“This is one of the things that gets revisited again and again, and I’ll tell you now that I will fight for the same outcome as last Congress,” said House Armed Services Committee Vice Chair Elaine Luria, D-Va., said Monday at a Hudson Institute event. “We’ve invested a lot in our carriers, and it’s not time to decommission them halfway through their life.”

Retiring an aircraft carrier early would save the Navy several billion dollars in both planned maintenance, personnel and operating costs over the remainder of the ship’s life, but such efforts have repeatedly been quashed by Congress going back at least a decade.

The Pentagon is expected to propose a budget that is essentially the same as last year’s, and to save money it is revisiting a Trump Administration proposal to cancel the carrier Harry S. Truman’s mid-life overhaul and nuclear reactor refueling, according to a report from USNI News.

In 2019, the Navy said it could save as much as $1.5 billion just in planning costs for the refueling, and when the Navy tried to cancel the George Washington’s midlife overhaul in 2013, it was estimated that retiring Washington would save a total of about $5 billion total for the years-long maintenance period.

But retiring a carrier with a planned 25 years left of service has always been a bridge too far for Congress, and there is little reason to believe a renewed attempt to retire Truman would be any more successful than the last two times DoD tried.

To Luria, considering retiring an aircraft carrier is a puzzling move in light of a building consensus that the Navy will, in some way, need to grow to meet an ever-expanding Chinese fleet, which already surpasses the U.S. Navy in raw ship count.

With less than four months left in the Trump administration, then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper unveiled a new vision for the Navy, called Battle Force 2045, that eclipsed previous plans to grow the fleet to 355 ships to instead grow it to more than 500 manned and unmanned vessels.

“The bottom line is getting rid of ships when you’re trying to build the Navy is not a smart decision, and I would like justification as to why,” Luria said.

Virginia home fires

In 2019, President Donald Trump’s Pentagon proposed cutting Truman as part of a plan to pivot to more unmanned technologies and to free up money for a planned two-carrier block-buy for the follow-on Ford class. But Trump reversed course after a bipartisan group of lawmakers opposed it, arguing the Truman has more than 20 years of life left and that U.S. law requires 11 carriers be in service.

Then, as now, lawmakers from Virginia – home to the country’s largest naval base and where spending makes up more than 10 percent of the economy – were leading the charge.

“As was made clear to the previous administration, retiring the USS Harry S. Truman two decades ahead of schedule would be a serious mistake given the capabilities it provides to the Navy,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said in a statement to Defense News.

In broader remarks Monday, Luria recommended extending the service-life of older types of ships while new classes of ships are being brought online. As opposed to the Battle Force 2045 plan, which called for aggressively decommissioning cruisers, Luria wanted a deeper analysis.

“In our pursuit of a larger fleet and more presence in the Pacific, you need to build more ships, we also need to maintain the ships that we have, and operate them as efficiently as possible,” she said. “And we need to quit getting rid of the ships we have that still have operational life left.”

The Virginia delegation’s opposition to retiring carriers is long lived. In 2010, when then-Defense Secretary Bob Gates suggested that the Navy didn’t need 11 aircraft carriers, then-Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va.,

Senate Readiness and Management Support Subcommittee Chair Tim Kaine, D-Va., pointed to the cost of recycling the nuclear carrier Enterprise ($1.5 billion) and recent 11 month deployment of the USS Nimitz to the Mideast and Pacific as proof carriers are “expensive to retire and remain in constant demand.”

“I am skeptical this proposal will yield savings or avoid severe operational impacts,” Kaine said in a statement.

Both Luria and the House Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee’s top Republican, Rep. Rob Wittman, also pointed to recent, lengthy carrier deployments to meet the demands of combatant commanders.

“It is obvious based on deployment schedule that we are breaking the fleet trying to supply the COCOMs the volume of carriers being requested — and now the Department is mulling removing one from circulation earlier?” Wittman, of Virginia, said in a statement to Defense News on Monday.

