May. 15, 2012 - 01:09PM |
By KATE BRANNEN
The House Appropriations
subcommittee on defense outlined the increases in its markup of the defense
appropriations bill. The full committee is scheduled to review the legislation
May 17.
The Pentagon had
requested $99.8 million for Israeli Cooperative Programs in its 2013 budget
request, submitted to Congress in February.
The House panel’s
proposed spending increases include $34 million for the joint U.S.-Israeli
Arrow anti-ballistic missile system and $111 million for David’s Sling, which
is being designed to counter medium- to long-range rockets and cruise missiles.
David’s Sling is developed by Rafael and Raytheon.
Overall, the
subcommittee added $576 million to the Pentagon’s research and development
budget, for a total of $70 billion in 2013. The subcommittee notes this is $2.4
billion below the R&D funding provided by Congress in 2012.
The subcommittee is also
recommending no further funding for the Medium Extended Air Defense System, a
U.S.-German-Italian missile defense program.
After announcing last
year that it would not be buying MEADS, the Pentagon asked for $401 million in
its 2013 budget request to finish out its agreement with its European partners.
DoD officials have said it would cost more to unilaterally terminate than it
would to complete the pre-production phase of the program.
“While the committee
recognizes that some additional benefit might be realized by additional
funding, the expected benefits do not justify the cost,” the subcommittee said
in its version of the bill.
As for cuts, the
subcommittee recommended shrinking the Air Force R&D budget by $310
million, with $215 million coming from classified programs.
The subcommittee
recommends only minor cuts to the R&D request for the F-35 Joint Strike
Fighter (JSF) program.
It also adds $25 million
in R&D funding to help restore the C-27J Joint Cargo Aircraft program.
While the subcommittee
would add $105 million the Navy’s overall R&D budget, it recommends cutting
$66 million for the M-Q8 Fire Scout UAV, saying the program’s problems resemble
those of the JSF program and that it should therefore undergo the same
probationary period that was imposed on the F-35B variant of the JSF.
The subcommittee said
buying weapons systems before testing is complete inevitably results in
required modifications as problems are discovered along the way.
“Recent examples of
issues in the Fire Scout program include one aircraft that was unable to be
recovered on its host ship and ultimately crashed into the water, and another
aircraft that lost communications with its control station and was lost while
conducting operations,” the subcommittee mark says. “These incidents have
resulted in the Fire Scout fleet being grounded from routine operations.”
The subcommittee notes
that the F-35B was recently removed from probation, implying the Pentagon
strategy must have worked. The subcommittee urges the Pentagon to use a similar
approach with the Fire Scout program.
Cyber R&D
The subcommittee’s
recommendation, while meeting spending requests for cybersecurity operations,
dramatically cuts research funding. Basic research spending would be set at
$11.4 million, compared to a request of $19 million, and advanced research
spending would be set at $12.4 million, below the requested $19.9 million.
Together the funding would be 39 percent below requested research levels. In
both cases, the subcommittee’s stated reason for the cuts was “excessive
growth.”
Experts and DoD
officials have been saying for months that spending needs to increase
dramatically to meet the barrage of cyber threats assaulting military networks.
The subcommittee also
directed the DoD and U.S. Cyber Command chief Army Gen. Keith Alexander to
provide detailed accounting on cyber spending, an area frequently lumped into
other information technology spending.
Staff writers Zachary
Fryer-Biggs and Marcus Weisgerber contributed to this report.
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