The House Appropriations Committee (HAC) endorsed yesterday a $530 billion defense budget after approving new provisions supporting the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and M1 Abrams tank programs.
The House is slated to take up the fiscal year 2012 defense appropriations bill next week, following the HAC’s markup yesterday.
Senior committee members emphasized their support for Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] over-budget and behind-schedule F-35 program during the bill-writing session. The HAC, on a voice vote, approved an amendment that adds language to the HAC’s bill report “expressing the importance of the Joint Strike Fighter airplane program and its unique place in military operations.”
This F-35 language calls for continued oversight of the multi-service, multi-nation aircraft effort and states the lawmakers will work with the defense secretary to make the F-35 a success. The amendment was crafted by Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), whose district includes Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth plant.
“The truth of the matter is we wish this bill could have afforded to have more Joint Strike Fighters included,” HAC Defense subcommittee (HAC-D) Chairman C.W. “Bill” Young (R-Fla.) said during yesterday’s markup. But because the legislation is $8.9 billion lower than President Barack Obama’s proposed defense budget, Young said the money wasn’t available.
The HAC’s bill includes $5.9 billion for 32 F-35s, which breaks down as 19 for the Air Force, seven for the Navy, and six for the Marine Corps. The Pentagon requested funding to buy 32 of the aircraft, but the HAC calls for cutting $75 million in requested F-35 development funding.
The Pentagon early this year delayed the start of full-rate F-35 production by a year and put the Marine Corps’ short-takeoff/vertical-landing (STOVL) variant on a two-year probation period to work out technical kinks. The Pentagon now estimates the aircraft’s development will take an additional one and a half years and cost $4.5 billion more than was estimated in the spring of 2010, Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) Director Christine Fox said last month (Defense Daily, May 20).
HAC-D Ranking Member Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) said yesterday that the Pentagon has “really turned the corner” in terms of improving the F-35 program this year.
“I just hope somewhere (in) this process we can increase this (F-35 funding) somehow, that we could get the (Senate) to agree with us,” Dicks said. “The point of it is, if we could get more planes into the program the cost comes down.”
He said the Marine Corps’ STOVL variant is now doing “very, very well” in its development, and questioned the Pentagon’s move to place it on “probation” status.
Dicks said “sometimes the Congress has to step in and give some direction to the Pentagon on these issues, because we have a lot of experience up here.”
The HAC approved a total of 13 amendments yesterday to its defense appropriations bill and report, both of which it released to the public on Monday.
A successful amendment from Rep. Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) adds language to the HAC’s report “encouraging the secretary of the Army to pursue improvements to the M1 Abrams Tank engine to increase fuel efficiency and reliability.”
The HAC’s bill adds $272 million to the Pentagon’s request to buy upgraded tanks and prevent their production line from shutting down from 2013 to 2016 (Defense Daily, June 14).
The committee also approved an amendment yesterday regarding the Pentagon’s efficiencies initiative from Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), an anti-government-waste crusader who started serving on the HAC this year. The measure requires the defense secretary to specify where the Pentagon found $100 billion in efficiency savings and where they were reinvested.
The HAC’s report is critical of the efficiencies initiative, which the Pentagon said yielded $10.7 billion in such savings in FY ’12 and $100.2 billion from FY ’12 to FY ’16. The committee, in its report, states it found $884.7 million in “unrealistic efficiencies,” saying most of the savings fall under “the broad categories of better business practices and reorganizations…(that) often times never materialize.” It adds it found “more troubling” instances “in which underfunding valid requirements were claimed as efficiencies.”
The HAC’s bill does not fund the F-35 second engine, developed by General Electric [GE] and Rolls-Royce. The House-passed defense authorization bill, though, included language intended to keep it alive.
The HAC measure also calls for boosting the Pentagon’s requested funding for a future Air Force bomber and Humvee improvements, while cutting the administration’s proposed monies for developing the Ground Combat Vehicle and Joint Light Tactical Vehicle and buying the MQ-9 Reaper and MQ–8B Firescout unmanned aircraft.