“I understand looking for savings, but this doesn’t pass the smell test. If the Department decides to attempt a to cancel an RCOH again, I am confident they will be met with a strong Congressional rebuke.”

Luria and Wittman each represent districts that touch the Hampton Roads region of Virginia. The Truman is homeported there at Naval Station Norfolk.

At a hearing last week, Wittman asked U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s chief, Adm. Phil Davidson, if he thought it would make sense to remove a carrier from the fleet. Davidson replied, “There is no capability that we have that can substitute for an aircraft carrier in my view.”

Speaking at a recent Hudson Institute virtual event, House Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee Chairman Joe Courtney, D-Conn., said the Pentagon is at an “inflection point” over whether the Navy, Air Force and cyber “are going to take a larger portion of the pie chart” when the fiscal 2022 budget is released this spring.

“That conversation has to happen,” he said.

The comments align with a growing consensus inside the Pentagon that to meet the challenge from China’s rapidly expanding blue water fleet, paired with investments in long-range anti-ship missiles and bombers, the Navy must grow substantially.

In the waning days of the Trump administration, the Pentagon floated the idea of a Navy in excess of 500 ships, which would include a heavy investment in submarines, smaller frigates, and a suite of unmanned surface, underwater and aerial vehicles. Today’s fleet stands just shy of 300 ships.

In December, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said he would advocate for “heavy investment” in sea-, air- and space-centric platforms, suggesting there will be “bloodletting” in other areas of the budget.

Courtney and the sea power subpanel’s ranking member, Rob Wittman, R-Va., pointed to China’s emerging plans to further militarize its Coast Guard and grow its aircraft carrier fleet as the two lawmakers outlined where they want to see increased investments.

“I’m optimistic that we’re going to have a solid shift that is really overdue, but clearly that first budget [from President Joe Biden is where] we’re gonna do everything we can to make sure it’s in a good place for this Congress,” Courtney said.

Between the Obama administration’s goal of a 355-ship Navy and the 500-ship target, Wittman touted the idea of 405 manned ships by the end of the 30 years ― which also emerged in Trump’s final days in office ― as a more feasible path.

But that idea for 500-plus ships — which was a rhetorical 500-ship Navy that included unmanned vehicles that would not meet any reasonable definition of a battle force ship, but were intended as a means of framing the scale of the undertaking required — has not sat well with everyone in Congress.

“When you talk about now 500 ships, sometimes some members of Congress kind of get turned off by that,” Wittman said. “I think we need to be talking clearly about the plan, [which] will have 405 manned ships, and what does that do for us to counter the Chinese. The communication needs to be simple and straightforward.”

‘The only way you do that is with ships’

Growing the Navy will be a challenge, especially as some high-capacity Cold War-era ships begin to retire over the coming decade.

In January, Defense News reported that a wave of ship retirements built at the end of the Cold War means the Navy is facing a decline in both the number of ships and the number of vertical launching system missile tubes it can field by the early 2030s.

Between the Ticonderoga-class cruisers, the first-generation Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, the Ohio-class guided-missile submarines and the Los Angeles-class submarines, the Navy stands to lose about 70 ships with nearly 5,500 vertical launching system cells. Today, based on the last official 30-year shipbuilding plan, it appears the Navy will replace those ships ― and their tubes ― with about 65 ships and submarines that have anywhere from 1,800 to more than 2,000 fewer VLS cells.

Both Courtney and Wittman have a significant stake in the Pentagon’s push to start building more Virginia-class submarines. The Navy has stretched the supplier base and labor force in the submarine-building industry just to reach two Virginia subs per year.

The Virginias, which are a joint undertaking between Connecticut’s General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News shipyard in Virginia, are seen as core to maintaining the Navy’s presence inside areas such as the South China Sea, which is within reach of Chinese anti-ship missiles and bombers.

In October, then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the Virginia class must be the Navy’s top priority.

