Here are the major changes in the Senate’s defense policy bill

The Senate Armed Services Committee will release the text of its mark of the fiscal 2017 defense policy bill next week, but committee aides gave a rundown on Friday of some of the highlights included in the bill.

• Acquisition reform: The bill makes major changes to how the Pentagon buys weapons, including getting rid of the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics job. Instead, those responsibilities would be split between two positions: an undersecretary of management and support, who would deal primarily with running the business side efficiently, and a new position for an undersecretary of research and engineering, who would be able to focus on technological innovation.
• Combatant commands: The Pentagon would be required to conduct a pilot program at a combatant command of the secretary’s choice that would replace the service component commands with a joint task force, which an aide said is a “more mission-focused” way of integrating the services. The bill also creates a Combatant Commanders Council, which formalizes meetings that often already happen between leaders of the geographic commands and top Pentagon officials, the aide said.
• Top officers: The bill would reduce the number of four-star flag and general officers from 41 to 27 across the military.
• NSC staff: The bill seeks to cap the size of the president’s advisory National Security Council at 150 permanent staff, well under the 400 people it’s reportedly grown to under recent administrations.
• JLENS: The Senate did not completely cut funding for the Raytheon blimp that broke free of its tether last year, but reprioritized most of the money for the program to other priorities, aides said. The bill also requires the defense secretary to look at the requirement the blimp was filling and see if it can be met with alternate capabilities.
• B-21: The bill reduces funding for the next bomber, which will be built by Northrop Grumman, by about $300 million because of a lower-than-expected contract value and establishes more rigorous oversight. It does not address two large issues raised by Sen. John McCain this year: revealing the cost of the contract to the public and requiring the program to be run under a fixed-price, not a cost-plus, contract.
• F-35: The bill would disband the F-35 Joint Program Office once it makes the full-rate production decision, expected sometime in April 2019. Once the office is gone, the Navy and Air Force would maintain control of the program since the three versions are three distinct aircraft that can be better managed by the individual services, the summary said. The Marine Corps variant would be overseen by the Navy.
• Gitmo: The bill maintains many of the restrictions on transfers of Guantanamo Bay detainees, but would ease rules in two areas: allowing detainees to be transferred temporarily to the U.S. for medical care and letting them plead guilty to crimes in federal courts via videoteleconference, then serve out their sentences in another country.
• Drafting women: The committee voted to require women to register for the draft, saying in a release that there is “no further justification” to keep women out of the Selective Service now that they are able to serve in combat. It also establishes a commission to review if a draft is still needed, similar to a provision in the House bill.
• Russian engines: The Senate’s mark repeals a provision in last year’s omnibus that would allow the U.S. to continue using Russian-made RD-180 rocket engines to get to space and does not add to the nine Russian engines the Air Force is already authorized to use. It also allows for $1.2 billion between fiscal 2017 and fiscal 2021 to be used to design a replacement to the RD-180, though it does not specify if that money can be used to build just a rocket or an entire launch system.
• Quadrennial Defense Review: The Senate committee nixed the QDR, replacing it with a classified report called the National Defense Strategy. It also classified the National Security Strategy, but required it to have a unclassified summary. “There’s only so much you can say and reveal in public. I think the sense was they’ve devolved into speech writing exercises to justify everything being done,” the aide said.
• Pay raise: The committee authorized a 1.6 percent pay raise for troops in fiscal 2017, in line with the president’s request but lower than the 2.1 percent authorized by its House counterpart.
• LCS: The bill would ban any revisions to the current procurement strategy for the littoral combat ship, including prohibiting a reduction to 40 ships, which the defense secretary has said is the right number despite Navy objections to build more. The Navy has two variants of the ship, one built by Lockheed Martin and another by Austal USA.
• Overseas: The bill authorizes $3.4 billion for the Afghan Security Forces and another $3.4 billion to support the European Reassurance Initiative.