The office estimated an 18-ship LSM program would cost between $6.2 billion and $7.8 billion in 2024 inflation-adjusted dollars, or $340 million to $430 million per ship. This is three times more than the Navy’s comparable estimate of $2.6 billion total, or $150 million per ship.

The CBO, in a report released April 11, noted the program would cost between $11.9 billion and $15 billion in 2024 dollars if the service ultimately buys 35 ships, as the Marine Corps has pushed for.

The report outlined the challenges in predicting the cost of the program, given remaining questions about what the platform will look like and how it will be used, and cited inconsistencies over time between how the Navy and Marine Corps each talk about the future of this program.

For example, the Marine Corps originally proposed LSM in its Force Design 2030 modernization plan in spring 2020, calling for a vessel that would be built to commercial standards to keep costs low and to help it blend in with commercial shipping.

The Navy and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, however, have pushed for higher standards for safety and survivability, leading to a back-and-forth over design, cost and quantity.

“A central issue that remains unclear is the LSM’s concept of operations. Specifically, do Navy and Marine Corps leaders expect the ships to deploy and resupply their marines only before a war has started, such as when a crisis is building? Or would the ships also redeploy and resupply marine units during a conflict, when those ships would be potentially vulnerable to detection and attack by opposing military forces?” the report asked.

“A ship that is not expected to face enemy fire in a conflict could be built to a lesser survivability standard, with fewer defensive systems than a ship that would sail in contested waters during a conflict. Recent experiments by the Marine Corps suggest that the naval services are still determining what the capabilities of the LSM will be,” it continued.

The answers to these questions will directly affect cost.

The CBO created a cost estimate based on a hybrid military-commercial ship design, as Navy and Marine Corps leaders have indicated they’ll pursue.

Using strictly military standards associated with traditional amphibious warships would add $2 billion to $3 billion to the cost of an 18-ship program, and $5 billion to $6 billion to the price of a 35-ship program, the report noted.

The use of commercial standards would lower the cost estimate by $4 billion to $8 billion for an 18-ship program, and by $5 billion to $10 billion for a 35-ship program, the report added.

Additionally, the CBO report noted uncertainty over how many ships the Navy will ultimately buy. The service has discussed buying 18, while the Marine Corps insists it needs 35.

“The total cost of the program — as opposed to the average cost of individual ships — will largely be determined by the number of LSMs the Navy ultimately buys,” the report noted.

The cost will also depend on how many shipyards the Navy puts on contract to build LSMs and at what annual rate. This might look different if the services hurried to get as many out as quickly as possible, versus if they stick to the current plan of buying one or two per year for the first five years.

The Navy originally planned to begin buying LSMs in fiscal 2023, but that was pushed back to fiscal 2025 for budgetary reasons. The Navy has awarded contracts to five companies to help refine the requirements for the ship type, and in January the service released a request for proposals to industry for the contract to design and build the first LSMs.

The vessels will have a draft of 12 feet, be 200-400 feet long, be able to transit 3,500 nautical miles at a speed of 14 knots, beach themselves to load and unload vehicles and supplies, have a crew of 70 sailors, and embark 50 Marines, among other specifications.

The White House on Wednesday, during Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s state visit at the White House, floated Japan’s entry into the second pillar of the pact in a joint statement. While the first pillar would see the U.S. and Britain help Australia develop its own nuclear-powered submarine fleet, the second aims to jumpstart cooperation on emerging defense technologies.

During a joint address to Congress on Thursday, Kishida highlighted U.S.-Japanese cooperation on some of the key technologies the agreement seeks to enhance.

“Just yesterday, President [Joe] Biden and I demonstrated our commitment to leading the world on the development of the next generation of emerging technologies, such as AI, quantum, semiconductors, biotechnology and clean energy,” he told U.S. lawmakers.

Biden and Kishida announced a slew of new defense cooperation agreements between their two countries in a joint statement Wednesday. And while the statement opens up a door for Japan to join AUKUS Pillar II, Kishida did not formally commit to joining.

“For Japan, to have a direct cooperation with AUKUS, nothing has been decided at this moment,” Kishida said at a press conference with Biden at the White House.

Australian Minister for Defense Industry Patrick Conroy and British Vice Adm. Martin Connell, the U.K. Royal Navy Second Sea Lord, both spoke favorably about Japan possibly joining the agreement during the Sea Air Space defense conference in Washington on Monday.

Vice Adm. Rob Gaucher, who command U.S. submarine forces in the Atlantic, said during the conference “we already share a ton of technology with Japan and they’re a great partner in the Pacific,” pointing to Tokyo’s unmanned capabilities.

‘Getting the basics of AUKUS right’

AUKUS is still in its nascent stages, and the three participating countries are seeking consensus on overhauling their export control regimes, which critics say inhibit the information and technology sharing crucial to deepening collaboration among their respective defense industries.

“The Biden administration has to get the basics of AUKUS right before it expands the pact to other partners,” Sen. James Risch, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said in statement Wednesday, noting the State Department still needs to submit a certification to give Australia and Britain broad exemptions to U.S. export control laws.

“Without this certification, cooperation on advanced technologies under AUKUS — the very types of military capabilities needed to counter China — will remain stymied by regulations and bureaucracy,” he added. “Rather than take credit for things it has not yet done, the Biden administration should certify our two closest allies and deliver tangible defense capabilities now. Adding more partners delays capabilities and fails to deter China.”

The fiscal 2024 defense policy bill, which Congress passed in December, would give Australia and Britain a carveout in Washington’s International Traffic in Arms Regulation, or ITAR. Canada is currently the only country to enjoy a blanket ITAR exemption.

But to receive this, the State Department must certify Canberra and London have passed comparable export control laws of their own so U.S. technology does not fall into the hands of adversaries like China.

Australia’s parliament is considering legislation to enhance its export control laws, but some Australian defense firms fear stricter regulations will inhibit their ability to do business with non-AUKUS countries, like Japan.

For his part, Kishida did not directly mention AUKUS in his address to Congress, which largely centered on urging lawmakers to continue supporting Ukraine and playing a leading role in the Indo-Pacific.

“As we meet here today, I detect an undercurrent of self-doubt among some Americans about what your role in the world should be,” said Kishida. “As I often say, Ukraine of today may be East Asia of tomorrow.”

For the long-range plan to be carried out, the first step is executing the FYDP plan through fiscal 2029, per the president’s budget request, which provides plenty of insight into the expectation for ship construction timelines and statuses.

These ship-by-ship details provide insight into recent performance, the changing of expectations and the difficult road ahead for the long-range plan.

The plan outlines an ambitious increase in the number of active battle force ships to meet the goal of an eventual 381 ships (plus 134 unmanned vessels). It shows increasing deliveries effectively across all ship categories through the late 2030s in a baseline plan, and provides an alternative with fewer procurements, but both begin with the assumption that FY25-FY29 FYDP expectations will be met.

Navy leaders recently executed a 45-day review of shipbuilding performance, which highlighted several delays to big-ticket programs. Our analysis of some of these major programs, including the outcome of the 45-day review, shows that the steadily increasing construction spans, paired with an outlook of increasing demand on shipbuilders, will not aid improvement.

Submarines

The Columbia-class submarine is the highest-priority shipbuilding program, and building it according to plan is required for the Navy to stay at the threshold of 10 ballistic missile submarines. Columbia construction has been historically prioritized to the detriment of the Virginia class so that Columbia can use more attention and resources from the shared shipbuilder (ideally to shield Columbia from delays).

According to the recent shipbuilding review, the first boat, SSBN-826, is now 12 to 14 months behind schedule.

While the second boat is not yet officially delayed, it is hard to imagine the construction spans dropping from what is now nearly 100 months for the first boat down into the 70s for SSBN-827 and all subsequent units. Given the second boat is only scheduled to begin construction in FY24, it is too early to see the extent to which SSBN-826 issues will impact SSBN-827 and beyond. One would expect delays for SSBN-827 and onward, especially considering the two boats being built in FY24 are planned to grow to six by FY28.

The Virginia-class program has experienced large delays over recent years as production has ramped up. But for what it’s worth, the Navy has begun incorporating more realistic expectations in its plans.

Since 2019, the months required to build each ship has risen from 68 months per boat to 85 months for the four most recently delivered boats, and is planned to be 95 months on average for all boats currently under construction.

This increase in construction months has been in line with a ramp-up in production as the number of ships being built has risen from 12 in 2019 to 15 in 2024, and is expected to climb to 18 by the end of the decade. Per the FYDP, planned boats are expected to remain around 95 months on average, which appears to be reasonable given recent history.

With the higher-priority Columbia program now officially experiencing delays — which may become more severe — and with Virginia construction ramping up to 18 boats at a time, maintaining the same level of efficiency will be a victory in itself.

Destroyers

Procurement of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer is planned to continue until FY32, when procurement for the next-generation destroyer DDG(X) should begin.

Between those boats recently delivered and those that have already begun construction, the average actual or planned construction is roughly 70 months per boat and has been trending upward.

The nuance is that the performance is largely unique to the shipyards. DDG-51s are split between General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works and HII. Those ships under construction or completed by HII average 62 months per boat, while those by General Dynamics average over 75 months per boat.

This disparity in performance is also reflected in the Navy’s forecast, where HII is expected to drive improvement to the program with constructions spans eventually dipping below 50 months, while General Dynamics boats are never expected to break 70.

Whether the issues at Bath Iron Works are due to the beleaguered DDG-1000 program still being wrapped up there or other causes, naval planning is clearly not expecting much to change in terms of DDG-51 construction, besides allocating fewer boats to build going forward.

Meanwhile, HII will be expected to improve construction time by a double-digit percentage while taking on the lion’s share of the work, going from six ships under construction in 2024 to at least nine by the end of the decade.

Aircraft carriers

CVN-79 and CVN-80 are each delayed by more than two years compared to original delivery plans, while CVN-81 is still on schedule. This is largely attributed to CVN-81 being procured in a two-carrier contract, which allowed for procurement efforts to be spread over a much longer period since contract signing.

This gives CVN-81 a longer planned construction span and means less work has been completed, even though construction has technically been ongoing for a few years.

It is still yet to be known if CVN-81 will really be built to schedule, given the keel laying is still a few years away.

Frigates

It’s early days for the Constellation-class guided-missile frigates, but the program is already looking at delivery delays.

