Republicans offer defense spending tips after punting on a budget

Yahoo

20-03-2025

The Republican leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees have sent the Pentagon detailed plans for how they think it should spend fiscal 2025 funding, following the passage of a six-month stopgap spending bill that largely freezes funding at prior-year levels.
The 181-page document, obtained by Defense News, includes the standard funding tables attached to lawmakers' annual defense spending legislation, which call for cuts to major service-led efforts like the Air Force's drone wingmen program, Army missile procurement and the Space Force's missile warning and tracking satellite architecture.
But the FY25 appropriations process has not been standard. The full-year continuing resolution passed by Congress may lower defense spending, but it also grants the Defense Department far more authority to decide how to spend its budget.
Because Congress failed to pass a full FY25 appropriations bill, the plans now sent to the Pentagon are not legally binding, instead serving merely as spending recommendations, according to Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
'Congress ceded a significant degree of authority to the executive branch in the FY25 defense budget, and they can't get that back by issuing a letter that basically says, 'This is what we intended,'' Harrison told Defense News. 'Good luck getting DoD to adhere to this.'
Congressional appropriators recommend a $1.2 billion cut from the Army's FY25 request for operations and maintenance FY25, but add an additional $501 million to the service's personnel account to cover pay raises for junior enlisted service members, according to the document.
Additional funding — to the tune of $265 million — would bolster Army procurement. Another $248.7 million would be added to RDT&E accounts.
While missiles have flowed from the U.S. to Ukraine and the Army has led the way in replacing and replenishing those munitions, lawmakers are recommending a cut of $247 million in missile procurement.
The Army's future missile defense radar — the Lower-Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, or LTAMDS, is recommended for a $129 million cut. The most capable variant of the Army's Patriot missile would also be cut by $58 million due to a delivery backlog. The delayed Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon program would be cut by $75 million.
Yet Congress is recommending a $100 million increase for the legacy Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, beyond just the $3.3 million the Army asked for in its FY25 budget as it works to phase the missile out and field the longer-range Precision Strike Missile. Congress proposes a $25 million cut for PrSM procurement and another $10 million for the Army's pursuit of a second variant.
Certain vehicles buys would also take a hit if the Army took the congressional recommendations. Lawmakers recommend slashing Armored Multipurpose Vehicle procurement by $134 million. The document contains an increase for the Paladin Integrated Management System by $158 million at a time when the service is looking at exactly how it might modernize its howitzer fleet.
Congress also suggests a major funding boost of $248 million for a modular artillery production facility and another $41 million for Army ammunition plant modernization.
Army aviation procurement would be increased as well, to include $240 million for National Guard-bound Gray Eagle unmanned aircraft systems and another $60 million for National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters.
Lawmakers recommend an injection of cash into Humvee modernization for both the active ($90 million) and reserve forces ($50 million) as well as additional $120 million for the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles, or FMTV. Congressional appropriators would also add $167 more in funding for the Family of Heavy Tactical Vehicles, or FHTV.
In RDT&E funding, lawmakers cut more than $140 million deemed to be associated with climate change initiatives, including $29.5 million from the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle program and $7.4 million from a 'soldier lethality technology' line. They also recommended cuts to all hybrid electric vehicle prototyping efforts in the force.
Lawmakers proposed additional funding in technology development areas affiliated with lethality enhancements.
The document recommends a nearly $3.2 billion spending reduction from the Air Force's original 2025 budget request.
That includes cuts of $2.3 billion from research and development funding, $1.4 billion from operations and maintenance. $130 million from personnel, and nearly $115 million from missile procurement. Aircraft procurement would receive almost $64 million more than originally requested, and 'other' procurement programs would see a plus-up of about $679 million.
Lawmakers proposed a $325 million cut to the Next Generation Air Dominance program, which they didn't justify but simply called a 'classified adjustment.' This would bring funding for NGAD — the Air Force's effort to build a sixth-generation crewed fighter that would fly alongside autonomous drone wingmen and other systems — down to $2.4 billion in FY25.
The document also breaks the high-priority drone wingman program known as Collaborative Combat Aircraft into its own line item, but also proposes trimming more than $70 million. CCAs would have nearly $487 million in funding this year if the document's funding levels were enacted.
Travis Sharp, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments who studies the defense budget, noted that CCA is one of the programs Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has indicated as a priority for funding.
'This seems to be a case where mostly everyone agrees that CCA is a promising capability, but they don't agree with what [that] means in spending terms,' Sharp told Defense News in an email.
Funding for the Air Force's advanced engine development programs would get another $100 million. This would be apart from the program to build cutting-edge adaptive engines for NGAD — known as next-generation adaptive propulsion, or NGAP — which would retain the original 2025 budget request's proposed funding of $562 million.
The E-7 airborne battle management program would get an overall bump up of $189 million over the 2025 budget request. This is the Air Force's program to acquire a fleet of up to 26 of the Boeing-made aircraft, sometimes referred to as the Wedgetail, to replace the aging E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system, or AWACS, planes.
Lawmakers want to strike $50 million in funding proposed in the 2025 budget proposal — called an 'unjustified request' — for prototyping the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile, or HACM. This would leave HACM with nearly $467 million in funding.
Lawmakers would also provide the services money to buy six more F-35 Joint Strike Fighters than originally requested. The Air Force would get another $196 million to buy two more F-35As, and the Navy would receive another $524 million to buy four more carrier-based F-35Cs
The F-35 program would also get a $10 million bump to improve its power thermal management system. The F-35′s Continuous Capability Development and Delivery, or C2D2, approach to developing, testing and delivering incremental improvements to the fighter will receive more than $1.1 billion in 2025.
And the document recommends providing another $200 million for the HH-60W Jolly Green II combat rescue helicopter program to buy two more aircraft than requested.
The Space Force's fiscal 2025 funding would drop $700 million under this proposal — a seemingly small decrease presented as the service pushes for its nearly $30 billion budget to triple amid growing threats in orbit.
The reductions include $222 million from the service's operations and maintenance request, $147 million from research and development and an increase of about $1.4 million to its personnel account.
As the Trump administration crafts a plan to develop a homeland missile defense shield composed of advanced space sensors — a project known as 'Golden Dome' — lawmakers are proposing cuts to the space-based missile warning and tracking systems that would likely make up the foundation of that system.
The proposal includes a $283 million reduction to that layered architecture, including $33 million from the Space Development Agency's low-Earth orbit satellite constellation. Another $180 million could come from the spacecraft the service is developing to monitor missile threats from geostationary orbit and $170 million from its medium Earth orbit layer.
Lawmakers also recommend cutting $246 million from the Space Force's classified procurement account and adding $351 million to its classified development account. While details on those funding lines are largely veiled, a large portion is used to develop counter space weapons and defensive systems.
The document lays out some potential additions for the Space Force, including $30 million for a Resilient Global Positioning System program that's being designed to augment the current GPS fleet. The proposal would also create a new funding line for commercial services, appropriating $40 million in FY25. Lawmakers also suggest an $80 million add to fund additional satellite payload processing capabilities at the Space Force's overtaxed launch ranges.