“If we do nothing else, the Navy must begin building three Virginia-class submarines a year as soon as possible,” he said during an event at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Both lawmakers plan to continue pushing for an increase in Virginia-class submarine production, and they support planning for the next-generation submarine.

“The question is what do we need and the next generation of submarine that has the right extension of capability that gives us that continued undersea strike advantage,” Wittman said. “But how do we do that at a at a price tag that allows us to build the number of platforms that we need.”

In an interview with Defense News in early February, Wittman said he was encouraged by the Biden administration’s continued focus on China, but added he will continue to push for a larger fleet. That conclusion, he said, should be obvious to anyone who looks closely at the strategic situation.

“I have been pleased so far in the preliminary conversations that I have had with the secretary of defense, [Lloyd Austin], with the deputy secretary of defense, [Kathleen Hicks], and others in the incoming administration about what their plans are,” Wittman said. “I think if you look at Gen. Milley’s comments, you see that if we’re going to be serious about countering the Chinese threat, it’s going to be in the Pacific. And the only way you do that is with ships, and the capability to create a risk for China through the payloads on those ships.

“So I think that [the Biden administration] will probably come to the same conclusions.”

In its opening weeks, the Biden administration has signaled it will continue many of the Trump administration’s hardline policies toward China. And it has not backed off heavy naval presence in the Indo-Pacific region, after a U.S. ship conducted “freedom of navigation operation” (FONOP) earlier this month. Then Feb. 9 the Navy announced that two carriers were operating together in the hotly disputed South China Sea.

The destroyer John S. McCain transited the Taiwan Strait Feb. 4, which China denounced as a provocation, and the following day the McCain performed a FONOP challenging competing claims in the disputed Paracel Islands, a patrol that was accompanied by what experts noted was an extraordinarily detailed explanation.

On Feb. 9, China’s Foreign Ministry slammed the Navy’s two-carrier exercise in the South China Sea, saying it was “not conducive to peace and stability in the region,” and that China would “work together with regional countries to safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea.”

Just 21 days into Biden’s presidency, and with a remarkably small sample size, the emerging policy on China looks nearly indistinguishable from the Trump policy, which has led many China watchers to believe that a policy of strategic competition with Beijing — in the maritime realm and beyond — is here for the long term. Or at least for Biden’s.

“What we’re seeing across the board is a new administration that isn’t going to throw it out of the playbook of the last four years and that accepts sort of the logic of prioritizing China and competition towards Beijing,” said Eric Sayers, a vice president at Beacon Global Strategies and a former Asia hand at the Senate Armed Services Command and at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

“They’re saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to have our own grammar, we’re going to do things a bit different and put our priorities in different places,’ but at the same time they haven’t backed off from some of the areas that that their skeptics said they would.

“There is continuity in the South China Sea, but it’s its continuity of the Trump approach, not a return of the Obama approach.”

Critics have argued that the Obama administration failed to take stronger measures to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive stance in the South China Sea, and was slow to react as China began building military bases on disputed features there.

But Biden’s approach appears more assertive. In the wake of the McCain’s FONOP in the Paracels, the Japan-based U.S. 7th Fleet released a detailed statement Feb. 5, specifically calling out a Chinese claim that dates to 1996 and would extend China’s territorial sea out to the features there. By extension, this logic would grant them most of the infamous-yet-ambiguous “nine-dash-line” claim seeking expanded rights.

“Unlawful and sweeping maritime claims in the South China Sea pose a serious threat to the freedom of the sea, including freedoms of navigation and overflight, free trade and unimpeded commerce, and freedom of economic opportunity for South China Sea littoral nations,” the 7th Fleet statement said.

China has never fully articulated what rights it claims in the South China Sea.

China’s Parcaels claim led to a violent clash with Vietnam in 1974 that left China in de facto control of the features, though it has remained contested ever since. That claim almost certainly infringes on Vietnam’s rightful exclusive economic zone, which, under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, extends 200 miles, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and former senior aid to the chief of naval operations.

