 million ABL funding reduction proposed by the Pentagon.
For FCS, the HASC agreed to add $100 million to the Air and Land Forces subcommittee’s recommended authorization. The subcommittee’s mark approved last week called for eliminating $427 million requested by the Pentagon for covering FCS contract termination costs. The $100 million addition, within a package of amendments passed yesterday via a voice vote, reduces the $427 million cut to $327 million.
Committee members voted to add language to the bill yesterday requiring a variety of reports and plans, including a report from the defense secretary on possible 4.5-generation fighter jet procurement; a plan from the Air Force secretary on preserving tooling for producing hardware and items for F-22 fighter jets; a report from the defense secretary on plans for Army ground-combat vehicles; and a strategy from the defense secretary for ascent-phase missile defense.
Acquisition reforms and provisions related to the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) are included in the measure, HASC Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) and new Ranking Member Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) said. It would create a National Defense Panel to conduct an independent assessment of the QDR and make recommendations on alternate views and recommendations on how to improve the decision-making process for determining national-security objectives, they said.