A House panel unveiled proposed Pentagon policy legislation yesterday that would restore a submarine slated to be cut, research a potential East Coast missile-defense site, and increase oversight of the Pentagon’s cyber-security operations.
Congress’ public rewriting of the Pentagon’s proposed fiscal year 2013 budget will start today when the House Armed Services Committee’s (HASC) subcommittees start crafting the defense authorization bill.
HASC Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) pledged during a speech last night to bolster Pentagon spending, charging President Barack Obama’s administration “takes a knife to the defense budget.”
The HASC is basing the size of its proposed authorization bill on the budget resolution the House passed March 29, which would deal the Pentagon several billions more than Obama proposed for FY ’13.
Citing his priorities for the legislation, McKeon told the Hamilton Society he wants to fight so-called sequestration cuts to the defense budget, which could cut longterm spending by $500 billion, and also “restore defense resources, and rebuild a stressed military that has endured a decade of war.”
The HASC subcommittees began releasing yesterday the legislative proposals they will consider and amend during markup sessions that start today. The plans, according to the committee, are intended to “put real combat power” behind Obama’s increased military emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region, bolster national missile defense, and ensure the Pentagon is prepared to face new dangers in the cyber realm.
The HASC’s Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee, notably, is proposing in its draft plan a new funding setup for the Virginia-class submarine program intended to make it affordable for the Navy to buy one vessel in FY ’14, which the service said it wants but can’t afford with near-term monies on hand. The Pentagon’s budget request calls for delaying the submarine in question from FY ’14 to FY ‘18, thus altering the two-Virginia-sub-a-year plan HASC lawmakers fought for in recent years.
However, the Navy has said it would be open to restoring the vessel in FY ’14 if Congress allows it to be incrementally funded, a power the Seapower subcommittee’s draft bill would grant. The legislation would authorize the Navy to enter into a multi-year contract for up to 10 Virginia submarines starting in FY ’14 and allow the service to pay for the restored ship’s contract via an incremental setup permitting it to pay in future years for parts not needed in FY ’14. The draft plan also would authorize $700 million in advance-procurement monies in FY ’13 for the vessel in question.
Members of the Congressional Submarine Caucus hailed the proposed Virginia plan yesterday.
“While we are all mindful of the pressures facing the defense budget, the fact remains that a steady submarine production rate today will ensure that the Navy has the submarine force structure it needs in the future and that our industrial base will remain stable,” said Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), a caucus co-chair and member of the Seapower panel whose district is home to Virginia submarine contractor General Dynamics [GD] Electric Boat. “While there are several steps ahead of us, this is an important show of support for the Virginia-class submarine program.”
The caucus has asked for support of this new plan from the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee, which has not yet marked up its version of the budget-setting FY ’13 defense appropriations bill.
The HASC Seapower subcommittee’s draft bill, which it will consider today, also would grant the Navy the multi-year procurement authority for up to 10 DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, this adding one of the ships to the Pentagon’s request for nine. It also would extend the incremental-funding period of the CVN-79 and CVN-80 Ford-class aircraft carriers from five to six years.
The Seapower measure would repeal a policy, which the HASC pushed in recent years, requiring all combatant vessels of the Navy strike forces be nuclear-powered.
The Seapower panel’s draft measure also would allow the Pentagon to temporarily drop the minimum number of required strategic-airlift planes from 301 to 275.
McKeon further said last night HASC member “hope” to prevent the Navy from retiring three of the nine CG-47 Aegis cruisers it wants to put to rest early.
He also said he is “particularly concerned” about the Pentagon’s proposal to delay by two years the nascent effort to develop a SSBN(X) ballistic-missile submarine to replace Ohio-class boomers. He said HASC members will “look to restore some of the (research and development) R&D funding there, to help keep our nuclear triad replacements on time and on schedule.”
Meanwhile, the HASC’s Strategic Forces subcommittee’s draft plan, which it will weigh today, calls for compelling the defense secretary to produce an environmental-impact statement on possible East Coast locations for a new missile-defense site. The subpanel’s draft legislation further calls for the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to craft a plan for deploying such a site that could be running by the end of 2015, and assess the use of two-stage and three-stage ground-based interceptors, as well as the SM-3 block IA, block IB, and later blocks of the SM-3 missile. The subcommittee’s measure would authorize $100 million for such a site, to be available after lawmakers receive the MDA plan, and calls for the East Coast facility to be funded in the Pentagon’s FY ’14 budget proposal.
“The committee is aware that a cost-effective missile-defense site located on the East Coast of the United States could have advantages for the defense of the United States from ballistic missiles launched from the Middle East,” the Strategic Forces panel’s draft legislation says. It notes that some studies already have advocated for such a site.
The subcommittee’s proposal would authorize $1.26 billion for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system in Alaska and California, which is $356 million more than the Pentagon proposed. It further calls for an intercept test of the GMD system using an intercontinental ballistic missile-class target by the end of 2013, and seeks to increase the rate of GMD flight tests to three every two years when feasible. It also calls for requiring the MDA to begin upgrading a missile field in Alaska that the Pentagon wants to shut down.
The subcommittee’s draft plan would limit spending on the Obama administration’s Phased Adaptive Approach to European missile defense until lawmakers receive data on cost-sharing with NATO. The proposal further would prohibit the Pentagon from obligating monies on the Medium Extended Air Defense System program, and add authorization for an additional AN/TPY-2 radar to the Pentagon’s plan.
The HASC’s Emerging Threats and Capabilities subcommittee also will consider draft bill language today. The panel wants to require the defense secretary to brief the HASC and Senate Armed Services Committee four times a year on “all offensive and significant defensive military operations in cyberspace” by the Pentagon, according to a draft of its legislation.
The HASC subcommittee markups will conclude tomorrow, after the Air and Land Forces subcommittee and Readiness subpanel craft their portions of the Pentagon policy bill.
McKeon said last night the HASC will block the Pentagon’s attempt to allow the production lines for the Abrams tank and Bradley Fighting Vehicle to shut down for several years, and instead call for a “minimum sustained production” of the vehicles.
The full committee is slated to hold its all-day markup session on May 9.
The House-passed budget resolution would set the FY ’13 defense budget at $554.2 billion, or $8.2 billion more than the $546 billion cap in the Budget Control Act of 2011. However, the House Budget Committee used the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) revised defense baseline figure of $551.8 billion; thus, when looking at the CBO figures the House-passed resolution shows a $2.4 billion increase in defense funding.