The Senate Appropriations Committee this morning passed its fiscal year 2016 defense spending bill, which adds 12 F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, 10 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, a Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV), and eight MQ-9 Reaper drones to the numbers requested in the president’s budget.

The committee voted 27-3 to report the $575.9 billion bill to the Senate floor. Once there, it will likely have a tougher time moving forward. Democrats have said they will vote against a motion to proceed with the defense appropriations bill because it—like all the other military spending bills put forward in the House and Senate—moves about $38 billion in base budget spending to the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account meant to support wartime expenses. That transfer of funding allows the budget to skirt spending caps mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011.

Vice Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) reiterated that the Democrats would try to block the bill “not because we want to be audacious, not because we want to be obstructionist, but we know we need to end sequester.”

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said that negotiations to end sequester should begin only after President Barack Obama vetoes the defense budget, which he has threatened to do if increases to defense spending are not matched in domestic spending.

If the Senate stopped working every time the president threatened to veto a bill, “we might as well meet once a month,” Alexander said.

The appropriations bill provides $949 million to buy 12 Super Hornets built by Boeing [BA]. It appropriates an extra $1.23 billion for six additional F-35Bs for the Marine Corps to meet an unfunded requirement, as well as four more F-35As for the Air Force. It also recommends an increase of $160 million for eight Reapers.

In shipbuilding, the bill sets aside $18.2 billion to buy a total of 10 ships—the three Littoral Combat Ships, two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, two Virginia-class attack submarines, LPD-28 amphibious transport dock and one T-AO fleet replenishment oiler specified in the president’s budget request, as well as an additional JHSV and incremental funding for an 11th Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. The committee increased the Navy’s shipbuilding account by $1.6 billion.

The bill adds $350 million for the Navy’s carrier based drone program, the Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS), because of senior service leaders’ concerns that “a delay to the program would risk the United States falling behind in the development of an unmanned aerial vehicle from an aircraft carrier.”

The committee added $143.6 million for the Air Force to develop a replacement for the Russian-made RD-180 engine used in the Atlas V launch vehicle. “This would enable the Air Force to move expeditiously to a new, domestically-produced engine that would end the nation’s reliance on the Russians for access to space,” a summary of the bill states.

In the area of missile defense, the committee boosts funding for the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and targeted programs. It provides $8.2 billion for MDA, an increase of $262 million above the president’s budget request. That sum fully funds Ground Based Interceptor modernization, the development of the Long Range Discrimination Radar, and the European Phased Adaptive Approach Phase III. The bill also appropriates an additional $200 million to procure Patriot Missile Segment Enhancement (PAC-3 MSE) missiles for the Army, $140 million for TOW missile procurement used by the Marine Corps, and $30 million for Tomahawk missiles to sustain Raytheon’s [RTN] production line.

The committee added $329.8 million for Israeli missile defense programs, including $150 million to begin production of David’s Sling Weapon System.

During the markup June 11, Republicans swatted down an amendment by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) which would have transferred $37.5 billion from OCO back to the base budget. The amendment would have also bolstered shipbuilding, adding $476 million for an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and $940 million for a new polar icebreaker for the Coast Guard, which has been unable to fund a new icebreaker in its own budget. For aviation, it would have increased research, development, test and evaluation by $116 million for C-130H avionics modernization.

“Climate change is having an impact on national security, and the arctic is a contested region with China and Russia asserting their interest. The U.S. is falling behind in its Arctic capability,” Durbin said. “We can’t wait for the Coast Guard, whose budget has been gutted by sequestration, to find the money in future budgets.”

The Coast Guard has a stated requirement of three heavy duty and three medium duty icebreakers, but currently only operates one of each kind.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said that while she agreed on the importance of funding a new icebreaker for the Coast Guard, she could not vote for a bill that increased the base budget beyond spending caps.

The amendment was defeated in a 16-14 vote split along party lines.

Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) offered and then withdrew an amendment that would have restricted the purchase of RD-180 engines. It would have inserted language included in the Senate Armed Service Committee’s authorization bill that allow winners of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Phase1A competition to use the engine of their choice. That language would have allotted as many as nine more RD-180 engines to be procured from Russia, but would incentivize manufacturers of rocket motors to develop a replacement before 2018.

“The best way to get off this dependency is to set a goal,” he said.