“What they’ve been trying to do is argue that the Paracels are an extension of China and, therefore, allow you to draw a straight line around the features,” Clark said. “So, this essentially supports their argument about the nine-dash line, because the Paracel’s are south of Hainan Island. Essentially, you’ve got this extension of Chinese sovereignty well into the South China Sea as a result of drawing a straight line from the Paracels to Hainan to the Chinese mainland. And then it’s the same thing on the other end of the Chinese coast, which infringes on the [exclusive economic zone] that rightfully belongs to Vietnam.”

In response to the McCain FONOP, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs offered a muted response, saying China monitored the operations, and called on the United States to have a more constructive role in the region.

“China will continue to stay on high alert and is ready to respond to all threats and provocations at any time, and will resolutely safeguard its national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said Wang Wenbin, the spokesperson. “We hope the U.S. side will play a constructive role for regional peace and stability, rather than the opposite.”

The competition continues

Despite radically different positions on a range of national security issues, when it comes to the China relationship, Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump have charted similar courses thus far.

Both Biden and new Secretary of State Antony Blinken have signaled the need for some cooperation, particularly on tackling climate change. But the Biden administration has also held the line on the 2020 decision by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to formally reject China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea and has backed Pompeo’s late-hour determination that China’s actions against Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province constituted genocide.

During calls with counterparts in Vietnam and the Philippines, new Secretary of State Antony Blinken made clear the U.S. was not backing off its rejection of excessive Chinese claims of maritime rights and that the U.S. was committed to maintaining a rules-based order in the South China Sea.

In a State Department readout of a Jan. 27 call between Blinken and Philippines Secretary of Foreign Affairs Teodoro Locsin, Blinken said the United States rejected China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea “to the extent they exceed the maritime zones that China is permitted to claim under international law as reflected in the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention,” according to a statement from State spokesman Ned Price.

“Secretary Blinken pledged to stand with Southeast Asian claimants in the face of PRC pressure,” the statement reads.

It also made clear the U.S. would defend against attacks on Philippines military or government assets.

“Secretary Blinken stressed the importance of the Mutual Defense Treaty for the security of both nations, and its clear application to armed attacks against the Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft in the Pacific, which includes the South China Sea,” the statement reads.

The direct language and restating of U.S. policy so early in the Biden White House was a deliberate signal that there has been no significant shift in policy with the new team, said Bonnie Glaser, who leads the China Power Project at Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“It is essentially a restatement of Trump policy, articulated by Pompeo in mid-2018 and mid-2020,” Glaser said. “It reaffirms that the Mutual Defense Treaty applies to the South China Sea and that the U.S. opposes Chinese maritime claims that are inconsistent with UNCLOS.

“The fact that U.S. policy was stated very clearly within the first week of the Biden administration demonstrates U.S. commitment to alliances and U.S. willingness to push back against Chinese actions in the South China Sea that undermine the interests of the U.S. and its allies and partners.”

Realigning priorities?

What remains unclear is how that will impact Defense Department acquisitions priorities going forward.

On Feb. 4, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin launched a force-wide posture review to address if the military has the right capabilities in the right places to address the threats the country faces. And in comments Feb. 10 at the Pentagon, Biden said Austin had ordered a China task force to ensure the DoD is pursuing the right concepts and technologies.

“Today I was briefed on a new DoD-wide China task force that Secretary Austin is standing up to look at our strategy, operational concepts technology and force posture and so much more,” Biden said. He added that the task force would map out the course that would incorporate allies and partners and a whole-of-government approach to meet the China challenge.

There have been some clues as to what the administration is thinking coming in the door. In response to a question about the Trump administration’s late-hour force structure assessment, new Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said she was inclined to support many, but not all, of the themes in the assessment.

“There’s some really interesting operational themes that I’m attracted to,” Hicks said. “There’s a focus on increasing use of autonomy. There’s a focus on dispersal of forces and there’s a focus on growing the number of small surface combatants relative to today.”