Coming out of the recent shipbuilding review, it has been reported that the lead ship, FFG-62, is now expected to be delivered 36 months late. This puts the total construction time for the boat at more than seven years, nearing double the original estimate of four years.

Issues have been attributed to shipbuilder Marinette Marine now managing three programs, including the Littoral Combat Ship program and the Saudi Multi-Mission Surface Combatant. The Navy has stated that it’s taking steps to improve the process.

Given the second ship was only slated to begin the construction process in December 2023, it’s too soon to identify the extent to which these issues will continue — not only for the lead ship, but spread to the next ships beginning construction.

According to the latest plans, the shipbuilder is expected to go from potentially three ships underway in 2024 to more than 10 of the class under construction by 2028, while simultaneously bringing construction spans back down to planned levels. Assuming some level of delay continues for even just the first few hulls, the profile of small surface combatant deliveries and fleet size outlined in the 30-year plan has the potential to shift.

The problems plaguing U.S. shipbuilding have been attributed to multiple factors, from the cutting down of the industrial base in the 1990s to the impacts of COVID-19 on the supply chain in recent years.

Whichever issues can be argued for recent performance on these specific programs, construction performance has not been trending in the right direction, and much of the plan for the upcoming years looks ambitious given where things stand.

For industry to execute the plans in the FYDP, and therefore follow the path that provides the Navy with the capability it needs, major improvements will have to be made.

The shipbuilding community has its work cut out for it.

Theo Egan is a co-founder of Tamarack Defense, a data analytics and advisory firm.

Roughly 100,000 U.S. servicemembers are stationed throughout Europe today, including about 20,000 who were surged to countries like Poland and Romania in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. U.S. forces have not been involved in fighting against Russia but have trained with Ukrainian forces headed to the front lines.

Another 40,000 NATO troops are stationed in the region as well, in support of Eastern European countries’ security efforts.

NATO holds its biggest exercises in decades, involving 90K personnel

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday, Gen. Christopher Cavoli — head of U.S. European Command — said the deployments are part of “a definite shift eastward” for the NATO alliance, and said infrastructure is in place to up the troop numbers even more if needed.

“In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, NATO took the decision to establish new battlegroups on a standing basis,” he said. “By design, they can all go up to brigade size at a time of need. And a number of nations have already elected to go up to that.”

In 2022, the White House announced plans to station the V Corps Headquarters Forward Command Post, an Army garrison headquarters, and a field support battalion in Poland, the first permanent U.S. forces on NATO’s eastern flank.

Cavoli said officials are planning to continue rotating U.S. units into Poland and other Eastern European sites for the foreseeable future, in recognition of Russian aggression in the region.

But he sidestepped questions from committee members about making some of those surge bases permanent, instead saying that officials are only preparing for potential changes in deployments in the future.

“We see a Euro-Atlantic area that faces more threats and dynamic challenges than at any time in the past 30 years,” he said.

The U.S. military footprint in Europe was a key friction point in recent years between Pentagon leaders and former President Donald Trump, who had pushed for steep drawdowns in the number of troops stationed there.

But President Joe Biden has voiced increasing support for European allies instead of reducing it, and has used the war in Ukraine to underscore that need.

While several Republicans on the armed services panel expressed concern for increasing direct military aid to Ukraine, none suggested significant reductions in the U.S. military posture in the region.

The full Republican conference unanimously picked Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., to chair the committee. Although fellow defense appropriator Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., had also expressed interest in the position, Cole was the only candidate to formally run for the post.

Cole will step down as chairman of the House Rules Committee, which controls the floor agenda. Like Granger before him, he currently sits on the defense appropriations subcommittee and has historically favored large military budgets. He described the Biden administration’s fiscal 2025 defense budget proposal of $895 billion as insufficient during a hearing with Navy and Marine Corps leaders on Wednesday shortly after his appointment.

“I think this budget is too low,” Cole said. “I think that’s been consistently true with the administration. I also recognize we’re under the constraints of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, and that’s going to make it difficult for us to do some things I think we need to do.”

Cole was referring to last year’s debt ceiling agreement that capped discretionary spending levels. Under that agreement, the Defense Department receives more discretionary funding than all other federal agencies combined.

“I look forward to hitting the ground running tomorrow and am committed to engaging with the entire conference to deliver the necessary appropriations bills in a timely matter,” Cole said in a statement on Tuesday after the House Republican Steering Committee, which controls panel assignments, nominated him as appropriations chairman.

Congress did not pass a full FY24 defense spending bill until March, nearly six months into the fiscal year that began in October.

Granger, who is not running for reelection in November, said she is stepping down as appropriations chairwoman early in part because “an election year often results in final appropriations bills not getting enacted well until the next fiscal year.”

Cole told the Nebraska Examiner that he expects Congress will have to fund the government with a stopgap spending bill through the upcoming presidential election instead of full FY25 appropriations legislation at the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1.

Whether Congress passes the FY25 spending bills before January depends on President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees, respectively.

“The winner will probably decide,” Cole told the Nebraska Examiner. “Do we want to finish business this calendar year, which is always the best thing to do, win or lose, or do you want to kick it into next year?

“I hope we don’t do that, but that’s the way I see it unfolding right now.”

As appropriations chairman, Cole will have to balance the demands of traditional Republican defense hawks and fiscal conservatives more closely aligned with Trump’s America First wing of the party. Cole also favors Ukraine aid and has consistently voted in favor of it, though Trump and a growing number of Republicans oppose additional assistance for Kyiv.

While House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has said the House would act on Ukraine aid, he has so far ruled out putting the Senate’s $95 billion foreign aid bill — which also includes assistance for Israel and Taiwan — on the floor. The Senate passed that bill 70-29 in February.

Johnson has yet to reveal a formal plan for Ukraine aid. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has threatened to force a vote removing Johnson as speaker, should he move forward with a Ukraine package.

Last year’s effort instigated by a small band of right-wing Republicans to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., plunged the House into weeks of chaos as the conference struggled to select a new leader.

Further complicating matters, House Republicans will be down to a one-vote majority after Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., leaves Congress later this month.

And the topic of U.S. military support for Israel overshadowed a hearing with the defense secretary that same day on the Pentagon’s budget request.

Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, had expressed reservations about the fighter jet sale and demanded a classified briefing from the Biden administration, raising questions as to whether he will greenlight the pending deal.

“I want to know what types of weapons and what the weapons would be utilized for,” Meeks told CNN on Tuesday.

“I don’t want the kinds of weapons that Israel has to be utilized to have more deaths,” he said. “I want to make sure that humanitarian aid gets in. I don’t want people starving to death, and I want Hamas to release the hostages. And I want a two-state solution.”

Meeks was referring to the Israel-Hamas war that began after the militant group launched a fatal attack on the country in October and took people hostage. Israel has responded by waging war in the Gaza Strip, which has led to the deaths of tens of thousands, according to many estimates. The “two-state solution” calls for separate nations — one for Israelis, another for Palestinians.

The sale includes 50 Boeing-made F-15 fighter jets; Raytheon-made Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles; and Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munition kits, which convert dumb bombs to precision-guided munitions. Politico and other outlets first reported on the sale last week.

Israel would not receive the fighter jets and munitions from the sale until the end of the decade.

The top Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate foreign affairs panels have the authority to block arms sales, and the State Department typically alerts them to deals before formally notifying Congress in order to avoid embarrassing allies. The top Republicans on the committees, Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho and Rep. Mike McCaul of Texas, signed off on the sale soon after the Biden administration submitted the informal notification on Jan. 30.

The office of Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Ben Cardin, D-Md., declined to comment as to whether he supports the F-15 sale. Cardin met with Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid on Monday.

Other House members previously supportive of U.S. military aid to Israel signed onto a letter to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week expressing concern over the sale. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., a former House speaker, as well as Rep. Betty McCollum of Minnesota, the top Democratic defense appropriator, signed onto the letter alongside 38 other Democrats.

They also criticized Biden for another Israel arms transfer last week, noting in the letter that it “reportedly includes 1,800 MK-84 2,000-pound bombs, 500 MK-82 500-pound bombs and 25 F-35A fighter jets.”

The letter, which Meeks did not sign, called for a halt to offensive arms transfers pending Israel’s investigation into its strike last week in Gaza that killed seven humanitarian aid workers, six foreigners and one Palestinian.

It also called on Biden to “ensure that any future military assistance to Israel, including already authorized transfers, is subject to conditions to ensure it is used in compliance with U.S. and international law.”

‘2,000-pound bombs’

Meanwhile on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin fielded questions during a Senate hearing from members of the Democratic caucus who are increasingly concerned with ongoing U.S. weapons transfers to Israel amid the war.

“I was surprised that at the very week the World [Central] Kitchen attack occurred, continuing the humanitarian crisis, that the administration approved the transfer of additional munitions to Israel, particularly offensive munitions,” said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine. “Two-thousand-pound bombs are not defensive. They’re offensive, and they’re not very precision.”

The Israel Defense Forces have acknowledged they were responsible for an attack that killed aid workers with the humanitarian organization.

Austin also faced skepticism from Democrats and Republicans alike over the Biden administration’s plans to construct a temporary pier in Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said “the pace of humanitarian aid is insufficient” and cited World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain — the widow of former Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. — who had warned of imminent famine.

“There’s no reason the United States should have to build a pier in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Kaine added.

Gen. Michael Kurilla, who oversees troops in the Middle East as the leader of U.S. Central Command, told the House last month that force-protection plans for the Gaza pier remain classified. Austin said Tuesday that nongovernmental organizations would be tasked with distributing the aid coming in through the pier, though the details have yet to be worked out.

Austin said he pressed Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on the need to open humanitarian corridors into Gaza and to ensure civilian evacuation and safety before any potential Israeli offensive into Rafah, where roughly 1.5 million Palestinians have fled amid the six-month-long campaign.

Still, Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., said that “U.S. security assistance to Israel must therefore continue unimpeded.”

Austin replied that the Biden administration is “doing everything we can to make sure we get them what they need as quickly as possible.”

“I would expect that as the nature of this fight begins to change, to become a more precision fight, then their requirements should change a bit,” he said. “We will stay abreast of their needs, and we will continue to provide security assistance as quickly as we can. We remain committed to helping Israel defend itself, but we expect that they would execute operations responsibly.”

