The Pentagon did not include any new requests for multi-year munitions procurements in its fiscal year 2025 budget submission, while the department still awaits confirmation its requests for FY ‘24 will be included in the final defense appropriations bill.
“There’s no new [multi-year requests] in here. We’re hoping to get started on the ones we asked for a year ago. But we didn’t add new ones to the list. Seven [munitions] is a lot to start [with] in one year. So I guess it’s just as well that we didn’t start with any new ones because then we’d be on the hook to do quite a lot in however many months it’s going to be into FY ‘25 before we get the FY ‘25 funding,” a senior defense official told reporters ahead of the FY ‘25 budget rollout.
Photo: Lockheed Martin
After Congress granted new authority to seek multi-year procurement opportunities for select munitions, DoD’s FY ‘24 budget submission included a request to pursue such deals for seven weapons: Kongsberg’s Naval Strike Missile, Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] GMLRS rocket, PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptors and LRASM and JASSM-ER missiles, and RTX’s [RTX] AMRAAM and SM-6 missiles.
“We’re looking to make unprecedented use of new multi-year procurement flexibility provided by Congress. This will help us lock in critical investments, getting the most bang for the taxpayer’s buck, send industry a clear demand signal and be even better prepared to respond quickly in future contingencies,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said at the time of the FY ‘24 budget rollout (Defense Daily, March 3 2023).
The senior defense official noted that, while “the jury is still out” on the final FY ‘24 defense budget, if the seven multi-year munitions procurement requests are funded, then those deals, once awarded, would continue to run through FY ‘25.
“And on that basis, we don’t have any new multi-years [for munitions] in this budget. But between what we asked for last year and the presence or absence of supplemental funding for Ukraine, which is also pending before Congress, [those] are probably the big things that will move the needle on munitions,” the senior defense official said.
The Pentagon’s $849.8 million FY ‘25 budget submission requests $29.8 billion for munitions, to include $5.9 billion for ammunition, $16 billion for tactical missiles, $7.2 billion for strategic missiles and $700 million for technology development (Defense Daily, March 11).
“This budget continues to leverage multiyear procurement authorities provided by Congress to deliver critical munitions affordable, while bolstering our inventories and providing a more predictable demand signal to the industry,” the department wrote in a summary of its FY ‘25 budget request.
The budget submission does not add to the list of requested multi-year for munitions, although the FY ‘24 National Defense Authorization Act further expanded the list of weapons eligible for such contracts to include: Tomahawk cruise missiles, the Army’s new Precision Strike Missiles, Mark 48 Torpedoes, Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles, Rolling Airframe Missiles, and Small Diameter Bombs (Defense Daily, Dec. 14).
The Senate Appropriations Committee’s FY ‘24 defense spending bill funded all seven of DoD’s multi-year munitions requests, while the House Appropriations Committee did not include the requests for AMRAAM and SM-6 missiles (Defense Daily, June 27 2023).
Congress is still working on final FY ‘24 defense spending legislation, which is likely to be unveiled next week ahead of the March 22 deadline.
The senior defense official told reporters the Pentagon’s assumption is that the final FY ‘24 defense budget will “largely approve what we asked for.”
“If we get none of [the multi-year munitions requests], we’re really going to have to go back and look at this budget,” the senior defense official said.