The Senate Armed Services Committee’s (SASC) $602 billion defense authorization bill, agreed to Thursday afternoon in a 23-3 vote, contains less procurement funding—and far more provisions curtailing programs—than the legislation that will be debated on the House floor next week.
From a surface view, the SASC and House Armed Services Committee (HASC) versions of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Acts conform to the exact same top lines: $543 billion for base expenses and $59 billion for the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account for wartime operations. The difference, however, is that HASC’s bill includes $18 billion in the OCO account that actually pays for base expenses, including more money to buy and develop weapons.
As a result, the Senate bill does not authorize many of the items on the service chiefs’ unfunded priorities list, including an additional 14 F/A Super Hornets and 11 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.
SASC Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz) told reporters yesterday that he intends to offer an amendment on the floor that would expand defense spending past the $602 billion allowed by the Bipartisan Budget Agreement (BBA), which was passed last year.
“I think there’s a recognition that we’re struggling to meet all of the defense needs at the BBA level,” a SASC aide said on Friday. “With respect to Sen. McCain, he wants to just have a debate about whether the BBA is sufficient to meet the needs of the department. But the agreement is the agreement and the decision was to move forward pursuant to that agreement on a bipartisan basis.”
The aide added that McCain’s staff is still working through how much money to request, as well as whether those funds should flow into the base or OCO budget.
Another aide alluded to the fact that Democrats such as SASC Ranking Member Jack Reed, (D-R.I.) may be loath to approve a boost to defense funding unless equal additions are made to non-defense.
“From Senator Reed’s perspective, he does understand that the Defense Department does have its concerns over the BBA, but he also knows that the entire U.S. government has concerns over the restrictions in the BBA,” the aide said. “He would take the stance that if you’re going to raise defense funding, you also need to raise domestic spending an equal amount. So it sets up virtually the same discussion that we had last year.”
Procurement Funding
Although the NDAA and its corresponding tables have not been released by the committee, the bill’s summary provides some indications of spending priorities.
The committee authorized $10.5 billion for the F-35 program in total, including $8.5 billion for procurement to pay for the 43 F-35As, 16 F-35Bs, and 4 F-35Cs requested by the Defense Department.
The NDAA also fully funds the $2.2 billion for the procurement of 11 P-8 Poseidon aircraft and $185 million to buy two F/A-18 Super Hornets for the Navy.
The committee opted to boost funding for F-16 capability upgrades, authorizing a total $186 million—about $88 million more than the president’s request. The enhancements increase the survivability of the F-16, a requirement due to F-35 program delays.
It also added $199 million in Navy and Marine Corps unfunded priorities, such as a ballistic missile defense destroyer upgrade, surface electronic warfare improvement program (SEWIP) block 3 installation, a surveillance towed array, and F-35B spares.
The committee added $302 million to speed up the Air Force’s program to replace the UH-1N helicopter in use at the service’s ICBM fields. The hike in funding pays for eight HH-60 Black Hawk aircraft to replace some of the old aircraft.
In the area of shipbuilding, the bill provides $5 billion for two Virginia-class nuclear submarines as well as some advanced procurement funds and $1.5 billion for the Navy’s Ohio-class replacement submarine. It authorizes $1.6 billion for the next America-class amphibious assault ship.
The committee increased funding for certain ships, authorizing an additional $69 million to develop the Navy’s new class of amphibious ships, the LX(R). And the $3.3 billion for the DDG-51 program contains funds for two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers as well as incremental funds for a 2016 destroyer.
SASC added $84 million for Tomahawk missile procurement to maintain the minimum sustaining rate of the Raytheon [RTN] production line, and fully funded the request for the Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASM), Standard Missile 6 (SM-6), Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), and AIM-9X Block II Sidewinder.
For the Army, the committee authorized the service’s $2.6 billion request for 52 AH-64 Apaches, 36 UH-60 Black Hawks, and 22 CH-47 Chinooks, but did not add additional aircraft as the House authorizing and appropriations committees did. SASC also included in its bill $1.2 billion to improve the lethality of M1 Abrams tanks, M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, and Stryker armored combat vehicles.
Reining in Programs
SASC went much further than its House counterpart in limiting funding for key acquisition programs unless certain cost and performance targets are met.
For the Joint Strike Fighter, for instance, the Senate committee would kill the F-35 program office after the 2019 full production decision and disseminate its authorities and responsibilities to the individual services.
“Despite aspirations for a joint aircraft, the F-35A, F-35B, and F-35C are essentially three distinct aircraft, with significantly different missions and capability requirements,” the bill summary states. “Devolving this program to the services will help ensure the proper alignment of responsibility and accountability the F-35 program needs and has too often lacked.”
It also mandates that the F-35 Block IV modernization effort be treated as its own program of record. During the HASC markup, lawmakers debated separating the two initiatives but voted to keep the follow-on modernization within the F-35 program of record, as the Defense Department had advocated.
The bill reduces funds for the B-21 Long Range Strike Bomber by $302 million, a figure that relates to the discrepancy between the award price and independent cost estimate, a SASC aide said. In addition, it puts in place several new oversight mechanisms, including strict baseline and cost control thresholds, quarterly performance reports and the disclosure to Congress of the total contract award value for the engineering and manufacturing development phase.
McCain also took aim at one of the subsystems on the Ford-class aircraft carrier: its General Atomics-produced advanced arresting gear. The provision states that procurement of the USS Enterprise’s (CVN-80) advanced arresting gear would be halted until the department finishes a Nunn-McCurdy review and certifies that it will not terminate the program, an aide said.
The Littoral Combat Ship program appeared to be an area of disagreement between the House and Senate armed services committees. While HASC added in a third LCS and language that would prohibit a downselect to one vendor before fiscal 2019, SASC would basically codify in law Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s plan to cap the program at 40 ships and whittle down to one builder.
The Senate committee also slashed $28 million from the LCS shipbuilding program “for unjustified unit cost growth” and $59 million for its mission packages.
During a briefing with reporters, an aide confirmed that the committee had cut money from the controversial JLENS program, formally known as Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System. The bill also includes language directing the department to look at alternative solutions to fill the requirements currently satisfied by JLENS.
Likewise, SASC curtailed all funding for the Air Force’s GPS Operational Control System (OCX) program until the department conducts a Nunn McCurdy review.
“The committee is concerned that the service is yet to release its service cost estimate, and it believes that part of that delay in releasing that service cost estimate is because they’re going to breach Nunn McCurdy,” an aide explained.
Other cuts included: $34 million from extra-large unmanned undersea vehicle development “due to excessive program risk,” $30 million from AGM-88E Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile (AARGM), $100 million from the Army’s Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T) and $93 million from the Distributed Common Ground System-Army (DCGS-A).