Chances are dimming that the Navy and Air Force will get almost $23 billion in ships, missiles and aircraft spending, as it looks less likely that Congress will lift spending caps.
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James is defending about $10 billion in new spending to ramp up procurement of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, continued development of the Long Range Strike Bomber and its new tanker, the KC-46 Pegasus.
She told House defense appropriators that the service has made difficult decisions to maintain readiness with aging equipment and reduced spending under the first two years of the spending caps, but “if sequestration remains the law of the land, it is gonna be way, way, way worse.”
“More than half of our combat Air Forces, half, are not sufficiently ready for a high-end fight,” James said. “Something simply has to give.”
The Navy is defending about $13 billion in added funding that it has requested to reconstitute its submarine fleet, continue to upgrade its destroyers and continue to build its next aircraft carrier.
Both services are pushing for modernization that was pushed back over the years to fund the largely ground campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. They argue that the delays in funding have allowed Russia and China to gain on and possibly overtake the U.S. in strategic abilities to retain access to critical satellite, air and undersea needs.
While the defense committees are largely behind the services’ requests for additional funding, the message is not getting to the full Congress or to the nation, said Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger, D-Maryland.
“I don’t think anyone in that room disagrees,” Ruppersberger said, referring to his defense committee colleagues, but the nation as a whole doesn’t understand the urgency — which affects the rest of Congress, he said.
The House Appropriations defense subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., told the Navy and Air Force this week to prepare for a reality without the additional funding. He asked both services to identify what they could do without.
“I will advise you that we will cut the $13 billion with you or we will cut it without you,” he told the Navy Thursday.
“As we build our fiscal year ’16 bill … make no mistake. We do have to cut $10 billion with you, or we will cut $10 billion without you, but we need to do it,” he told the Air Force on Friday.
Defense committee lawmakers will get the first hints of how defense may be funded in the next two weeks as the House Budget Committee releases its mark for defense spending. The committee has been reluctant to go beyond the $499 billion sequester limits for defense, but any amount above the cap can only happen if Congress lifts the spending caps. But the divided Republican Congress added to the doubts in key lawmakers’ minds that any consensus will be found.
“I am not going to speculate” on what defense spending in fiscal 2016 will look like, said Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.
“Unless there’s some dramatic legislative change, the law will require we mark up bills this year to the level of [$499 billion,]” Frelinghuysen said.