Hicks’ discussion of “dispersal of forces” is seemingly a reference to the Navy’s plans to fight in a more spread-out manner, using sensors on unmanned autonomous platforms linked to manned platforms to push capabilities to more places for less money than it would cost to spread those sensors around on manned platforms.

That likely means the Navy’s networking effort, Project Overmatch, upon which the whole concept depends will go forward. By extension, the broader Air Force-led Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control network will likely be a priority as well.

She also pointed to increasing investments in small surface combatants, which is another means of starting to reduce the cost of spreading around significant capabilities for less money.

The next-generation Constellation-class Frigate was awarded last April to Fincantieri and its Wisconsin shipyard Marinette Marine.

It is unclear if hypersonic missiles, a key Trump-era priority aimed at giving the military the ability to rapidly strike Chinese targets at extremely long ranges, will endure as a priority in the Biden administration.

‘A little tougher than what I thought’

But to date, national security-minded conservatives have welcomed the Biden team’s embrace of many of the Trump administration’s hardline China positions.

In his confirmation hearing, Blinken drew some distinctions between his views on the China relationship and the Trump administrations’ but largely said he agreed with many of the steps the previous White House took, including the recent declaration that China was engaged in genocide against the Uighur population in Xinjiang. The response seemed to catch Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, off guard.

“You do agree?” a seemingly surprised Graham asked, adding haltingly that “we’re on a good start here. So, this … Really, I … I just very much appreciate that.”

In the highest-level to date interaction between the U.S. and China since the new administration took office, Blinken released a statement saying the U.S. was not backing down on China’s destabilizing role in the region.

“Secretary Blinken stressed the United States will continue to stand up for human rights and democratic values, including in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, and pressed China to join the international community in condemning the military coup in Burma,” Price’s statement read.

For its part, China released a statement saying it wanted the U.S. to “uphold the spirit of no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation, focus on cooperation and manage differences, so as to push forward the healthy and stable development of bilateral relations.”

Seth Cropsey, a Reagan and George H.W. Bush-era DoD official who is now a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, said that so far Biden’s policies have been encouraging.

“They are a little tougher than what I thought I was going to see,” Cropsey said. “For example, I don’t think that any of Taiwan’s representatives to Washington had been invited to attend the inauguration and Biden did that. They have said that they’re going to continue to arm sales to Taiwan … and we don’t know that that means but it’s a positive thing to say.”

Cropsey said holding off on high-level engagements with China until consulting with allies in the region was a smart move, and he was impressed with Blinken’s upholding of Pompeo’s determination that China was committing genocide against the Uighur population in Xinjiang and the continuation of naval activity in the South China Sea.

“Look, it’s impossible to tell where this is going to lead and whether it is the keel of the Biden administration policy, but it looks encouraging so far.”

Mark Vandroff, the senior director for defense policy at the National Security Council and a retired Navy captain, did not cite a reason for his departure in a letter sent to national security adviser Robert O’Brien and obtained by Defense News.

Vandroff’s resignation follows the resignation of deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger on Wednesday. Media outlets have reported that several top national security aides are also considering resigning.

Vandroff declined to comment on his resignation. The White House did not respond to a Thursday afternoon request for comment on any resignations in the wake of yesterday’s violent confrontation at the Capitol between a pro-Trump mob and police.

In his year in office, Vandroff worked on the Abraham Accords, an agreement brokered between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Israel that extended official recognition of the state of Israel. A former major program manager for the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer program, Vandroff was also instrumental in shaping the administration’s push to kick off a major buildup of the fleet as part of a naval arms race with China.

In a letter, Vandroff thanked O’Brien for the opportunity to serve on the National Security Council.

“In the last year is has been a great pleasure to work for you on the staff of the NSC to implement the President’s policies and work to make America and the world safer and more secure,” Vandroff wrote. “I was privileged to work alongside the most talented, dedicated, and patriotic group of colleagues a person could imagine, here at the NSC, within the broader EOP [Executive Office of the President] and across the inter-agency in the Departments of Defense and State, and the Intelligence Community. I will always be grateful to you for the opportunity you provided me to serve our great nation.”