Numerous protesters from the activist group Code Pink repeatedly interrupted the beginning of the hearing, shouting “stop the genocide in Gaza.” The interruptions prompted Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., to briefly recess the hearing, at which point the protesters left en masse.

Austin told senators that “we don’t have any evidence of genocide” in Gaza. The International Court of Justice in January found there was a “plausible” risk of genocide in Gaza and called on Israel to take steps to protect civilians and allow entry of humanitarian aid.

After a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, Biden called for an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza and threatened U.S. policy changes absent “a series of specific, concrete and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering and the safety of aid workers.”

It also requires submission of the often-misunderstood unfunded priorities lists, or UPL.

As detailed in our newly published analysis, the 12 unfunded priorities lists that have been made public to date this year total $28.7 billion in funding shortfalls and represent the best professional military judgement of our nation’s most senior uniformed leaders.

These unfunded priorities equate to about 3.4% of the $850 billion budget request. Given that inflation remains at about 3.2% and the pay raise for military members is 4.5%, the 1% topline increase in the budget request, when combined with the 3.4% in additional funding within the UPLs, would keep the Pentagon at a roughly zero real growth rate.

As there are two major wars ongoing, several shadow wars and the potential for a major conflict with China, we can expect the Pentagon may also have a fiscal 2025 emergency supplemental in the works. Even with this context, the UPLs contained several interesting surprises.

The first surprise is that, though China is the stated strategic pacing threat, the UPLs are filled with shortfalls in capabilities related to this challenge. In fact, the commander of Indo-Pacific Command monopolizes the list in asking for $11 billion, which is 38% of the entire UPL requests, and tops its own previous-year needs by more than $7.5 billion.

Research and development UPLs related to the Pacific and space make up 83% of shortfalls. Similarly, military construction gaps are up $4 billion over last year, an increase that is almost entirely for INDOPACOM needs. High-dollar requirements listed include facilities in Guam; harbor improvements in Palau; runways, wharfs and harbor projects in Micronesia; and water treatment and hangar projects in Hawaii.

Large shortfalls to counter China signal what we already know: The defense budget is too small. But it also may indicate priority disagreements during program and budget decisions, or that INDOPACOM has a more unrestrained view of the process than the service chiefs, or that Congress tends to support INDOPACOM UPLs in how it rescues the Pentagon budget. It likely means all of these things.

The second surprise is that within the investment accounts, there is a very notable shift in the UPLs away from procurement and into military construction as well as research and development. In FY23, procurement made up 53% of the UPLs. In FY25, that is down to 30%, with well over half (54%) not even submitted by the military departments but instead coming from INDOPACOM and the National Guard Bureau.

With procurement the known bill-payer for this year’s stated budget focus on readiness and the near-term fight, the UPLs were expected to make up for the lack of funding to actually buy the ships, planes, ground vehicles and space systems we know we need to remain competitive and to sustain our industrial base and supply chains struggling under uncertain and insufficient budgets.

The third surprise is in the readiness category, which includes appropriations for operations and maintenance as well as military personnel, along with targeted partner efforts funded through the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. Despite the FY25 budget request’s stated focus on readiness, the Air Force puts forth a single $1.5 billion request for spares, noting a one-time need for aircraft readiness that it could not fully fund in the budget due to fiscal constraints.

In addition, INDOPACOM lists a $581 million gap, which essentially means that the day-to-day operating forces and contracted logistics support functions of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps components in the Pacific are underfunded, at least in the view of the INDOPACOM commander.

In conclusion, three key points stand out. The FY25 defense budget request is too low to meet even those readiness requirements it says it prioritizes, and it loses ground on crucial strategic innovation, posture and procurement efforts necessary for U.S. national security and military competitiveness.

UPLs are important tools in determining where to apply missing resources, but they also signal consequences to budget uncertainty and the resulting disjointed approach to supporting strategic priorities.

And third, as Congress examines the unfunded priorities and the capability gaps they represent to increase the defense budget to minimally required levels, it should also prioritize on-time enactment of annual appropriations as equally important to promoting our national security.

Elaine McCusker is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. She previously served as the Pentagon’s acting undersecretary of defense (comptroller). Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John G. Ferrari is a senior nonresident fellow at AEI. Ferrari previously served as a director of program analysis and evaluation for the service.

These were difficult, even for the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee. And he wasn’t the only one asking. Thornberry often traveled to Asia, where U.S. allies had the same questions. Thornberry didn’t know what to tell them.

“What do we have to offer?” he said.

For two years, Congress had asked the Pentagon for a report on how much extra money it needed for the Pacific region, but never received one. So Congress demanded one.

“The attitude was, tell us what you need and we’ll try to help,” Thornberry said during a recent interview. “Well, if they’re not going to tell us, then we’re going to tell them.”

The defense policy bill for fiscal 2021 — named for Thornberry, who was retiring — created the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, a new section of the defense budget. PDI had two goals: to push the Pentagon to spend more on the region and to make that money easier to track.

Four years later, PDI has done only one of those two things, according to experts. It has certainly made China-focused defense spending more transparent, but it hasn’t driven much new spending on the Pacific. In fact, the part of America’s defense budget created to help deter a war with China has no actual money.

“Your priorities are always better reflected in your budget rather than in your rhetoric,” Thornberry said.

Whether those two areas match up may be the most important question in American defense policy right now. The last three administrations have decided China is America’s top threat, and a rising one at that. But it’s less clear how much money it will cost to address it and who gets to decide — Congress, the Pentagon or military leaders in the Pacific?

“I don’t think that we are somehow dangerously short of funding for the Indo-Pacific, whether it’s PDI or not,” Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel, told Defense News in February.

“We’re going in the right direction, but the question is: Are we going there fast enough?”

A second opinion

This was the question that led to PDI.

In 2021, the head of Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Phil Davidson, was in Washington ahead of his planned retirement to testify before Congress. Davidson hadn’t appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee in two years due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Early on, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., presented a set of charts during a short call and response. Wicker read a list projecting the number of Chinese and American weapons in the region by 2025, asking Davidson to check his numbers.

Three Chinese aircraft carriers to America’s one. Six Chinese amphibious assault ships to America’s two. Fifty-four Chinese combat ships to America’s six.

The admiral confirmed each one.

“Our conventional deterrent is actually eroding in the region,” Davidson said.

What concerned him most was not that Beijing had a more powerful military overall; it was a problem of speed and distance. Taiwan — which the Chinese government considers a rogue province and has threatened to take back by force — is about 100 miles from the mainland. It’s more than 5,000 miles from Hawaii, the headquarters of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

It would take three weeks for the U.S. to rush ships to the area from the West Coast, and around 17 days to do so from Alaska, Davidson estimated. If China launched a rapid invasion, it might overwhelm Taiwan before the U.S. had a chance to arrive.

“The important factor here is time,” he said.

Davidson’s answer, and that of many committee members, was to push America’s forces closer to Taiwan — the military version of a full-court press. But the U.S. didn’t yet have the necessary infrastructure in place. It would need to construct bases, airfields, radars and other buildings along the Pacific islands that arc around Taiwan.

And this would cost money — lots of money.

PDI was, at first, meant to be the source of that money. To understand why, it’s important to understand how the Pentagon writes its budget.

The process depends mostly on the military services — in particular the Army, Navy and Air Force. These services hold about four-fifths of defense spending each year and direct where that money goes.

Their incentives are different from those of the seven geographic combatant commands, who carry out America’s military goals around the world. Given their roles, the commands often focus on shorter-term needs. Hence, the services often don’t fund everything the combatant commands want.

To lawmakers, the gap seemed especially wide in the Pacific, where China has spent the last two decades upgrading its military.

Noticing this problem, lawmakers as far back as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in 2017 wanted to fund Indo-Pacific Command’s goals with a separate account — something Thornberry also later supported.

It didn’t come together until three years later. In May 2020, the chair and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee announced plans for a Pacific Deterrence Initiative that would reassure U.S. allies and improve its forces.

It had five goals: to improve presence, logistics, exercises, infrastructure and the strength of partners in the Pacific. The bill also added a voice to the budgeting process. Indo-Pacific Command would now give Congress an annual second opinion on America’s military needs in the region.

There was, however, a structural problem. The lawmakers that created PDI didn’t actually get any money for it. The policy bill named for Thornberry gave the Pentagon about $2 billion in authority for the effort but not permission to spend it. That would’ve required a signoff from the defense appropriations committees, who control the nation’s purse.

Those committees balk at initiatives like PDI, according to multiple congressional aides, because passing them makes it harder to write a defense budget — the same reason it’s harder to write a recipe when someone else decides your shopping list.

“The hope was for the following year that the appropriations and the budget would match,” said Kimberly Lehn, a former aide on the House Armed Services Committee who helped write the PDI legislation.

That didn’t happen, and by the time Davidson testified before Congress a year later, the initiative had become an accounting drill.

Think about it like a home improvement fund. If you want an upgrade — say, a nicer kitchen — then you have two options: Earn more money or spend less money elsewhere. Instead, PDI was, and still is, implemented in reverse. Each year, the Pentagon builds its budget and then reviews it to see what contributes to deterrence in the Pacific. It then labels that as PDI and highlights the total number in its budget request.

“It reflects their decisions, it doesn’t drive their decisions,” said Dustin Walker, a former Senate Armed Services Committee aide who helped write the PDI legislation and now works at the drone-maker Anduril.

‘Free chicken’

This was not the model PDI’s authors had in mind.

“It started basically as a straight copycat of [the] European Deterrence Initiative,” Walker said, referring to an effort that stemmed from Russia’s 2014 seizure and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

The Obama administration wanted to show commitment to NATO allies rattled by war on the continent. The government did so within months using what it originally dubbed the European Reassurance Initiative.

U.S. forces in Europe had declined for decades after the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s — down to about 62,000 personnel by 2016. The smaller size made sense in Europe given there were fewer needs for America’s military muscle. But Russia’s invasion showed how far readiness had fallen, said Tod Wolters, the former head of U.S. European Command.

With the European Deterrence Initiative, the administration wanted to bulk up.

“We knew that we could not go back to Cold War status, with the number of forces that were going to be in the theater. So the question became: How do we make sure that we can rapidly deploy combat power?” said Al Viana, who works in European Command’s force structure and requirements office.

This became the focus of EDI, whose name changed in 2018 when it became clear Russia’s military activities in the region weren’t coming to an end. From 2015 to 2023, the U.S. spent $35 billion on the effort to empower allies and ensure its own forces were more agile. The second goal required funding to run more exercises, rotate more troops, improve infrastructure and store important equipment on the continent.

