By Emelie Rutherford
The House passed yesterday the final compromise versions of fiscal year 2009 defense appropriations and authorization legislation–which call for continuing DDG-1000 destroyer production while potentially reviving the DDG-51 program, extending the F-22 jet fighter line with the blessing of the next president, and cutting the White House’s funding request for missile defense sites in Europe. Lawmakers hope to get the bills through the Senate and sent to the president before the weekend.
Defense appropriators and authorizers acknowledged difficult negotiations over shipbuilding.
The $487.7 billion FY ’09 defense appropriations bill–embedded in the CR that temporarily extends most domestic spending until March–grants the Navy partial funding for buying a DDG-1000 destroyer ($1.5 billion) and a LPD-17 amphibious ship ($933 million) under split-funding setups, while increasing funding for two Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) in FY ’09 (to $1.02 billion) and killing previously approved funding for a FY ’08 LCS ($337 million).
The defense authorization measure–a compromise version of the FY ’09 defense policy bills previously passed in each chamber–lifts the current LCS cost cap until FY ’10. It authorizes the Navy’s requested amount for the LCS ($920 million) and DDG-1000 ($2.5 billion) programs, and adds $600 million in advance-procurement funds for two LPD-17s, ships for which the Navy requested no procurement monies.
The appropriations and authorization bills take slightly different approaches to the Navy’s controversial new plan to start building more of the older DDG-51 destroyers in place of the DDG-1000s.
The appropriations measure includes $200 million in DDG-51 advance-procurement funds, to “preserve the option” of restarting the production line, according to an explanatory statement accompanying the CR. The authorization bill calls for $350 million for DDG-51, to be used either for advance procurement or to buy equipment spares.
House Appropriations Defense subcommittee Chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.) told reporters yesterday he hasn’t “been convinced that the 51’s the right direction to go.”
“Next year we’ll look into it, we’ll try to figure out what they want,” he said about the Navy, citing the service’s shifting plans on the destroyer programs.
House Armed Services Seapower subcommittee Chairman Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) said authorizers “did give the secretary of the Navy the leeway to return to building the DD-51 program rather than the DD-1000, should he deem that to be in the best interest of our nation.”
“I think it is,” added Taylor, who was a force behind the unsuccessful move to halt DDG-1000 production that was adamantly opposed by New England lawmakers.
For the Army’s FCS program, the authorization bill calls for a reduction of $104.7 million from the administration’s $3.7 billion request–a $137.7 million decreased in procurement monies along with an increase of $33 million in research and development funds–which is smaller than the cut the House previously approved. The authorization legislation includes several oversight provisions, including “new annual cost reporting requirements for FCS manned ground vehicles; additional conditions for the 2009 ‘go, no-go’ DoD review of FCS; an analysis of the FCS communications network’s vulnerabilities; a requirement for more detailed budget request data for FCS; and language restricting the Army’s ability to use the FCS Lead Systems Integrator for full-rate production contracts,” a summary says.
For FCS, the defense appropriations measure fully supports the funding sought by the service, and increases the total by approximately $26 million.
“While the (FCS) program has struggled with changing requirements and cost growth in recent years and undergone multiple restructures, support remains strong for the Army’s goal to create a more capable and modem force,” the CR’s explanatory statement says.
For the Air Force’s F-22 jet fighter, for which the Pentagon requested no funding to continue production beyond FY ’09, both the defense appropriations and authorization bills call for adding funds to keep the production line running in FY ’10. Both measures include $523 million in advance-procurement funds for 20 additional aircraft in FY ’10.
The authorization bill, though, includes a provision that would prohibit obligating more than $140 million of those advance funds until the next president “decides whether continuing F-22 production or terminating production would be in the best interests of the Nation,” and notifies the defense committees before next March, a joint explanatory statement says.
For the Air Force’s troubled KC-X aerial refueling tanker competition, which the Pentagon halted this month, defense appropriators direct the Pentagon to “consider any practical option that would enable the replacement of the KC-135s expeditiously to include the possibility of awarding competitive contracts to more than one offeror,” according to the explanatory statement.
The appropriations bill grants $62.5 million in operation and maintenance funds for upgrading the existing KC-135s for extended use. The appropriations bill greatly reduces the administration’s KC-X request, while keeping a minimal amount of research and development funding to keep the project office open.
Defense authorizers include no funding for the canceled KC-X competition and stick to the administration’s original request for KC-135s.
For missile defense, the appropriations bill cuts a total of $186.6 million in funding for the proposed European missile defense sites, aides said, citing figures that do not factor in military construction costs. The spending legislation reduces funding for “several of the far-term programs,” including the Multiple Kill Vehicle, the Airborne Laser, and Space Test Bed, while providing an additional $120 million for enhancements to the Ground-Based Missile Defense, Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense, and Terminal High Area Altitude Defense programs, the explanatory statement says.
The authorization bill cuts the authorization for the proposed European missile defense sites by $246.3 million, dropping the figure to $465.8 million, and prohibits deployment of interceptors until the defense secretary certifies they work in an “operationally effective manner,” a summary says. (Those figures do factor in military construction costs.) The authorization measure also includes cuts for the Multiple Kill Vehicle, Airborne Laser, and Space Test Bed.
The appropriators also cut funds for the Navy’s VH-71 presidential helicopter (by $212 million), the Army’s Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (by $197 million), and the dual- service Joint Cargo Aircraft (reducing research and development for the Air Force portion $2 million), Murtha and aides said.
The House passed the defense authorization bill yesterday afternoon by a vote of 392-39. The chamber shortly after cleared the CR by a vote of 370-58.
The CR includes the complete FY ’09 appropriations bills for defense, Homeland Security, and military construction-Veterans Affairs. It would end an offshore-oil-drilling moratorium, an energy-production-related measure Republicans blocked legislation in attempts to garner. The defense appropriations bill never got further in the approval process that being marked up by the HAC-D July 30 and the SAC-D Sept. 10.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.) told reporters Tuesday night that he did not want to include the defense appropriations bill in the $630 billion-plus CR. Yet Obey said Defense Secretary Robert Gates “was adamant that we include funding,” and that Republicans and “significant numbers of Democrats” did not want the fiscal year to start without the spending bill in place.
Obey expressed optimism that the Senate would pass the CR and the White House “will accept it.”
The authorization agreement, negotiated largely by staff because an official conference committee was not convened, combines the FY ’09 defense authorization bills passed by the Senate Sept. 17 and the House May 22. Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said despite past veto threats he does not expect the president to veto the compromise authorization legislation (Defense Daily, Sept. 19).