Joe Gould in Washington contributed to this report.

However, major questions remain about the plan to grow the Navy’s strength, not the least of which is whether the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden will follow through or scrap the strategy.

The fiscal 2022 planning framework, released late Thursday alongside the 30-year shipbuilding plan, proposes a $759 billion top line for national defense, including $721.9 billion for the Pentagon, a 2.3 percent increase from the FY21 budget request. Pentagon leaders have repeatedly stated they need 3-5 percent budget increases to have “real” budget increases beyond inflation.

The plan outlines a fleet of more than the current stated goal of 355 ships by the early 2030s by investing in new classes of logistics ships for the Navy and Marine Corps, accelerating production of the newly awarded Constellation-class frigate, and boosting submarine production. The fleet would hit 405 ships by the end of the 30 years, documents showed.

But experts and analysts who reviewed the plan for Defense News were skeptical of the mechanisms that the White House Office of Management and Budget used to pay for the increases, including assuming a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, back office savings and cutting legacy equipment.

“This looks like they are trying to box in the Biden administration when it comes to the shipbuilding plan by showing that they can fund it even in a budget that is flat with inflation,” said Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But the savings they tout to pay for this will be difficult to achieve and/or are not realistic, like $35 billion from getting out of so-called endless wars and $6.6 billion from cutting unspecified legacy systems.”

In a call with Defense News, senior Trump administration officials said the long-delayed shipbuilding plan, originally due with the FY21 budget submission in February, was held up by an effort to piece together an affordable approach based on constrained resources.

“We didn’t want to provide it without the context that is going to be on the minds of those policymakers, which is: Is it affordable and is it credible?” the official said. “The work that we’ve done in concert with the nine months of study at DoD has been to answer that question: How do we pay for and what are the necessary resources that are needed to be able to scale in a realistic top-line framework?

“And so what we’ve put forward is planning guidance … with our fiscal assumptions about what we could be looking at. And that’s why, from the standpoint of the overall number, we think it’s very credible. The easiest thing that we could have done was to assume a large increase in the top line to pay for it. We did not do that.”

According to the plan, OMB is looking to pay for the fleet buildup by:

Withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan: Officials for the Trump administration have stated that they would like to be entirely out of Afghanistan in the next year. While it’s unclear if that will happen under the Biden administration, the Trump team estimates $35 billion in savings over the Futures Years Defense Program, or FYDP, through “planned drawdowns in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Africa.” Part of those savings would come through reducing the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund and eliminating the the Counter-ISIS Train and Equip Fund.

Notably, the Trump administration says it would like to eliminate the overseas contingency operations, or OCO, funding stream starting in FY22, with war costs shifted into the base budget.

Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense analyst with the American Enterprise Institute, is skeptical that this would play out the way the Trump administration expects.

“Whether we have 5,000 or 150,000 forces overseas in any given country, so much of the costs are fixed. There’s no savings until the number is essentially zero,” she said. “Even after that happens, while OCO is appropriated through regular order, it is considered supplemental spending — so it’s debt-financed. You don’t save money by putting less spending on your credit card.”

Congress has been reluctant to fund a complete drawdown of troops in Afghanistan, and the lawmaking body has sent its 2021 National Defense Authorization Act to the president’s desk with a veto-proof majority blocking a partial drawdown there. In other words, until Congress has a change of heart, it appears unlikely it will allow a full withdrawal to reap those savings.

Cutting legacy equipment: The document calls for divesting $6.6 billion of legacy systems over the upcoming FYDP in order to put those resources elsewhere. “By discontinuing the use of older and less capable ground systems, surface ships, and aircraft, DoD can more effectively focus resources on modernized platforms and systems that support both high-intensity conflict and operations in highly contested environments,” the document read.