By the end of fiscal 2014, European Command had dissolved two heavy combat brigades. However, EDI helped rebuild those forces — deferring cuts to Air Force personnel, supporting a combat aviation brigade and making sure the Army had an armored brigade combat team rotating through the theater. In FY16, the Army’s forces in Europe conducted 26 total exercises per year. By 2023, that number was around 50.

In 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. surged 20,000 extra personnel to Europe. That included an armored brigade combat team — including about 4,000 personnel, 90 tanks and more than 200 other vehicles — which arrived within a week from notification. Without those stocks already stored in the theater, it would’ve taken between four and six weeks, according to U.S. Army Europe and Africa.

“EDI is the place to go and see exactly what we’re doing,” Viana said.

The two initiatives’ different fates come almost entirely down to money. EDI was paid for through an account called overseas contingency operations, more commonly referred to as OCO (pronounced like “cocoa”). That fund started for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, supplementing the annual Pentagon budget.

“EDI was easy because you weren’t fighting with a service,” a senior defense official told Defense News, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the individual was not permitted to talk to the press. “It was free chicken.”

By the start of this decade, Congress had soured on OCO, partly because the Pentagon used it to dodge some budget cuts it faced in the 2010s. Lawmakers called it a slush fund.

This meant the Pacific Deterrence Initiative didn’t get any extra funding. The European counterpart transitioned away from supplemental money in fiscal 2022, and its funding amounts since then have steadily dropped.

The result is that many items Indo-Pacific Command lists in its annual report to Congress — the things the command says it needs to maintain its strength in the region — aren’t funded. So the command just resubmits those unfunded priorities on top of additional needs in the next year’s report. Hence, each year’s dollar amount snowballs.

When Davidson testified before Congress in 2021, his report listed $4.7 billion in requirements. This year, the number was $26.5 billion — $11 billion of which is unfunded. The bulk of that $11 billion would go to construction costs — much higher in the Pacific than on the U.S. homeland — and munitions.

“Our demand signal has been consistent,” George Ka’iliwai, the director of requirements and resources at the command, said in a March interview. “It is what it is because they are our requirements.”

The Pentagon has questioned some of Indo-Pacific Command’s priorities and whether they’re possible to carry out, even with funding. Infrastructure projects, for example, sometimes require negotiations with the host government as well as expensive labor and material costs. Only about a fifth of Indo-Pacific Command’s desired construction projects appear in the FY25 budget request, Ka’iliwai said.

Since its first report, the command has said the missile defense architecture of Guam — a U.S. territory crucial to the military’s Pacific posture — is its top goal. Others, such as infrastructure on Pacific islands or a secure network to communicate with allies, have also appeared each year.

PDI “doesn’t come close to scratching the itch,” the defense source said.

‘Trade-offs’

There are a few paths forward. One of them would see Congress give Indo-Pacific Command new money each year, like the account McCain sought in 2017.

There are lawmakers, such as Hawaii’s Case, who support that. But the appropriations committees don’t, and it’s unlikely that will change in the short term, according to multiple congressional aides.

Another option is in the Pentagon’s control. At the start of the budgeting process, department leaders could reserve money for the command’s priorities and build everything else around it. That would resemble how the deputy defense secretary is funding two signature initiatives: the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve, which helps accelerate prototyping; and Replicator, an effort to buy drones faster.

But these programs are loose change compared to what the command says it needs — hundreds of millions of dollars compared to more than $11 billion in unfunded priorities.

The way PDI works now is important, according to another senior defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic. The official argued that a different model for the initiative would make it more difficult for the Defense Department to plan and budget.

“The department has the best ability to find the right trade-offs,” the official said.

Points of view

Three years after Davidson testified, his successor stepped into a House hearing room this March.

“The risk is still high, and it is trending in the wrong direction,” Adm. John Aquilino noted in his opening statement, later adding that the Pacific is the most dangerous he’s ever seen it.

Sitting next to him, Ely Ratner, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, was more hopeful, citing higher spending and the administration’s “historic momentum” with allies in the region.

The higher spending is easier to see with PDI, which has charted large increases in funding over the last four years. Whether the initiative is working depends on whether you look at the Pacific through the eyes of Ratner or Aquilino. Both agree war isn’t imminent, but they’re split on whether deterrence is getting better or worse.

If it’s eroding, as Davidson argued in 2021, then PDI’s current model may not be enough. If the region is more stable, then the initiative looks better too.

The biggest misconception about PDI, according to the second defense official, is that the Pentagon doesn’t take it seriously.

“This is not a gradual slope of increase,” the official said of Pacific funding. “This is a significant and dramatic increase in investment, and we are more committed than ever.”

The PDI request for this year is $9.9 billion — more than $800 million over last year’s. But up until soon before the Pentagon released its FY25 budget request, it wasn’t, according to the first defense official and a congressional aide.

To show the Pentagon was focused on the threat from China, defense leaders tagged more items under the initiative at the last minute to raise its dollar figure, the first defense source and a congressional aide told Defense News. Among the late entries was the drone program Replicator.

At the recent March hearing, a member of Congress asked Ratner whether the $9.9 billion includes everything the Pentagon needs “for the PDI to be as effective as possible.”

“Congresswoman,” Ratner responded, “the PDI is simply an accounting mechanism.”

Chairman Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., who recently announced his imminent resignation from Congress, and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., sent a letter asking Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for updates on the mandatory assessment, highlighting one company’s operations in the U.S.

“The [People’s Republic of China’s] 14th five-year plan identifies dominance in biotechnology as critical to ‘strengthen [China’s] science and technological power’ and calls to deepen military-civil science and technology collaboration in the sector,” they wrote in a Friday letter to Austin. “Urgent action is needed to identify the [Chinese] biotechnology entities at the forefront of this work.”

The fiscal 2024 defense policy bill requires the Pentagon to assess whether any biotechnology companies belong on its list of Chinese military firms.

The assessment is due in June, but the letter asks the Pentagon to brief staffers from the House’s Committee on the Chinese Communist Party on the provision by May 1. Gallagher recently announced he will resign on April 19, with Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., set to take his place as chairman.

Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi singled out six Chinese biotech firms that they believe warrant potential inclusion on the Pentagon’s list of Chinese military companies. The list includes Innomics, which has operated out of Massachusetts since at least 2010 as a subsidiary of China’s BGI Americas Corp. The other BGI subsidiary on the list is STOmics.

The four other Chinese biotech companies the letter cites are MGI Group, Origincell, Vazyme Biotech and Axibo.

Congress first mandated the Pentagon maintain a list of Chinese military companies in the FY21 defense policy bill. It requires the Defense Department to track companies “identified as a military civil-fusion contributor to the Chinese defense-industrial base” and “engaged in providing commercial services, manufacturing, producing or exporting.”

The list does not result in sanctions. However, it bans the Defense Department from buying goods or services from the designated Chinese military companies.

The fiscal 2024 State Department spending bill Congress passed on Saturday includes $300 million in Foreign Military Financing, or FMF, for Taiwan. The funding to buy more military equipment comes more than a year after Congress first authorized the cash assistance for Taipei. But the $300 million falls far short of the cumulative $4 billion in Taiwan military assistance in the foreign aid bill that remains stalled in the House.

“It provides new tools to use to try and contribute to the deterrence effort and get weapons to Taiwan more quickly and in larger quantities,” Bonnie Glaser, the managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific program, told Defense News. “Another benefit of it is that it signals to the people of Taiwan that the United States prioritizes their defense and is willing to put our money where our mouth is.”

The $300 million figure represents a halfway point between House appropriators – who sought $500 million in Taiwan FMF – and their Senate counterparts who only wanted $113 million.

Taiwan must spend most of that $300 million in FMF grants or loans to procure weapons from U.S. defense contractors but could use $45 million of that money to purchase equipment and services on-island – a privilege called offshore procurement that only Israel has enjoyed so far.

Of the 25-plus countries that receive FMF yearly, the largest recipients are Israel with an annual $3.3 billion, Egypt with an annual $1.3 billion and Jordan with an annual $425 million. The State Department has asked for $100 million in Taiwan FMF as part of its FY25 budget request. It provided Taiwan with $55 million in FMF last year from a portion of Egypt aid frozen over human rights concerns.

Appropriators initially were wary of allocating large FMF sums for Taiwan given pressures on the State Department budget and the relative wealth of the island, whose GDP came in at an estimated $800 billion in FY23.

Glaser noted that Taiwan has increased its defense spending consecutively over the past several years and now spends 2.6% of its GDP on defense, “which is still not enough given the nature of the threat they face.”

The U.S. hopes that rushing an influx of weapons into Taiwan will help deter a potential Chinese invasion. China considers Taiwan to be a rogue province and has threatened to take it by force if necessary. President Xi Jinping has set 2027 – the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army – as the date he hopes the Chinese military will have the capabilities to take Taiwan.

“Yes, it’s our taxpayer money and they should be paying for more themselves, but there’s also some value in signaling that this is a priority for the United States,” said Glaser. “It does help to boost the determination of the Taiwanese to defend themselves because they know that the United States cares about their defense.”

Another $4 billion

The Taiwan FMF in the FY24 State Department spending bill pales in comparison to the $3.9 billion in additional military assistance for Taipei that the Senate’s foreign aid bill. The Senate in February passed the bipartisan bill, which primarily provides $60 billion in economic and security aid to Ukraine and another $14 billion in military aid to Israel, in a 70-29 vote.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has so far refused to put it on the floor amid opposition to the Ukraine aid from former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and the right-flank of his caucus. Meanwhile, some progressive Democrats oppose the additional Israel aid in the bill amid the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Johnson has told Republican defense hawks the House will hold foreign aid votes in April after it returns from its two-week recess, though it will not necessarily take up the bipartisan Senate bill, which hews closely to President Joe Biden’s request.

The Senate bill includes an additional $2 billion in Taiwan FMF and another $1.9 billion that would allow the Defense Department to rush weapons to Taipei from U.S. stockpiles and replenish it.

Using Presidential Drawdown Authority from U.S. stockpiles would allow the U.S. to move materiel into Taiwan faster than through FMF-funded arms sales. The Biden administration has primarily armed Ukraine through drawdowns of U.S. stockpiles since Russia’s 2022 invasion.

