The House Appropriations defense subcommittee laid out a $570.4 billion spending plan Thursday that followed in the House Armed Services Committee’s path of cutting operations and maintenance and research and development accounts to support equipment procurement.
The appropriations bill includes $491 billion in the base budget and $79.4 billion for the Overseas Contingency Operations fund.
The base budget provides for $91.2 billion for equipment procurement and upgrades in fiscal year 2015, which is $1.6 billion more than the Pentagon requested. It funds operations and maintenance at $165 billion, or $1.4 billion less than requested, and research and development at $63.4 billion, or $171 million less than requested. Both sums of money, however, are higher than the current year spending levels.
The subcommittee did not release its line-by-line account of its spending plan, only a press release and 140 pages of legislative text that outlines rules for spending the money. Congressional staffers said additional details are embargoed and will not be released until just before the full committee markup, likely in mid-June.
The press release highlights several items in the procurement budget, including $789 million for the USS George Washington (CVN-73) refueling and complex overhaul, which the Pentagon had chosen not to fund in FY ‘15; $5.8 billion for 38 F-35 aircraft; $1.6 billion for seven KC-46A tankers; $975 million for 12 EA-18G Growlers; $2.4 billion for 87 UH-60 Black Hawk and 37 MH-60S/R helicopters; and $351 million for the Iron Dome missile defense project with Israel.
The subcommittee gave the Army $5.3 billion for aircraft, $1.2 billion for missiles, $1.7 billion for weapons and tracked combat vehicles, $1 billion for ammunition and $4.8 billion for other procurement. The Army also got $6.7 billion in its research, development, test and evaluation fund.
The Air Force received $12 billion for aircraft, $4.5 billion for missiles, $648 million for ammunition and $16.6 billion for other procurement, along with $23,4 billion for RDT&E.
The Navy got $14 billion for aircraft procurement, $3.1 billion for weapons systems, $629 million for ammunition for it and the Marine Corps, $927 million for Marine Corps equipment procurement and $5.9 billion for other Navy procurement, along with $15.9 billion in RDT&E. Its shipbuilding and conversion fund, which totals $14.3 billion, is outlined by ship class: new construction aircraft carriers would receive $1.3 billion; the George Washington RCOH would get $491 million in advance procurement, plus additional funding elsewhere in the budget to add up to $789 million; Virginia-class attack submarines would receive $3.5 billion for procurement and $2.3 billion for advance procurement; the DDG-1000 destroyer program would get $419 million; DDG-51 destroyers would get $2.7 billion in procurement and $134 million in advance procurement funding; Littoral Combat Ship would receive $951 million; the San Antonio-class amphibious transport docks would receive $12.6 million; the America-class amphibious assault ship program would receive $29 million in advance procurement funding; and more.
The bill also takes on several policy issues in laying out how the money can and cannot be spent. Only the Army can spend money on research or acquisition of its tactical unmanned aerial vehicle, the bill says. “The Army shall retain responsibility for and operational control of the MQ–1C Gray Eagle Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in order to support the Secretary of Defense in matters relating to the employment of unmanned aerial vehicles.”
No money can be used to cancel the avionics modernization program for the C–130 aircraft. No money can be used to retire or divest any E–3 Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft or to disestablish any units that fly the AWACS. No money can be used to transfer any AH-64 Apache attack helicopters from the Army National Guard to the active Army. And no money can be used to decommission or convert any Minuteman III ballistic missile silos.
On the issue of the Navy’s 11 cruisers and three dock landing ships, which the Navy wanted to lay up all at once for extended maintenance, so as to extend the life of the class and reduce operating costs in the short term, the defense subcommittee found a different approach than the House Armed Services Committee, which outright banned the Navy’s plan, and the Senate Armed Services Committee, which agreed to the plan. HAC-D decided to provide $540 million to add to money already in the Ship Modernization, Operations and Sustainment Fund for these ships. The bill stipulates that the Navy secretary may only transfer money out of the account to pay for modernization of no more than two cruisers at a time, and only six of the 11 cruisers may be in the yard for modernization at any given time.