Eaglen pointed out that every year, the department tries to retire equipment, only to be turned back by Congress. She pointed to the recently completed National Defense Authorization Act, which was full of prohibitions on retiring gear such as the Air Force’s Thunderbolt II close-air support aircraft, as evidence that this is “wishful thinking.”

Find internal reforms: Although this section does not come with projected FYDP savings, there have been ongoing series of reform efforts inside the department. The Government Accountability Office has validated $37 billion in reform-driven savings since the start of FY17, while Chief Management Officer Lisa Hershman said she found more than $6 billion in FY21 alone. However, the CMO’s office is set to be disbanded by Congress, which could impact reform.

“The road to defense budget efficiency savings for modernization is paved with the skulls of erring Pentagon officials who believe this fallacy,” Eaglen said, noting luminaries such as Defense Secretary Bob Gates tried and failed for years to find real, meaningful efficiencies.

Cutting Army end strength: Compared to FY21 budget request figures, the plan would cut 900 soldiers from the active-duty component, 500 from the National Guard component, and 300 from the Reserve component — which the document claims would save $2.6 billion over the current FYDP.

“Constraining end strength is one means of protecting the rest of the DoD’s budget to ensure America’s servicemembers have the modernized equipment and weapon systems to defend the Nation and prevail on the battlefield,” the document read.

This is one area where Eaglen thinks cuts are realistic, as the shift toward the Pacific combined with the extreme costs of personnel make the Army a ripe target for cuts.

Realistic changes?

Ultimately, this budget document is more of an exercise than prescriptive, as the Trump team will be replaced Jan. 20 by the Biden administration. It is unlikely the Biden team will follow through with the ambitious shipbuilding increases laid out in the document.

But defense budgets tend to be largely put together by the end of the calendar year, and while a new team at the Pentagon will be able to tinker with the details, a wholescale rewriting of the budget request seems unlikely until it is in the hands of Congress.

Speaking last week, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged the need for realistic budget planning going forward.

“I suspect that, at best, the Pentagon’s budgets will start flattening out. There’s a reasonable prospect that they could actually decline significantly, depending on what happens” with the broader economy, Milley said. “So we have to — we the uniforms, we here at the Pentagon, civilian and military alike — we’ve got to do a quick reality check on the national budget and what is likely to happen in the not too distant future.”

Said Eaglen: “Most of the budget cake is baked, but that’s true every year — not just when one administration hands off a budget to another. The new team will tweak the ’22 [program objective memorandum] and ‘put its stamp on it,’ but I doubt there will be major [tweaks] — aside from shipbuilding.”

At the same time, she does expect at least one similarity to play out between this document and the incoming administration.

“I do think the Biden team will try some of this magical math to balance the defense books, too,” Eaglen said. “These tricks are employed by both parties regularly once those in power see how hard it is to even manage a defense enterprise that doesn’t grow with inflation.”

Ultimately, though, the administration believes the primary threat to U.S. security is a maritime threat from China, and that to combat it effectively under limited budgets, a realignment inside the DoD is necessary.

“The safest assumption is that we’re going to be spending at freeze levels going forward,” the senior administration official told Defense News. “So at that point you’re talking about a reallocation. You can’t really say something’s not affordable if all that is required is trade-offs.

“If there’s a bipartisan commitment to preparing and modernizing for the China threat and providing for the needs necessary in [the Indo-Pacific region].”

The U.S Marine Corps and U.S. Army are both working toward fielding long-range strike and anti-ship missiles to hold Chinese targets at risk within the first and second island chains. Both have talked about putting supplies, gear and forces forward to be able to rapidly respond in a crisis, and both are actively discussing sacrificing older equipment and upgrades for current equipment to help pay for the modernization they need.

The expectation in the Pentagon, however, is that the military will see flat defense budgets at best going forward. Some defense watchers argue that limited resources means gets the funding may depend on whose concepts carry the most weight among defense planners. Others, however, believe a potential China problem is big enough that there are plenty of missions to go around.