“That makes it easier to deliver something if we already have it in our own stockpiles, and we can just give it to Taiwan,” said Glaser. “That seems to cut through quite a bit of the red tape that might be involved in using other methods.”

Lawmakers estimate that there is a roughly $19 billion backlog in U.S. arms sales to Taiwan due to a confluence of issues, including industrial base constraints, a sometimes slow pace of contracting and acquisition and a medley of lengthy technology and security reviews in the Foreign Military Sales process.

The unfunded priorities list the service submitted to Congress, dated March 21, asks for another $1.5 billion to restock spare parts; $612 million to create nine new deployable units called mission generation force elements; $1.1 billion for construction projects worldwide; and $266 million to fund exercises in the Pacific region.

The Air Force did not ask Congress for additional funds to buy more aircraft, as it sometimes has in previous years’ unfunded priorities lists. The service’s $188.1 billion budget request for FY25 trims six F-35A Joint Strike Fighters and six F-15EX Eagle II fighters from what it originally planned, and the wish list does not aim to change that.

In the unfunded priorities list, the Air Force said its additional $1.5 billion request for spare parts — the largest component in the list — is necessary because the tight budget environment prevented it from asking for all the parts it needed.

The spare parts request asks for:

• $167 million for B-52H Stratofortress bombers.
• $564 million for F-16 Fighting Falcon jets.
• Nearly $61 million for F-15E Strike Eagle jets.
• Nearly $62 million for the HC-130J Combat King personnel recovery aircraft.
• $195 million for RC-135 intelligence aircraft.
• $7 million for C-130J Super Hercules cargo planes.
• Almost $450 million for the KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling plane.

The service also said its $612 million request to create new mission generation force elements would allow it to deploy as many as 208 additional combat-coded fighters.

Mission generation force elements are part of the service’s new Air Force Generation deployment concept, which allow it to send fighter aircraft overseas. Those elements include both the equipment, jets and airmen needed to fly and maintain the aircraft. They also include munitions operations, weather-tracking capabilities, and intelligence and cyber capabilities.

This request would cover a one-time purchase of spare parts, aviation support equipment and munitions support equipment. But the elements would be created using personnel and fighters already in the service, and the funds would not pay for more jets or airmen.

The Air Force said its $1.1 billion request for additional construction funds would allow it to whittle down a $46.8 billion backlog on infrastructure and facilities that it needs to prepare for a potential conflict against China.

That includes $158 million for planning and design work on the Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft that will replace the aging E-4B Nightwatch fleet. The E-4B, nicknamed the “doomsday plane,” would allow the president to direct forces in case of a nuclear war or other devastating emergency that destroys command-and-control centers on the ground.

It also asks for another $215 million in construction funds for basic military training classrooms and a dining facility at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas, plus $148 million for a multidomain operations complex at Beale Air Force Base in California.

The Air Force also asked for another $28 million to build infrastructure needed for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the T-7A Red Hawk trainer at Hill Air Force Base in Utah.

And the service wants additional funds to allow Pacific Air Forces to conduct a theaterwide exercise to practice the Agile Combat Employment concept. That approach aims to spread out deployed airmen across more bases to make it harder for an adversary, such as China, to destroyer large portions of the force.

After the first theaterwide Agile Combat Employment exercise in 2025, the Air Force wants to keep holding those drills every other year, and plans to use $5 million to plan and prepare for them.

This unfunded priorities list, which supplements the Navy’s $257.6 billion FY25 budget request, asks for 13 items, ranging from repairs to infrastructure in Guam to buying another KC-130J transport plane for the Navy Reserve to accelerating classified program development.

The No. 1 priority on the list is $403 million to invest in the submarine-industrial base — something the FY25 budget already does, with $3.9 billion included in the budget request released March11.

However, the FY25 request was written assuming Congress would pass both a FY24 defense spending bill and a $105 billion national security supplemental the White House requested in October. Neither of those two had been passed into law when the FY25 budget request was released, leaving Navy officials concerned.

This unfunded priorities list notes that, absent the supplemental and its $3.3 billion to bolster the submarine-industrial base, the Navy needs $403 million in specific additional spending so that it can fully implement its FY25 plans to grow vendor capacity, support workforce development efforts and more.

The list also includes $92.9 million to address how quickly it’s been shooting Standard Missile-2 weapons to knock down Houthi-launched missiles and drones in the Red Sea since October. The militant group is based in Yemen.

This money would procure SM-2 Block III and Block IIIA/B recertification materials to address a backlog of these older missiles that need to be recertified before they can be used in combat. The Navy asked for $157 million in FY24 and $134 million in FY25 for this weapons maintenance work, but the document notes it could need to accelerate this work “based on the duration and nature of conflict in the Red Sea and other areas of responsibility.”

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE NAVY’S FY25 UNFUNDED PRIORITIES LIST

The sea service also wants $50 million to buy four more Mk 48 heavyweight torpedoes, which the document calls a top service priority for long-range maritime fires. The Navy is already working to restart production lines in support of its Mk 48 inventory, and this money would increase spares and buy new fuel tanks and electronics sections to support the fleet inventory.

Service officials cited the weapons-industrial base as another one, in addition to the submarine-industrial base, that the Navy was trying to support and that needed stable funding from FY24 into FY25.

Elsewhere in the request, the Navy asks for $208 million for aviation readiness, including four F-35C engines to support deployed carrier air wings; Super Hornet Block III upgrades; and MQ-25 Stingray carrier-based tanker drone initial deployment activities.

For the surface force, the unfunded priorities list includes $200 million meant to reduce cannibalization of parts on destroyers and in critical surface warfare systems.

The Navy asks for $75.3 million for a subsea and seabed warfare payload for the Navy’s TETRA remotely operated vehicle, which completed its critical design review in November. The FY25 budget requests just $15 million for the effort, and the additional $75 million would accelerate payload development and integration work.

It also asks for $184 million to accelerate the development of a payload for the Orca Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle. It also seeks a combined $90 million to accelerate two classified programs, COPPERFIELD and GRANDSTAND.

It wants $105.5 million to accelerate the development of communications equipment for the strategic deterrence fleet.

And it includes $109.9 million to develop and procure a Long Endurance Electronic Decoy countermeasures system. Its funding was cut from $249 million in FY24 to just $83 million in FY25.

The Navy separately requests nearly $1.5 billion in military construction projects, including upgrades and repairs to hangar facilities in Guam, a dry dock and a water treatment plant in Hawaii, and an aviation training complex in Nevada.

The defense budget is capped in FY25, due to the Fiscal Responsibility Act. If lawmakers chose to add in any items from the unfunded priorities list, they would have to offset them with cuts elsewhere in the defense budget.

Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., said Monday that Johnson had selected him to fill the vacancy atop the House’s Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

“I am thankful to the Speaker for this appointment, and I look forward to working with Ranking Member [Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill.], the members of the Select Committee, House leaders and the standing committees in the weeks and months ahead,” Moolenaar said in a statement on Monday. “Together we can help our country prepare for the challenges that we face from the Chinese Communist Party and win the competition against the CCP.”

Moolenaar already sits on the 24-member committee, which House Republicans established last year to put forth a wide array of U.S.-China policy recommendations. While Gallagher also sits on the Armed Services Committee, and chairs its cyber and information technology panel, Moolenaar does not sit on any of the other national security committees. As an appropriator, Moolenaar sits on the agriculture and labor spending panels.

Under Gallagher, the China panel advanced 10 bipartisan recommendations last year to deter Beijing from attacking Taiwan shortly after the panel hosted war games that found the U.S. would quickly run out of munitions in the event of a war.

The recommendations included the establishment of a war reserve stockpile in Taiwan, prioritizing weapons deliveries for Taipei, speeding up the roughly $19 billion arms sale backlog to the island and authorizing multiyear munitions procurement contracts.

The China panel is one of the few committees to work across party lines in an increasingly polarized legislature where the right-flank of the razor-thin Republican majority has hurled various procedural road blocks against leadership – often grinding House business to a halt.

The outgoing Gallagher had already announced that he would not seek reelection this year, but announced he would leave early in a surprise announcement March 22 shortly after Congress passed a fiscal 2024 spending package nearly six months late.

Gallagher said he would leave office on April 19, ensuring that his seat will remain vacant through the rest of the year. If Gallagher leaves before April 9, Wisconsin state law stipulates that there would be a special election to fill his seat before the end of the year.

The timing ensures House Republicans will operate on a one-vote margin after Gallagher’s departure given the immediate resignation last Friday of Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo. The special election to replace Buck in Colorado is slated for June 25.

House Appropriations Chairwoman Kay Granger, R-Texas, also announced Friday she would step down as head of the powerful panel, citing her expectation that the FY25 appropriations process will spill over into next year after she leaves Congress. While Granger is not seeking reelection either, she intends to serve out the rest of her term in Congress through December.

Shortly after Granger’s announcement on Friday, Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., a defense appropriator and the Rules Committee chairman, said he would like to take her place as Appropriations chairman.

“At the end of the day, I am a budget hawk,” Cole said in a statement. “I believe in stretching our budget’s dollars as far as we can, but I also recognize there are critical needs and challenges that must be funded if our great nation is going to be protected, preserve and improved. However, as chairman, I will ensure that, in doing this, we are not wasting and abusing.”

The $825 billion bill will allow the Pentagon to launch the initiatives and begin the procurement of key weapons systems it had planned for this year. For more than five months, Congress had funded the Defense Department at FY23 levels via a series of stopgap measures, avoiding a government shutdown but hampering those initiatives and procurement plans.

“We made changes and decided on efforts that include countering China, developing next-generation weapons and investing in the quality of life of our service members,” House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Kay Granger, R-Texas, said before the chamber’s vote. “I am proud to say this bill strengthens our national security and funds critical defense efforts.”

The House voted 286-134 to pass the bill as part of a broader appropriations package that adheres to spending caps imposed by last year’s debt ceiling deal. Granger, who is not running for reelection, announced shortly after the vote that she is stepping down as Appropriations chairwoman, anticipating another drawn-out budget process for FY25.

The Senate then passed the bipartisan spending package 74-24. President Joe Biden has committed to signing the bill.

The bill includes $33.5 billion to build eight ships and allocates funds for 86 F-35 and 24 F-15EX fighter jets as well as 15 KC-46A tankers. There’s also a combined $2.1 billion for the Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon and the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic weapon system.

