The House Armed Services Committee late Wednesday evening voted near unanimously to advance its $883.7 billion version of the fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act.
The final vote followed 12 hours of consideration, a relatively speedy markup for the panel, to include further debate on the Sentinel future intercontinental ballistic missile program and plans to build a homeland missile defense site on the East Coast.
“I just want to tell all of you, you rock. This is awesome. I’ve been here 22 years. I know the ranking member’s been here 28 [years]. We’ve never seen anything like this,” HASC Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said ahead of the final vote, noting the rarity in concluding a markup before midnight. “This is an incredible piece of legislation that authorizes over half of all discretionary spending, and it will become law. And it is going to be one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in each of our careers because of what it does for our servicemembers’ quality of life.”
After considering about 700 amendments over the course of the markup, HASC voted 57 to 1 to approve its FY ‘25 NDAA and send it to the House floor for further consideration, with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) once again casting the sole vote against the measure.
“I was the lone no vote on the NDAA out of the House Armed Services Committee because I believe we should use this money to invest in a modern national security strategy that will actually keep us safe and domestic priorities instead of further enriching defense contractors,” Khanna said in a statement.
HASC released its roughly $883.7 billion FY ‘25 NDAA draft last week, which authorizes nearly $895 billion for national defense when factoring in items outside the panel’s jurisdiction, adhering to the one percent spending cap from last year’s debt limit deal (Defense Daily, May 13).
Wednesday’s markup began with adopting several additional oversight measures related to the Sentinel ICBM program, as the program is currently undergoing a Nunn McCurdy review for cost and schedule overruns, and approving an amendment to slightly revise an Air Force proposal to move Air National Guard units to the Space Force, changing language in the defense policy bill that governors “may transfer” such units rather than “shall transfer” (Defense Daily, May 22).
Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) then offered three more nuclear weapons-related amendments later in the day, with HASC ultimately blocking his proposals that called for pausing the Northrop Grumman [NOC]-built Sentinel ICBM while the program review is ongoing and seek an analysis of alternatives, another to repeal the deadlines to boost plutonium pit production capacity to 30 pits a year by 2026 and 80 pits by 2030 and one more to remove a requirement to maintain 400 ICBM silos.
“If I’m going to be a radical, I’m going to be a radical on this issue. It seems to me we have a unique opportunity. No, that’s incorrect. We have an obligation, as the House Armed Services Committee…to pay attention to what is actually happening here. We’re not talking about disarmament. What we’re talking about is an extraordinarily expensive [Sentinel] program that is running out of control, that will consume over the next 15 years, on the rocket system itself and not including the bomb, somewhere [around] $130 billion,” Garamendi said on Wednesday.
Garamendi, who has offered similar proposals in past markups, received some Democratic support for his amendments, to include the adjustment to pit production deadlines, while the panel ultimately voted down each measure.
“This is a debate that we have every year. The talking points may change but the objective remains the same, and that’s killing the Sentinel program. I do not agree with that. I would point out that the Biden administration does not agree with that. We need to let the Nunn McCurdy review do its work. I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment,” Rogers said.
A more tense debate followed on a proposal from Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) that would strike language from the FY ‘25 NDAA requiring a third homeland missile defense site be built on the East Coast.
HASC’s bill includes a requirement for DoD to complete construction of an East Coast Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) site to host Next Generation Interceptors at Fort Drum in New York by 2030, which was selected as the location several years ago, joining the other two missile defense sites at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The Missile Defense Agency last month selected Lockheed Martin [LMT] to continue development for the Next Generation Interceptor over competitor Northrop Grumman (Defense Daily, April 15).
Moulton said DoD shared information in a recent classified briefing about “why the East Coast may no longer be the best location.”
“All of I’ve done is make sure the site will be at a location optimized to support the defense of the homeland of the United States from emerging long-range ballistic missile threats, which is also a requirement in the underlying provision,” Moulton said. “The decision on where to put a ground-based interceptor site, a weapon system that is a little miracle of physics, should be driven by physics and geography with respect to the threat. And that threat is changing. In the time since Fort Drum [in New York] was declared the provisional preferred location, the threat has changed. We now have a rogue adversary with systems of maneuvering capability, fractional orbital bombardment systems that could be proliferated to those nations and use trajectories that do not come in over the poles.”
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), chair of the House Republican Conference, represents Fort Drum and pressed back on Moulton’s amendment, stating the classified statement from DoD he mentioned is “based on a false choice and fundamentally misrepresents the capability enhancement.”
“It assumes that investment in a third site would come at the expense of other missile defense capabilities as if we could only have one or the other, when, in fact, an additional site is a significant enhancement in homeland defense capabilities and exactly what my language in the base NDAA achieves,” Stefanik said. “Constructing a missile defense site on the East Coast will give the U.S. significantly enhanced shoot-assess-shoot capability for ballistic missile defense. Additionally, a missile defense site at Fort Drum creates considerably more battlespace and gives our decision makers enhanced engagement options.”
The former director of the Missile Defense Agency told lawmakers last year the organization supported developing an East Coast homeland missile defense site, but that it would take time and could affect the amount of Next Generation Interceptors the Pentagon will buy (Defense Daily, April 25 2023).
“Now, I understand that a lot of Republicans are voting on this amendment on purely partisan lines because I’ve heard they’re ‘afraid of Ms. Stefanik,’ which I compliment my colleague on engendering,” Moulton said. “This is clearly an issue of national security versus parochial concerns, and I hope people can make an honest assessment about where those parochial concerns lie.”
Ultimately, Moulton’s amendment was defeated by a 28 to 30 vote along party lines.
The Senate Armed Services Committee is scheduled to markup its version of the FY ‘25 NDAA in mid-June.