The Pentagon’s annual funding bill passed out of a House committee on Wednesday and will likely head toward a final vote on the chamber floor.
The $675 billion appropriations legislation, approved 48-4, would dramatically boost purchases of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 joint strike fighters and press ahead with a new aircraft program and ship buys opposed by the White House.
The bill markup and passage by the House Appropriations Committee comes as the fiscal 2019 defense authorization legislation — the other piece of the military’s budget — has already been passed by the House and is teed up for passage in the Senate.
The appropriations bill includes $9.4 billion to buy 93 of the high-tech F-35 jets, which is 16 more than the 77 requested by President Trump and the Pentagon. Both the House and Senate versions of the National Defense Authorization Act call for 77 and 75 of the aircraft, respectively.
“To maintain air superiority we provide increases for key platforms such as the Joint Strike Fighters” as well as a variety of other aircraft, said Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, the chairwoman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.
Lockheed’s mile-long F-35 production factory in Fort Worth is in Granger’s district.
The Senate Armed Services Committee had reduced its proposal for F-35s due to concerns over the long-term costs of sustaining the aircraft, which comprises about 300,000 parts from suppliers throughout the U.S.
The appropriations bill also backs a House Armed Services effort to force the Air Force into buying a replacement for its fleet of Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System aircraft, or JSTARS.
The $623 million for JSTARS could start the replacement program for 17 Boeing E-8C aircraft that fly over battlefields and provide surveillance and intelligence to ground forces. The replacement program could eventually cost about $6.5 billion.
Mick Mulvaney, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, sent a letter to the appropriations committee opposing funding for JSTARS and two additional littoral combat ships for the Navy.
The spending is “not in line” with the president’s request to Congress, Mulvaney wrote to Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., the committee chairman.
The House Armed Services Committee is also pushing for three littoral combat ships instead of the single ship that was requested by Trump. The Navy is attempting to shift away from the near-shore warships in favor of a new frigate, but the commercial shipyards in Wisconsin, where Lockheed builds an LCS variant, and in Alabama where Austal USA builds its variant, have warned a single purchase in 2019 could lead to layoffs or even closure.