It also funds multiyear contracts to procure six critical munitions: the Naval Strike Missile, the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, the Patriot Advanced Capability-3, the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile and the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile.

Multiyear contracts are usually reserved for big-ticket purchases like ships and aircraft, but the Pentagon hopes using them for munitions will ensure demand stability, which in turn encourages defense contractors to ramp up production capacity. The American defense-industrial base has struggled to quickly replenish the billions of dollars worth of munitions drawn down from U.S. stockpiles for Ukraine.

The bill also includes $300 million for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which allows the Pentagon to place contracts for new equipment to send Kyiv. That amount is less than the $60 billion in security and economic support for Kyiv provided in the Senate’s foreign aid bill.

The Senate passed the aid bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan in a 70-29 vote in February, but House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has refused to put it to a floor vote amid opposition from former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

Johnson has also faced anger from the right flank of his caucus for working with Democrats to fund the government. Similar grievances prompted a small group of Republicans to instigate the ouster of his predecessor, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., triggering three weeks of House dysfunction as the caucus struggled to select a new leader.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., filed a similar measure to oust Johnson shortly after the House passed the spending package. But it’s unclear whether she or anyone else in the caucus will actually trigger a vote to remove Johnson when Congress returns in April after a two-week recess. Putting a Ukraine aid package on the floor would likely anger Greene and other right-wing lawmakers.

The list, obtained by C4ISRNET, includes $846 million in classified projects. The remaining $305 million is largely focused on improving the resiliency of Space Force systems and training capabilities.

The military services and combatant commands send Congress a similar document each year, detailing programs they want to fund but that weren’t included in the annual budget request.

The unclassified efforts included on the Space Force’s list reflects its focus on making its satellites and ground systems resilient against adversary threats. In recent years, the service has started to shift toward building smaller satellites in large quantities across key mission areas like missile warning and communications.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, who provides civilian oversight for the Space Force, said that while the service’s $29.4 billion FY25 funding request is sufficient to continue those efforts, it won’t allow it to move as quickly as he would like in other missions, like positioning, navigation and timing and its mostly classified counterspace portfolio.

“We need to find a way to have PNT be more resilient, and I think there are some additional communications things that we need to do,” he told reporters March 8.

Among the unfunded projects is a request for $159 million to establish a fund to procure commercial satellite communications. Another $9 million would support an effort to improve the power supply at certain facilities that operate wideband SATCOM systems.

The list includes $42.5 million for the Space Development Agency’s fleet of demonstration and experimentation satellites. Without additional funding, the program would likely be delayed, the service said.

The service also asks for $60 million for an effort to improve energy efficiency at Buckley Space Force Base in Colorado and $19 million for the National Space Test and Training Complex, increasing the number of wargames the service conducts each year.

An additional $59 million in FY25 would allow the service to conduct up to two more Rocket Systems Launch Program missions, which support science and technology efforts across the Space Force, National Reconnaissance Office, NASA and the Missile Defense Agency.

“Restoring RSLP is not just a matter of maintaining ongoing projects, but is critical for progressing towards the goals set forth by the [National Defense Strategy] to innovate and ensure security in space,” the service said.

If enacted, the allotment would mark the most Joint Strike Fighters the Air Force has bought in a single year since 2021, when it procured 60. The service had included 48 F-35As in its fiscal 2024 budget request.

The FY24 defense appropriations bill would provide the Air Force more than $5.2 billion for F-35A procurement, an increase of nearly $361 million over the original budget request. The program increase of three additional F-35As would account for $277 million of that growth.

The purchase would still remain far below the minimum annual buy of 72 F-35s the service argued for years it needed to modernize its fighter fleet, while keeping up with the pace of older jets leaving the inventory. The Air Force plans to buy more than 1,700 F-35As, totaling nearly $250 billion, over the life of the program, according to FY25 budget documents.

Congress in FY24 also looks to give the Marine Corps and Navy funds for 16 short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing F-35Bs as well as 19 F-35Cs, which can take off and land from aircraft carriers.

F-35 fighters act as combat quarterbacks, conducting airstrikes as well as vacuuming up data on other nearby military assets and communications to share with the rest of the joint force. The program remains the Defense Department’s most expensive at more than $1.7 trillion to buy, operate and sustain.

Boosting spending on the Pentagon’s most advanced fighter jet is one piece of Congress’ agreement to put more than $40 billion toward militarywide aviation procurement in FY24 — $3 billion above the initial request, appropriators said in a legislative summary.

Congress would also approve the Air Force’s request to buy 24 F-15EX Eagle II fighters for $2.4 billion, seven MH-139 Grey Wolf patrol helicopters for $223 million and 15 KC-46A Pegasus refueling tankers for $2.8 billion.

The bill also offers an extra $840 million to purchase eight additional C-130J airlifters that would replace an older version flown by the Air National Guard; and $400 million to buy 10 HH-60W combat search and rescue helicopters, rebuffing the service’s plan to cease procurement.

And appropriators would provide $1.6 billion for procurement related to the Air Force’s B-21 Raider stealth bomber, about $55 million shy of its request because of a classified reduction. It’s unclear how many aircraft that might fund; the stealth bomber was approved to begin low-rate production last fall.

Meanwhile, lawmakers are pledging $2.3 billion to fully fund development of the F-35′s successor, known as the Next Generation Air Dominance program, and to further mature drone wingmen under the collaborative combat aircraft initiative.

Lawmakers on Friday were still scrambling to pass the FY24 defense budget ahead of a midnight deadline to fund the federal government or enter a shutdown.

House Appropriations Chairwoman Kay Granger, R-Texas, and Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., had already announced they would not seek reelection this November amid a slew of Republican retirements.

But Granger said Friday she would vacate her committee position while serving out the end of her term. At the same time, Gallagher said he would resign in April, further narrowing the House GOP’s thin majority and creating a vacant position atop the China-focused panel.

Granger announced she would step down as the Republican appropriations leader shortly after the House voted 286-134 to pass the fiscal 2024 government funding package — including the $825 billion defense spending bill — nearly six months overdue. The Senate must still vote to pass the bill, with funding for the Defense Department and several other agencies to expire at midnight.

“Recognizing that an election year often results in final appropriations bills not getting enacted well until the next fiscal year, it is important that I do everything in my power to ensure a seamless transition before the FY25 bill development begins in earnest,” Granger wrote in a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. “I, therefore, respectfully request that as soon as possible, the GOP Steering Committee and Conference select a new Chair of the Appropriations Committee to serve out the remainder of the 118th Congress.”

Granger, who chaired the defense spending panel before becoming the Appropriations Committee chairwoman, wrote that she would remain as chair emeritus to advise and counsel colleagues.

Conversely, Gallagher — who also chairs the Armed Services Committee’s cyber and information technologies panel — announced he would resign April 19. As chairman of the China committee chairman, Gallagher championed policies to “arm Taiwan to the teeth” to deter a possible Chinese invasion, while framing the Sino-U.S. rivalry as a “new Cold War.”

“I’ve worked closely with House Republican leadership on this timeline and look forward to seeing Speaker Johnson appoint a new chair to carry out the important mission of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party,” Gallagher said in a statement.

Gallagher’s early departure will reduce the embattled House Republican majority to a one-vote margin given the resignation of Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., on Friday. Buck announced his resignation date earlier in March. The Colorado special election to replace Buck is slated for June 25.

As one of his last acts, Buck became the first — and so far only — Republican to sign a discharge petition that would force a House vote on the $95 billion foreign aid bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, which the Senate passed 70-29 in February. The discharge petition would need to gather 217 signatures for House lawmakers to force a vote on the package.

Johnson has so far refused to put the bill on the floor amid opposition to Ukraine aid from former President Donald Trump and the right flank of his caucus. Traditional Republican defense hawks like Granger and Gallagher have found themselves increasingly sidelined in the House by Trump’s America First wing of the party.

The service noted their arrival in budget documents released March 11. The first of 10 EA-37Bs was delivered to the Air Force last year for testing — two years later than anticipated — before heading to its eventual home at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona. Delivery of the first mission-ready jet is expected sometime in 2024.

US Air Force receives first new Compass Call electronic warfare plane

It’s unclear to what extent the first five aircraft will be used in testing or if they will enter regular operations as they come online. Air Combat Command, which manages the fleet, declined to provide more details about the jets.

Compass Call is designed to jam enemy signals, including communications, radar and navigations systems, and can suppress enemy air defenses by blocking the connection between weapons systems and command-and-control networks. The aircraft also carries hardware and software that give airmen the ability to hack into wireless devices, defuse roadside bombs and more.

Its new airframe — a Gulfstream G550 business jet outfitted with advanced electronic attack equipment by an L3Harris-BAE Systems team — will also be able to soar higher than 40,000 feet and fly at nearly 600 mph, nearly twice as high and as fast as the legacy EC-130H.

The 43rd Electronic Combat Squadron at Davis-Monthan will be the first to transition to the new Compass Call, which began flying in the 1980s. As it prepares to replace old with new, the squadron logged its final flight in an EC-130H on Feb. 15.

“Throughout its storied existence, the squadron’s adaptability and commitment to evolving military technologies shine through, having operated 11 different aircraft types across six continents,” 43rd ECS Commander Lt. Col. Tray Wood said in a statement. “The final EC-130H flight marks the end of an era and signals the beginning of a new chapter with the forthcoming EA-37B transition.”

This Compass Call squadron was deployed in Afghanistan for 20 years. Here’s their inside story.

The 41st and 42nd Electronic Combat Squadrons, also based at Davis-Monthan, are still flying the legacy platform. The 41st is the only remaining operational squadron flying the EC-130H; the 42nd is a training squadron.

The new EA-37B, which was redesignated from EC-37B late last year, comes as the Air Force looks to replace many of its decades-old aircraft with more-capable versions that may have a better shot at surviving in future conflicts against advanced adversaries like China.

The service said in November it had retired nine of its 14 old Compass Calls so far. Air Force budget documents show that the service plans to send one more EC-130H to its aircraft “Boneyard” this year. The budget also includes an additional $15 million for operating and maintaining the Compass Call program, driven by fielding the new aircraft and storing the retiring planes.

