The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) is calling for changes to ship, vehicle and missile-defense plans, while rejecting a move to limit F-35 Joint Strike Fighter funding, in the fiscal year 2014 defense authorization bill it passed early Thursday morning.
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The committee approved a slew of amendments to its earlier version of the Pentagon policy legislation during the markup session that ran past midnight on Wednesday. Those legislative tweaks to the bill include an increase in the cost cap for the Ford-class aircraft carrier, a restriction on funding for Stryker vehicles, and block funding for the Medium Extended Air and Missile Defense System (MEADS).
The full House is expected the debate the defense authorization bill next week. The measure authorizes a $552.1 billion base defense budget and $85.8 billion in separate Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) war funding. The HASC’s proposal does not reflect “sequestration,” the $500 billion in decade-long defense budget cuts that started in March despite the opposition of defense hawks.
Near the outset of the HASC’s marathon markup session on Wednesday, members rejected an amendment, by a 10-51 margin, to limit funds for Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] F-35 effort. Offered by Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), the failed measure called for banning the Pentagon from spending FY ’14 funding on buying new F-35s until the defense secretary certifies all testing on the aircraft’s increment 2B mission-systems software is complete, problems with helmets and other systems have been fixed, and contracts for low-rate-initial production lots 6 and 7 are definitized.
HASC members on both sides of the aisle spoke against Duckworth’s F-35 proposal. Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), chairman of the HASC’s Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee, noted the program to concurrently develop and build the multi-service fifth-generation fighter has seen some improvements amid substantial congressional oversight.
“This amendment would in fact stop funding the F-35 program,” Turner said about Duckworth’s measure. “The F-35 program is one with concurrent development and procurement….If you stop procurement until development is completed, you in effect stop the F-35. This would result in increased costs and delay, and it would send a severe, negative message to our partner countries.”
Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran, argued her amendment “speaks to the fact that even while the testing of F-35 aircraft went relatively well in 2012, there are numerous technical issues in what we learned.”
“In fact this amendment will send a message to our international partners in the program that Congress is truly supportive of the program and that we are serious about getting this aircraft delivered on schedule and with its promised capabilities,” she maintained.
The HASC, meanwhile, approved an amendment from Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee, to raise the cost cap on the Ford-class carrier. It sets the lead ship’s price at $12.887 billion and follow-on vessels’ cost at $11.411 billion each, while allowing the Navy secretary to make adjustments under some circumstances.
The panel approved an amendment to directive report language–which accompanies the bill but is not legislation–that requires that a long-range Navy shipbuilding plan due next March discuss strategies to address shipbuilding shortfalls. The new report language, crafted by Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), says replacing the SSBN Ohio-submarine is “a challenging but necessary strategic priority,” while also noting the strain it will put on the Navy’s shipbuilding budget.
Another successful amendment from Forbes adds report language that expresses concerns about the LCS program–which a recent draft report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) critiques–and also calls from another GAO report on the shipbuilding effort next year. A Lockheed Martin-Marinette Marine team and Austal USA are building different versions of the LCS.
An amendment to limit funding for buying or upgrading Strykers, from Duckworth, also garnered the HASC’s approval. It says the Army cannot spend more than 75 percent of FY ’14 monies on the General Dynamics [GD] vehicle until the Army secretary reports on the status of Stryker vehicle spare parts inventory in Auburn, Wash., which the Pentagon’s inspector general reported on last year.
The HASC also passed multiple of missile-defense amendments.
Those include one from Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) requiring the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to construct a third missile-defense site in the United States that is operational in FY ’18. Congress in the FY ’13 defense authorization act directed the Pentagon to conduct environmental-impact studies on three possible locations for a new missile-interceptor location, with at least of them being on the East Coast.
Turner’s amendment would accelerate the East Coast missile defense planning by actually requiring the site to be erected. He argued the United States needs protection beyond missile-defense sites in Alaska and California to protect from intercontinental ballistic missiles from Iran. His measure calls for MDA to submit a report to Congress with funding estimates for the new interceptor site.
HASC Democrats fought unsuccessfully against the third missile-defense site.
“Instead of spending these funds on a new interceptor site on the East Coast, we should fix existing technical problems with the current system that need much improvement in terms of their capability and cost-effectiveness,” the Democrats said in a statement. “We must make sure we get that right before rushing to deploy additional expensive and unproven systems.”
The HASC also approved a measure from Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) to prevent the Pentagon from continuing to fund the tri-nation MEADS effort in FY ’14. His successful measure also calls for the Pentagon to wait 120 days before taking technology from the developmental effort to use on other programs.
Multiple lawmakers have called on the United States to stop work on the developmental MEADS program, which has suffered cost and schedule setbacks. Though the United States does not plan to actually deploy MEADS, it has continued work on a MEADS “Proof of Concept” effort, in part to avoid substantial contract termination fees and to appease the German and Italian partners.
Though defense authorizers tried to stop the Pentagon from continuing MEADS in FY ’13, the current defense appropriations act includes monies for it.
The missile-defense system is developed by MEADS International, which includes Lockheed Martin in the United States and MBDA in Italy and MBDA’s LFK in Germany.