The House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday began considering its $883.7 billion fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, to include adopting additional oversight measures for the Sentinel future intercontinental ballistic missile program that has faced cost and schedule overruns.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the HASC chair, noted the panel was set to consider nearly 700 amendments to the annual defense policy during the marathon markup session, which was still ongoing as of Defense Daily
’s deadline.
“It’s a good bill. It will help revitalize the defense industrial base and build the ready, capable and lethal fighting force we need to deter China and our other adversaries,” Rogers said to open up the markup on Wednesday. “I urge all members to work together to get us through this process in a timely manner. There will be disagreements, unfortunately. But we all have the same goal – to support the men and women that serve our nation. If we can keep that goal in mind, I am very optimistic this bill we report today will enjoy very bipartisan support.”
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).
The panel began the markup by adopting each of its subcommittee’s portions of the bill and associated amendment packages with mostly non-controversial provisions by unanimous voice vote.
Measures in those amendment packages included measures such as one from Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), the Strategic Forces chair, requiring a DoD report on roles and responsibilities for hypersonic defense and another proposed by Tactical Air and Land Forces Chair Rob Wittman (R-Va.) requiring the Army to provide details on integrating additional systems into its new Northrop Grumman [NOC]-built Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System.
Ahead of adoption several-Sentinel related amendments as part of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee’s portion of the bill, Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), the panel’s ranking member, noted the program’s “critical breaches” on cost and schedule, to include being an “alarming” 37 percent over budget and “at a minimum two years delayed.”
“This is unacceptable, and I believe ensuring there is proper government oversight and maximum competition within this program will be absolutely necessary if it is to be recertified after the Nunn McCurdy review,” Moulton said.
The Air Force in January informed Congress that the Northrop Grumman-built LGM-35A Sentinel future ICBM program had risen above the Nunn-McCurdy’s 25 percent critical cost breach threshold to an estimated $125 billion, a 37 percent increase from the previous $95 billion estimate (Defense Daily, Jan. 24).
The Pentagon and the Air Force are expected to complete their Nunn McCurdy review of Sentinel in the next six weeks, which will determine whether the program is recertified and can continue moving forward (Defense Daily, May 15).
Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) had two amendments adopted related to Sentinel oversight, to include requiring the Government Accountability Office to submit a report to Congress by December 2024 assessing if DoD conducted a “full and thorough assessment” throughout the Nunn McCurdy review, to include whether a “range of alternatives was considered” and if “the program clearly identified cost tradeoffs.”
The second measure from Garamendi inserts new language into the FY ‘25 NDAA requiring that report language related to Sentinel also factor whether an analysis was done on “life extending one or more wings of the [current] Minuteman III [ICBM] and deploying a mixed fleet of Sentinel and life-extended Minuteman III ICBMs for a period of time.”
Garamendi, who has described himself as a “longtime critic of the Sentinel program,” pressed Pentagon officials during a recent hearing on the Sentinel cost issues and the level of resources devoted to the future capability, set to replace the current Minuteman III ICBMs (Defense Daily, April 30).
“Fourth grade math would indicate that, at $700 million a copy, [the] $137 billion can buy you somewhere more than 120 B-21 bombers…or, perhaps, seven Columbia-class submarines for $137 billion. There are choices to be made here,” Garamendi said at the time.
Moulton also had a proposal adopted that requires the Pentagon’s acquisition chief to ensure there’s “maximum feasible opportunity for competition” in the Sentinel program and “maximum” oversight moving forward if it’s recertified, to include requiring a report within 90 days on how this will be integrated into the program prior to a revised Milestone B decision.
HASC also adopted an amendment from Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) that would slightly revise an Air Force proposal to move Air National Guard units to the Space Force, changing language in the FY ‘25 NDAA that governors “may transfer” such units rather than “shall transfer.”
The National Governors Association has argued that the Air Force’s proposal usurps state authority (Defense Daily, May 9).
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall earlier this month defended the proposal, stating that creating an entirely new Space National Guard “makes no sense” (Defense Daily, May 14).
“They really need to be part of the Space Force,” he said. “They’re going to be orphans unless they’re integrated into the Space Force. It’s the right thing to do for those people. There’s gonna be stability. They’re gonna stay where they are doing their jobs, as they have been. That’s what we want. That’s what they want, and we can work our way through the details of how to make that happen,” Kendall said in a May 9 interview with the Defense & Aerospace Report podcast.
Much of the remaining debate in the first of HASC’s NDAA markup on Wednesday focused on items related to prohibiting foreign influence related DoD research and academia-related efforts and items related to climate change initiatives and specific labor and union considerations for military construction projects, most of which were adopted along party lines.