A mainstay in U.S. Central Command during the war on terror, the EC-130H carries a 13-person crew, including two pilots, a navigator, a flight engineer, a mission crew commander and supervisor, a signals analyst and multiple cryptologic language analysts. The Air Force contends that though its new Compass Call airframe is smaller, advances in equipment will allow it to consolidate jobs onboard and cut the crew to nine members.

The 41st Electronic Combat Squadron spent 20 years overseas with the Compass Call, becoming the longest continuously deployed Air Force unit in Afghanistan at nearly 14,800 sorties over 90,000 flying hours before returning home in 2021.

The bulk of the request — more than $800 million — would support classified programs to develop capabilities aimed at deterring and fending off aggression from Russia and China. That includes a U.S. Navy Mobile Counterspace Capability and an effort called Lunar Locust, neither of which were detailed in an unclassified version of the command’s unfunded priority list obtained by Defense News.

Northrop, DARPA envision moon ‘railroad’ for lunar logistics

Each year after the White House unveils its budget submission, the military services and combatant commands send Congress a rundown of programs they want to fund but that weren’t included in the request. This year’s list comes as Space Command officials express growing concern about how China and Russia’s space ambitions could impact U.S. military operations.

In a memo accompanying the document, SPACECOM Commander Gen. Stephen Whiting labeled China’s activities in particular as “increasingly assertive actions” that threaten critical space infrastructure.

“This in turn puts Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Guardians at risk, who rely on space capabilities every day,” he said. “Both states are already deploying counterspace capabilities that can target U.S. space systems.”

Whiting raised particular alarm about threats to GPS, a Space Force-run satellite constellation that provides navigation and timing capabilities to civilian and military users. He also highlighted Russia’s growing focus on cyber and nuclear capabilities, a concern that follows reports that Russia may be building a nuclear-armed spacecraft.

Beyond the classified space efforts, the command’s list also includes $393 million for commercial and military operations facilities and space domain awareness sensors and radars.

Space Command said it needs another $26 million for its Joint Commercial Operations Cell, which pulls commercial tracking data and uses it to augment military inputs. The cell has agreements with 14 international allies, and additional funding would improve access to the data it provides. It would also help support more robust space observation capabilities.

“Without funding, expansion capabilities will not be integrated, putting U.S. allies and partner nation protect and defend operations at risk,” the command said.

The list also includes $161 million for an effort called Project Lighthouse, which integrates space domain awareness radars and sensors to help coordinate Space Command’s understanding of what’s happening in orbit. The money would fund software upgrades, improved data flow and completion of a Multi-Mission Advanced Radar Capability.

To support further space observation capabilities, the command requests $179 million for sensor modernization, including the Army’s Long-Range Tracking and Instrumentation Radar located at the Reagan Test Site in the Marshall Islands.

“Radar capabilities and infrastructure at the Reagan Test Site are the only multi-phenomenology, deep-space surveillance systems in the Pacific,” Space Command said. “Loss of transmitters, power supply or . . . all-weather deep space coverage will take years to recover from.”

Bryant Harris contributed to this story.

This run of prosperity, however, cannot lead us to complacency. The past two years of heightened global unrest are evidence that the end of the Cold War did not mark the end of great power competition. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, global aggression by the People’s Republic of China, the brutality of Hamas and other Iranian proxies, and the unending antagonism of North Korea are reminders of this sobering truth.

In the face of these challenges, American military strength is needed now more than ever. But we cannot rely on our legacy arsenal to retain military advantage and deter these threats. We must prepare for a modern fight to preserve America’s superiority. The fiscal 2024 Defense Appropriations Act funds these preparations.

The approximately $824.5 billion provided in the bill, which accounts for a $27 billion increase over the FY23 enacted level, is directed to the highest national defense priorities, in particular countering the People’s Republic of China, prioritizing innovation at the Pentagon, and investing in quality-of-life initiatives for service members and their families.

To deter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region, the bill maxes out the production of critical munitions, doubles security cooperation funding for Taiwan, and prioritizes the delivery of defense articles and services to Taiwan. It rejects the Biden administration’s inadequate procurement and divestment suggestions, and instead funds eight battle ships while retaining four others; increases investments in fifth- and sixth-generation aircraft; and provides over $66 billion in Indo-Pacific-relevant capabilities. These decisions demonstrate America’s capacity and intent to stand with Taiwan as well as our allies and partners in the region.

Today’s Department of Defense is an overburdened and antiquated bureaucracy confronted with the realities of the 21st century. The bill recognizes that the military will only achieve the modernization it needs by tapping into America’s entrepreneurial spirit, and it provides an unprecedented investment in innovation.

Included in that investment is $1 billion for the Defense Innovation Unit and military services to accelerate acquisition and fielding as well as $300 million for the successful Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies program, which will work to overcome the infamous valley of death.

The most cutting-edge military technologies still rely on the ingenuity of American service members. At the core of our military might are the men and women who serve the nation so bravely. The bill recognizes that and honors them, funding the largest increase in basic military pay in more than 20 years (5.2%) and providing $123 million for recruiting and retention incentives and service member cost-of-living adjustments.

The bill also resources across-the-board investments in our military families with funding to address out-of-pocket family costs such as child care; to expand spouse employment opportunities; and to conduct medical research on areas of significance to the military community.

Undoubtedly, the bill invests in a more modern, innovative and ready fighting force. In the midst of unparalleled threats to the United States and its interests, this sends a strong message that we are prepared to meet and defeat any adversary.

Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, chairs the House Appropriations Committee, where Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., chairs the Defense Subcommittee.

Congress is expected to begin votes on the $825 billion defense spending bill on Friday; Pentagon funding via a stopgap measure is slated to expire at the end of that same day. The bipartisan bill adheres to the spending caps imposed by last year’s debt ceiling deal. It funds the procurement of eight battle ships and dozens of new aircraft, provides a small amount of Ukraine military aid and offers multiyear procurement for six critical munitions.

“As chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, I have prioritized five areas that are reflected in this act: countering China and staying ahead of our adversaries; prioritizing innovation of military superiority, achieving a more efficient and effective Pentagon; enhancing the military’s role in countering efforts and supporting our servicemembers and their families,” Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., said in a statement.

The bill includes $33.5 billion to build eight ships and allocates funds for 86 F-35 and 24 F-15 EX fighter jets as well as 15 KC-46A tankers. There’s also a combined $2.1 billion for the Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon and the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic weapons system.

The bill retains $300 million for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which allows the Pentagon to place contracts for equipment to send Kyiv. House Republican leaders had initially removed the $300 million in Ukraine aid amid opposition from the right flank of their caucus when they narrowly passed their version of the defense spending bill 218-210 in September.

But even with the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funds back in the bill, the $300 million is far less than the $60 billion in security and economic support for Kyiv provided in the Senate’s foreign aid bill. The Senate passed the aid bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan 70-29 in February but House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has so far refused to put it on the floor amid opposition from former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

Separately, the compromise defense spending bill includes funding for multiyear contracts to procure six critical munitions: the Naval Strike Missile, the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, the PATRIOT Advanced Capability-3, the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile, the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile and the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile.

Multiyear contracts are usually reserved for big-ticket purchases like ships and aircraft, but the Pentagon hopes using them for munitions will ensure demand stability to encourage defense contractors to ramp up production capacity. Defense appropriators granted the Pentagon’s request to use multiyear contracts for all but one munition: the Standard Missile-6. The defense-industrial base has struggled to quickly replenish the billions of dollars worth of munitions drawn down from U.S. stockpiles for Ukraine.

The FY24 defense policy bill, which Congress passed in December, authorizes multiyear contracts for six additional munitions outside the Pentagon’s request. But the FY24 defense spending bill does not fund those additional multiyear contracts.

War games hosted by the House China Committee in April found the U.S. would rapidly run out of munitions — including the SM-6, Naval Strike Missile and Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile — in a war with Beijing in the Pacific. That committee endorsed multiyear munitions buys as part of a series of 10 bipartisan recommendations on Taiwan it drafted in May.

Additionally, the bill provides an $800 million boost to the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit, for a total budget of $983 million in FY24. It also provides $200 million for Replicator, the Pentagon’s effort to buy and field thousands of drones by next August.

Finally, the legislation cuts funding for the Defense Department civilian workforce by $1 billion.

The compromise bill eliminates many of the amendments Republicans introduced when they passed their version of the bill in September. That includes an amendment from Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, R-Ga., that would have reduced Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s salary to $1.

The bill also drops a priority a proposal championed by Calvert that would have moved Mexico from U.S. Northern Command to Southern Command. Calvert argued last year this would “prioritize combatting the trafficking of fentanyl by Mexican drug cartels.”

Although Mexico will remain in Northern Command, the bill includes a $50 million increase to counter illicit fentanyl and synthetic opioids.

The department in February announced a sweeping shake-up of the Air Force and Space Force to better prepare them for a potential conflict with China, which the department calls a “reoptimization for great power competition.”

The changes would include the creation of an Integrated Capabilities Command, led by a three-star general, which would take charge of identifying the Air Force’s future requirements. The Air Force would also revamp some existing organizations such as Air Combat Command as well as Air Education and Training Command; shift how airmen, units and equipment deploy; and improve training.

But in a summary of the compromise version of the fiscal 2024 Defense Appropriations Act, publicly released Thursday, lawmakers said the Air Force hasn’t thoroughly explained why the reorganization is necessary, how the service would implement it and what budget is required. Lawmakers say they need such information to properly assess the department’s plans.

The bill would require Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall to explain any organizational changes to congressional defense committees, 30 days before they go into effect. Lawmakers would also want Kendall to explain how such a change would differ from the existing structure; a breakdown of the phases of the reorganization; what each phase would cost; a description of the new offices, commands or centers it would require; how this would affect service members and civilian employees; and the programmatic effects of the planned change.

When asked for comment, the Air Force said it plans to keep lawmakers informed about its reorganization.

“As the Department of the Air Force develops implementation plans, leaders will continue to share information with congressional staffs,” Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said in an email to Defense News.

The Government Accountability Office would also have send the House and Senate defense appropriations subcommittees a report within six months on the Air Force’s planned reorganization. This report would have to detail factors and analysis the service considered for the revamp, what feedback combatant commanders offered, how much it might cost, how long it might take to put into place and how the reorganization might be deemed a success.

GAO would also have to describe how recommendations from the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Commission were taken into account, and how the reorganization might affect joint and coalition forces.

Kendall told reporters at a budget briefing earlier this month that the revamp would likely not cost a great deal of money.

