The House Armed Services Committee is still working on its Fiscal Year 2015 National Defense Authorization Bill but has thus far passed amendments to encourage work on several energy weapons, preserve the Air Force’s Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) fleet, consider purchasing more F/A-18E-F Super Hornets and more.
The intelligence, emerging threats and capabilities subcommittee passed its section of the bill in just 16 minutes with just one amendment package already agreed to by Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Ranking Member Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.).
The amendment package contains language that highlights several new technologies and either requests more information or helps pave a way forward. It notes a 2012 Joint Concept Technology Demonstration for a high-powered microwave cruise missile but adds the system needs additional work to decrease the size and engineer an operationally usable design for the weapon. It then requests a briefing by the chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff on near-term need for this technology and whether there would be a joint urgent operational need statement or a joint emerging operational need statement from any of the combatant commanders. It mentions the Army’s High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL-MD) and says the service does not have a clear plan for the program’s future. It asks for a briefing by Dec. 1 to discuss the plan, to include the feasibility of operational testing of HEL-MD in foreign countries such as Israel. And it requests a briefing with the Navy on the Laser Weapon System being installed on the USS Ponce (AFSB-I), to be held by March 2, 2015.
The tactical air and land subcommittee, in a similarly short 24-minute session, passed its language with just two amendments. Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) proposed an amendment to curtail the Air Force’s plans to divest seven of its 31 AWACS, allowing the service to divest just four. Bridenstine said he flew the Navy’s version of the plane, the E-2D, and believes the military needs more, not less, of this asset. “Think of the AWACS as the quarterback of the Air Force’s football team. …. We need more quarterbacks,” he said, adding that he’d liked to have saved them all but realizes there isn’t enough money in the Air Force operations and maintenance budget to sustain the planes. Bridenstine said NATO relied on the United States’ AWACS fleet to control the skies in Eastern Europe and would be the first to alert and coordinate a response if Russia were to attack. HASC Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) took issue with Bridenstine taking funding from spares and repair parts to pay for the amendment, but it passed in a voice vote.
A package of amendments passed that included encouragement for the Navy to buy more Super Hornets to supplement the additional five F/A-18G Growlers the committee added to the budget plan. “In concert with the procurement of 5 Growlers in FY15, the Committee encourages the Chief of Naval Operations to utilize the Advanced Procurement funds for F/A-18 E/F aircraft in FY14 ($75 million) to extend the production line to a minimum production rate of 2 aircraft per month” to ensure the production line stays healthy and affordable in fiscal year 2015.
The amendment package also requires the Army to submit a plan on how it will modernize the National Guard’s UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter fleet, and it requires the defense secretary to submit a report on the U.S. Pacific Command’s 10-year munitions strategy, including munitions requirements, gaps and shortfalls, and necessary investments – one of the items to come out of the Asia-Pacific Region Priority Act.
In the strategic forces subcommittee, three amendment packages passed, plus an amendment from Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) to require U.S. Strategic Command to brief the committee on long-range standoff weapons, including cost, which warhead would be used, and any redundancies between a potential long-range standoff weapon and other items in the current arsenal.
Garamendi offered two other amendments questioning the B-61 bomb, which were both withdrawn, but Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) included an amendment in one of the packages that would direct the defense secretary to brief the committee on “the analysis and requirements that have informed the determination of the number of B61-12 bombs to be produced by the [life extension plan]. This briefing should include analysis regarding the number required to provide a credible extended deterrent to U.S. allies around the world, the number required for forward-deployment and to be available for forward-deployment, the number required for the U.S. strategic deterrent, and a timeframe for when a final decision must be made regarding the total number of B61-12s to be produced by the LEP.”
The amendment packages would also require the defense secretary to deploy short-range air and missile defense capabilities to Poland, fence half the funding for both the Space Based Infrared Systems (SBIRS) and Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) programs until they complete their analyses of alternatives and brief the committee on the results, and study the value of converting the Aegis Ashore Missile Defense Test Complex at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii from a test and evaluation center to a permanent facility capable of continuous operations.
The seapower and projection forces subcommittee passed just one package of amendments and one stand-alone amendment, proposed by subcommittee chairman Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), to prevent the Navy from spending any money to retire any of its cruisers or amphibious ships. Forbes said he wanted to work with the Navy to address its funding shortfall, which the service hoped to address by laying up half its cruiser fleet for modernization instead of keeping them all manned and operating. After a passionate debate that essentially boiled down to whether the Navy ought to have a smaller but more ready fleet or a larger but less ready fleet, Forbes’ amendment passed.
Smith offered alternate language to Forbes’ amendment that would do the opposite and allow the Navy to proceed as planned with its cruiser maintenance. Smith told the committee that he wanted the Navy to keep its 11-aircraft carrier fleet, buy two attack submarines and destroyers each year, build its new ballistic missile submarine fleet and pursue other expensive programs. Though he doesn’t like the idea of losing 11 cruisers from the active fleet, he said “the Navy looked at their entire situation, all their shipbuilding needs…and concluded that one of the better things they could do was this plan.”
Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) jumped into the debate, saying Congress had gotten itself into “a terrible situation” by allowing sequestration to come to fruition, but he said ultimately he supported forcing the military to hold onto as much “stuff” as it could in the short term in the hopes that Congress could turn off sequestration in the next year or two.