Less ships, more bombs: Senate unveils its version of $150B defense reconciliation package
“The House and Senate are very, very close in the provisions,” SASC Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., told reporters. But there are differences.
U.S Army Spc. Breyana Semans, a military police officer with the 46th Military Police Company, Michigan National Guard, secures an area near the U.S. Capitol in Washington, March 1, 2021. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. 1st Class R.J. Lannom Jr.)
WASHINGTON — The Senate Armed Services Committee version of the $150 billion defense reconciliation bill roughly mirrors the House version, but makes spending adjustments to key areas like shipbuilding, nuclear modernization and munitions.
The SASC text, released late Tuesday, will be incorporated in the Senate version of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” aimed at facilitating a laundry list of Trump administration priorities, and will ultimately need to be reconciled with the House bill, which passed last month.
“The House and Senate are very, very close in the provisions,” said SASC Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., during a Defense Writers Group event this morning. “[House Armed Services Committee] Chairman [Mike] Rogers and I are really very close together, and the administration is supportive. The difficult portions of reconciliation, and the things that that might trip it up… are really in other parts of the bill.”
In a statement released last night, Rogers, R-Ala., said the bill is “a generational investment in our national defense.”
But that doesn’t mean SASC and HASC’s language is exactly matched, with Senate authorizers making changes in the roughly dozen priority areas outlined in the bill.
Shipbuilding projects — the largest single bucket in both bills — lost about $5 billion in funds in the SASC version, going from about $34 billion to $29 billion. In the biggest change, the SASC bill zeroes out about $4.8 billion in funding for a San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock and America-class amphibious assault ship. It adds $300 million for medium unmanned surface vessels, bringing the total spend to $2.1 billion.
Funds for munitions grew from $21 billion to about $23 billion. While most of the major expenditures for items like long-range cruise missiles remains the same across both bills, the Senate version makes various changes among smaller programs. One larger shift is the addition of $500 million to improve US-based production of critical munitions, raising the total for those activities to $3 billion.
The SASC version also adds funds for priorities not included in the House bill, such as $167 million for procurement of launchers for Army medium-range air and missile defense interceptors, $200 million for Army medium-range air and missile defense interceptors, and $500 million for the expansion of defense advanced manufacturing techniques.
SASC spends $2 billion more on low-cost enablers such as drones, counter-drone tech, cheap munitions and AI, for a total of $16 billion. It boosts funding for the small drone industrial base from $1.1 billion to $1.4 billion, and increases funding to expand and accelerate qualification activities meant to increase unmanned competition in the defense industrial base from $500 million to $1 billion. It also adds $250 million for the development and procurement of Air Force low-cost counter-air technologies, among other changes.
Funding for nuclear modernization grew from $13 billion to $15 billion. The single biggest beneficiary was the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program, which received an additional $1 billion, bringing the total up to $2.5 billion. Funding for classified programs increased from $22 million to $96 million.
In another key change, the SASC version also tweaks the language associated with the $4.5 billion for the B-21 bomber program, stipulating that the funds be used for “expansion of the production capacity” of the bomber, “including tooling and expansion of the supplier base, and the purchase of aircraft only available through the expansion of production capacity”— language seemingly meant to induce the Air Force to increase B-21 production rate, rather than accelerating the buy.
The SASC bill added $2 billion for air superiority, raising that total to $9 billion. The Navy was a major beneficiary in those plus-ups, getting an additional $250 million for its next-generation F/A-XX fighter program, putting the total for that effort at $750 million. The increase is notable given a Tuesday report from Bloomberg News, stating that the Pentagon has pressed the House and Senate armed services committees to transfer funding for the Navy fighter into the Air Force’s F-47 program.
Also in the realm of airpower, funding for classified Navy programs grew from $230 million to $480 million. The SASC version also added several new spending items, including $270 million for “unmanned combat aircraft” for the Marine Corps, $96 million for infrared search and track pods, and $50 million for F-15EX conformal fuel tanks.
Funding for various measures meant to boost readiness jumped up from $12 billion to $16 billion, while spending for Indo-Pacific command was increased by $1 billion to $12 billion. Meanwhile, border security, a major priority for the Trump administration, dropped from $5 billion to $3.3 billion.
Areas where funding remained at the same level across both bills included $25 billion for Golden Dome — an area where the House and Senate were complete alignment on line item priorities — as well we $9 billion for servicemember quality of life issues and $400 million for the audit.