“What we’re talking about with the re-optimization is creating some new organizations, but they will be created out of pieces that we already have,” Kendall said. “We’re not talking about big manpower increases, and we’re going to minimize, [to] the extent we can, the movement of people ... the acquisition of real estate, and so on.”

House and Senate appropriators released a compromise version of the fiscal 2024 defense spending bill March 21 that would grow DIU’s funding to $983 million — up from the $191 million enacted the prior year across multiple accounts that support the unit.

“The Department of Defense continues to identify innovation and expediting capability development as top priorities,” lawmakers said in a report accompanying the bill. “This agreement supports these priorities and takes steps to better enable innovation efforts to expeditiously translate into fielded capabilities.”

The House is expected to vote on the bill on Friday.

DIU was created in 2015 to draw more commercial technology into the Pentagon. Its role has grown from focusing on partnerships and proving the value that Silicon Valley startups can bring to national security to now leading efforts within the Defense Department to push that technology to the field in larger quantities.

The organization has struggled since its inception to get buy-in from DOD leaders as well as the funding to match. That started to shift last year when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin elevated DIU to report directly to his office and named former Apple executive Doug Beck to lead the unit.

Beck now sits on the Deputy’s Innovation Steering Group, which oversees DOD efforts to rapidly field technology to address high-need operational problems. He also chairs a separate Defense Innovation Working Group and DIU is playing a key role in Replicator an effort to field thousands of drones in two years and develop a process for quickly delivering capabilities to military users.

Congress has recognized the organization’s growing importance. The House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, led by Chairman Ken Calvert, R-Calif., proposed the creation of a “hedge portfolio” comprised of innovative, commercially available systems like satellites, drones and agile communication nodes. His subcommittee approved $1 billion for the effort and gave management authority to DIU.

The compromise bill replaces that language and slightly reduces the funding it called for. It also eliminates a proposal that would have required each military service to designate a Non-Traditional Innovation Fielding Enterprise lead who would be responsible for working with commercial industry partners and shepherding projects within the service.

The final bill does require each service secretary to identify an organization with “proven competence in partnering with commercial entities” and develop plans and processes for how that office will leverage DOD-wide innovation initiatives.

It also calls on DIU to provide details on the additional staffing, infrastructure and authorities it will need to execute its new role. Lawmakers also want information about the organization’s fiscal 2024 programs and an assessment from the organization of the military services’ participation in the Defense Innovation Working Group.

To this last point, the bill emphasizes the importance of collaboration among the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the services as well as the delegation of decision-making authority to the organizations that are best equipped to make sure capability can get to users in the field.

“The pursuit of innovation should enhance, not undermine, sound financial, acquisition, technical and management best practices essential to delivering capabilities to warfighters on time and on budget,” the bill states. “This requires efficient collaboration between requirements owners, acquisition officials, comptroller organizations and other stakeholders.”

The Corps would like an additional $230 million for restoring and modernizing the living facilities where Marines have had to put up with mold, vermin, broken furniture and appliances, and other deficiencies.

The money would come on top of the $274 million for barracks restoration in the service’s official budget request — a sum that already was a $65 million increase from the fiscal year 2024 budget request. The Corps plans to spend that money on renovating 13 barracks, where 3,517 Marines live, according to congressional testimony Wednesday by Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlos Ruiz.

The Marine Corps’ wish list, known as an unfunded priorities list, totals nearly $2.4 billion. The service’s formal budget request includes $53.7 billion for personnel, weapons, operations, infrastructure and more.

The congressionally mandated unfunded priorities lists are a way for the branches to signal how they would spend any additional money that came their way — and nudge lawmakers for those extra funds.

But the defense budget topline is capped, based on Fiscal Responsibility Act spending limits put in place for fiscal years 2024 and 2025, so additional money for one service’s priority would have to come from somewhere else in the Defense Department’s budget.

On the Corps’ fiscal year 2024 wish list in spring 2023, the No. 1 item wasn’t even a Marine asset: It was an amphibious warship, which falls under the Navy’s budget.

Then-Commandant Gen. David Berger insisted the ship was necessary to maintain a congressionally mandated fleet size of at least 31 amphibious ships, which the Marines use to deploy overseas and conduct deterrence and crisis response missions.

Ultimately, Congress added a billion dollars to the fiscal year 2024 defense authorization bill to incrementally fund that amphibious ship, LPD-33. Congress has not yet passed an appropriations bill, though, to actually provide that money. The Navy has asked for remaining money needed to finish building LPD-33 in its fiscal year 25 budget request.

Throughout the past year, Marine leaders repeatedly have said fixing the barracks is a top priority. The state of the barracks could hamper the Corps’ plan to retain experienced Marines who have the training and talent necessary for fighting future wars, leaders have acknowledged.

The Marine Corps has rolled out a Barracks 2030 plan, which involves installing civilian barracks managers, consolidating Marines in the higher-quality barracks, improving the maintenance process, replacing outdated furniture and considering partnering with the private sector.

To restore the barracks, though, the service needs much more money.

The Marine Corps estimates its backlog of deferred maintenance in its facilities totals more than $15.8 billion, according to Department of the Navy budget request documents. Commandant Gen. Eric Smith said in October 2023 it would take about a decade for the service to fix its barracks.

On March 11, the day the military services unveiled proposed budgets, Marine spokesman Maj. Kevin Stephensen told Marine Corps Times that the formal budget request’s $274 million for barracks restoration came “in this time of hard choices and budget constraints.”

The Corps is now assessing how its barracks are being used, Stephensen said. Barracks occupancy averages between 55% and 63%, according to the spokesman.

“Simply put, we have too many facilities and need to ensure we are making smart investments,” Stephensen said.

Items No. 2 and No. 3 on the fiscal year 25 wish list also pertain to quality of life on bases. The list includes $119 million for base operating support and $293 million for other kinds of facilities modernization.

What else is on the Marines’ wish list?

The Marine Corps requests $1.25 billion for modernization efforts related to the Force Design initiative, ranging from developing new communications tools to accelerating vehicle procurement to buying more bombs.

The list includes $6 million to develop the autonomous low-profile vessel, something the Marines began experimenting with in 2023 and successfully used in February’s Army-led Project Convergence exercise in California.

These drug-runner-inspired boats would fill an important resupply gap for the highly mobile Marine littoral regiments that will hop around the Pacific theater. They’ll carry with them the Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System to provide a sea-denial capability for the larger joint force — and the autonomous low-profile vessels solve the problem of how to resupply these units with more missiles.

The vessel could deploy from a landing ship medium or connector and swim undetected to the shore while carrying two naval strike missiles inside.

Two big-ticket items are $340 million for the amphibious combat vehicle 30 mm cannon variant and $250 million for two CH-53K heavy-lift helicopters.

The list includes $95 million for four sets of Marine Corps F-35C engine spares and power modules, $90 million for an improved variant of the long-range anti-ship missile, and $90 million for the Osprey drive system safety and health information kits to monitor performance of the MV-22B Osprey.

Also on the list are items to upgrade new systems important to Force Design, including $10 million to modernize some equipment related to the Medium Range Intercept Capability and nearly $16 million for equipment upgrades on the Common Aviation Command and Control System, or CAC2S.

Much of the money requested in the annual list, obtained by Defense News, would go toward constructing infrastructure to host U.S. forces in the region, classified space programs, munitions and Guam defenses. The U.S. is aiming to bolster its presence in the region to deter China.

The largest component of the list by far is military construction in the Indo-Pacific region, with a $3.3 billion request “to enable U.S. Indo-Pacom to develop and deliver footprint requirements in a timely manner.” The military construction amount alone is nearly equal to the total $3.5 billion unfunded priorities list Indo-Pacific Command submitted to Congress last year, which was the largest wish list from any combatant command in FY24.

Indo-Pacific Command’s request to beef up military construction in the region comes after Congress recently renewed assistance to the Pacific island nations of Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands, which provide military access for U.S. forces in return.

The unfunded priorities list requests another $40 million for the Navy, specifically for activities in Micronesia to integrate “posture plans, military construction projects, land use negotiations and other joint support activities.”

Meanwhile, the Philippines is expected to begin work on numerous base upgrades this year after its recent agreement to enhance basing cooperation with the United States.

Another $580.7 million on the list would go toward military campaigning in the region, with the bulk of those funds directed toward the Army.

Additionally, $1.4 billion on the Indo-Pacific Command list would go toward classified space programs. Half of that requested amount would help accelerate the development of space-based sensors used to counter missile threats, while the rest would resource “space control and enabling capabilities.”

For munitions, the list asks for more than $1 billion to accelerate development and procurement of the Maritime Strike Tomahawk cruise missile. It requests another $766.9 million for the Navy to procure more of the Standard Missile-6 weapons and another $396.9 million for that service to accelerate fielding Hammerhead mines, “designed to be delivered by unmanned underwater vehicles and surface vessels.”

It asks for $390.7 million worth of Precision Strike Missiles for the Army. For the Air Force, it requests $298.4 million to procure Joint Strike Missiles and another $105.1 million to buy Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles.

Wargames conducted by the House Committee on the Chinese Communist Party last year found a U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan would rapidly deplete munitions stockpiles, including the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile.

The command’s wish list is meant to bridge the FY25 funding gap it reported in its annual assessment to Congress, which Defense News obtained last week. That report assessed the command needs $26.5 billion for FY25, $15 billion of which was in the Pentagon’s base budget request.

The command is also asking for $430 million to develop a missile defense system in Guam “against ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missile threats.”

It’s unclear how much funding Congress can provide for either the FY24 or FY25 wish list, as last year’s debt ceiling agreement imposed an $886 billion defense spending cap for FY24 and an $895 top line for FY25. Funding any defense wish lists would require Congress to take money out of other accounts.

Nearly six months into the fiscal year, Congress has yet to pass a full FY24 budget. Lawmakers are expected to release the text of the long-overdue FY24 Pentagon spending bill later this week.

Furthermore, the Defense Department had been relying on the Senate’s $95 billion foreign aid bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan to beef up global force posture and ramp up munitions production. That bill includes $542 million for Indo-Pacific Command to fulfill its $3.5 billion unfunded priorities list for FY24.

The Senate passed the bill 70-29 last month, but it has stalled in the House amid opposition from Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

The military combatant commands and services are legally required to submit unfunded priorities lists to Congress every year.