The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) is calling for pressuring the Pentagon to firm up usage dates for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in the defense policy legislation it passed via a 56-5 vote early this morning.
The HASC worked all day yesterday and past midnight marking up the fiscal year 2013 defense authorization bill, approving dozens of amendments related to matters including aircraft development, shipbuilding, and missile defense. The bill authorizes $554 billion for a base defense budget, or $8 billion more than Senate Democrats are eyeing.
The committee added to the bill a provision crafted by HASC Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) requiring the Air Force and Navy to establish initial operational capability (IOC) dates for the three F-35 variants by the end of this year. The measure was a scaled-back substitute to a controversial amendment proposed by Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee Chairman Todd Akin (R-Mo.). He wanted to withhold half of the FY ’13 procurement funds for each variant of the Lockheed Martin [LMT] aircraft until each reaches IOC.
Smith warned Akin’s proposal, to fence off the F-35 procurement monies, could send the message that the United States will not ultimately support the multi-nation program to build a fifth-generation fighter jet. He said that could create uncertainty with the partner countries helping pay for the program’s development, noting some of them are having doubts about the technically challenged effort and scaling back their F-35 buying plans.
“So this is a simple way of saying, ‘Yes, the committee is still very focused on making sure we actually get to (initial) operation capability,’ but hopefully do so in a way that doesn’t send the wrong message,’” Smith said. “We are, for better or worse, committed to this program. Because frankly we have no choice. It is critical to our national-security needs.”
Akin’s district includes Boeing [BA] and he has supported purchases of the company’s F-18 fighter jets. He noted the F-35 is the Pentagon’s largest weapons program but is an anomaly because at this stage of its development it has no IOC date. He said his thwarted amendment was about ”transparency, accountability, and project management.” He argued the successful measure from Smith “has no teeth.”
Still, HASC Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.), like the majority of the committee, agreed with Smith, passing his amendment on voice vote.
“It’s important that we get it right; it’s important that we move forward with it,” McKeon said.
The HASC bill largely supports the Pentagon’s $9 billion FY ’13 proposal for the F-35 effort, though doubts about the program remain elsewhere in Congress.
HASC Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee Chairman Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) has said while his panel still has concerns about the F-35 effort, the Pentagon’s FY ’13 proposal does what the committee proposed in recent years: reduces the number of F-35s it purchases until research and development issues are better resolved in testing, so it doesn’t have to modify too many aircraft already built. The Pentagon’s budget request calls for cutting $15.1 billion in previously planned F-35 spending by delaying the purchase of 179 planes over the next five years.
HASC Democrats and Republicans clashed during yesterday’s markup over multiple missile-defense matters, including a plan for potentially building a missile-interceptor site on the U.S. East Coast. Crafted by Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) and included in the authorization bill McKeon released Monday, the provision 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. It authorizes $100 million to be available after Congress receives the MDA plan and requires the Pentagon to produce an environmental-impact statement on possible locations.
Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) offered an amendment to strike the entire section on an East Coast site from the bill, which Republicans on the panel killed after heated debate.
Republicans maintained the site is needed to counter a possible attack from Iran, a threat Democrats maintained is not pressing and is covered via other missile-defense setups.
The committee also approved a series of Navy-related amendments, including one from Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) requiring a Government Accountability Office review of the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program. The examination, according to her amendment, would include an examination of the Navy and contractors’ knowledge regarding the potential for cracks in the LCS hull and deckhouse and any related potential design risks.
“When Congress was first told about this program we were told it was going to be light, fast, and cheap,” she said. “But each day brings more news about how the program is failing to meet its key performance parameters.”
She said her concerns include possible systemic design flaws, and pointed to recent reports on cracking on LCS-1, the USS Freedom.
Bartlett defended the rocky shipbuilding effort, saying the “current development is on course.” Bartlett worked on the LCS program in past years when he served as the main Republican on the Seapower subcommittee.
The HASC also accepted a LCS amendment from Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) calling for the Navy to submit a report to lawmakers on the ship’s two designs, including comparative cost and performance information.
Another successful amendment from Akin would force the Navy to share its annual shipbuilding plan when the Pentagon sends its budget request to Capitol Hill. If the Pentagon is delayed in submitting the vessel-construction plan, the Navy cannot spend 50 percent of more than half of its funding for operation and maintenance for “emergencies and extraordinary expenses,” under the provision.
The HASC further tweaked a current legal requirement that future classes of Navy surface combatants be nuclear powered. The HASC bill, thanks to an amendment from Akin the panel approved yesterday, allows the service to opt out of the requirement if a cost-benefit analysis shows it would not be practical to design a ship with an integrated nuclear power system. Congress–with the prodding of lawmakers including Bartlett–created the nuclear-ship requirement in 2008 and 2009. The Seapower subcommittee approved language removing the standing nuclear requirement outright when it marked up its bill on April 26. However, the committee later decided to take a more-nuanced approach that retains the nuclear requirement but includes the opt-out provision approved yesterday, according to aides.
Akin also added a successful amendment calling for the Air Force to ensure the next-generation bomber aircraft is capable of carrying strategic nuclear weapons when it reaches IOC, and is certified to use such weapons no more than two years later. This is a change from the legislation the Seapower panel approved April 26, which called for the bomber to be certified to use strategic weapons at IOC.
In the readiness area, an amendment requiring a briefing on the incorporation of fuel cells in military applications was added to the HASC bill yesterday, via a successful amendment from Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.).
The committee approved multiple amendments requiring reports from the Pentagon, including one for a report from the defense acquisition chief on an industry vertical-lift consortium. The amendment, from Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.), would add bill report language that also calls for the Pentagon to include recommended acquisition approaches for “rapid and affordable flight demonstration of innovative Vertical Lift X-planes.” Smith also posed a successful amendment adding report language that requires the defense secretary to brief lawmakers on the risks of counterfeit electronic parts in the defense supply chain.
Smith further added language exempting some defense contractors from paying for removing counterfeit parts if they took certain steps to avoid using such fake electronics.
The Senate Armed Services Committee plans to mark up its version of the defense authorization bill in two weeks.