By Emelie Rutherford
Lawmakers denied the Pentagon’s request to decrease existing funding for aircraft programs for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and bombers.
Defense Comptroller Robert Hale sought permission from Congress on June 11 to reprogram $71 million in existing funding in the Pentagon’s coffers away from the Air Force’s Global Hawk program, and $68.1 million from the MQ-9 Reaper effort.
The House Armed Services Committee (HASC), though, blocked those money-shift requests, according to a July 30 letter from panel Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) and Ranking Member Buck McKeon (R-Calif.).
“The committee notes that the Global Hawk program has been consistently underfunded in the area of spare parts,” the lawmakers wrote to Hale. “The committee encourages the Air Force to obligate these funds as soon as possible in order to support ongoing operations” in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Air Force and Pentagon officials have been lamenting cost growth and performance issues with Northrop Grumman‘s [NOC] Global Hawk.
For General Atomics‘ MQ-9 Reaper, the HASC leaders said they want the $68.1 million used to meet existing shortages in the area of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and noted the Air Force has negotiated an option under an existing contract for the use of the funds.
The HASC also blocked the Pentagon’s attempt to reprogram $19.4 million away from Northrop Grumman’s B-2 stealth bomber, the panel’s leaders told Hale in a second July 30 letter. The Pentagon sought the B-2 money change in a July 2 reprogramming request.
The committee “continues to encourage the Secretary of the Air Force to realign funding within the B-2 program to hold a full, unrestricted and open competition for the development of the B-2 Extremely High Frequency Increment II program, which should include the opportunity for all material solutions such as mechanically scanned, hybrid- composition or electrically-scanned arrays,” Skelton and McKeon wrote.