Previously, long-range strike was the domain of the Navy and Air Force from carriers, vertical launch missile tubes on submarines and surface combatants and from land-based fighters and bombers. But the demise of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty has opened up long-range, ground-based fires as a means of countering China’s capabilities in that area — China was not a party to that treaty, and U.S. Pacific Command for years bemoaned as unfair the advantage the treaty gave the Chinese in the theater.

Gen. David Berger’s plan for the Marine Corps seeks to change the force from a land-heavy force to a light, primarily maritime force that can fight, maneuver and threaten Chinese forces inside the South and East China seas, and has said he wants to do it at no extra cost. Part of that plan: divest fully from tanks, and cut the number of tube artillery batteries from 16 to five. For that trade, the Marines are looking to massively grow the number of mobile rocket batteries from seven to 21.

In addition, the Marines are adding both the Navy’s new anti-ship Naval Strike Missile and its Tomahawk missile to its ground-based fires quiver, in order to threaten Chinese ships.

But the Army is also getting into the strike game, and has made long-range precision fires its top modernization priority.

The service is working toward a 2023 fielding of its Precision Strike Missile, which will have a range of as much as 550 kilometers. (The minimum range prohibited under the INF Treaty was 500 km.) The service is also working on a new seeker to be able to target ships, which should be fielded by 2025.

In a 2019 interview, the Army’s lead on long-range precision fires, Brig Gen. John Rafferty told Defense News that as much as 750 kilometers or further was possible.

The Army is also working toward fielding its Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon in a battery by 2023, which will be shot from a road-mobile launcher.

In August, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said the Army, like the Marine Corps, was ready to make cuts to existing capabilities in order to make its future investments a reality.

“We know we need long-range precision fires, that is our number one priority and so we are developing hypersonic capability right now,” McConville said. “One of the things that we are taking a look at is how we divest, and this can be a challenge as you look at some of these systems we have that some would like us to continue to purchase.”

In comments this month to Defense News, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said that by 2023, the Army was going to start seeing significant divestment in older systems.

“We’re basically lining ourselves up for the ’23 program where you will see a much more aggressive effort,” McCarthy said. “The choices are going to get bigger and tougher, but that’s necessary” as modernized programs begin to be fielded, he said. “That will force us to make harder calls with legacy systems that will have to be forced to end their service life.”

‘Encouraging’

The focus on Pacific-focused capabilities is a matter of the Army reading the writing on the wall, but it doesn’t mean they are necessarily trying to steal missions from the Marine Corps, said Dakota Wood, a retired Marine officer and analyst at The Heritage Foundation.

“The services are always trying to prove their relevance,” Wood said, adding that as “The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan start to wind down, the next big bogie is China. And, so, the cynic might say that the Army is just trying to invent missions because they do not want to lose budget share, lose their prominence among the services.

“But I think it’s more accurate to say that you have a service full of military professionals who want to make sure the country is defended. So, they’re looking for where the next challenge might be. And if you are called up to perform a mission in the Indo-Pacific, you have to get that right. The cynic might say they’re just trying to maintain relevance, but the advocate would tell you they’re just doing what they are supposed to do.”

But to some, both the Marine Corps and the Army are starting the blur the lines between traditional roles and missions played by the services. In comments to Breaking Defense, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, who heads the Mitchell Institute think tank, said that the Army’s pursuit of long-range strike was bad for the force.

“It’s ridiculous, to be quite candid. It is encroachment on roles and missions,” Deptula told Breaking Defense. “The fact of the matter is the services need to adhere to their core competencies. And the United States Army reaching out to develop weapon systems that operate at thousand-mile range truly is encroachment.”

“While some people have said: ‘well, you know, it’s nice to have a variety of different capabilities’ — well, sure, in a world where you’ve got unlimited budgets,” he said.

But others find that kind of service protectionism to be misdirected. Eric Sayers, a former aide to former Indo-Pacific Commander Adm. Harry Harris who is now a vice president at Beacon Global Strategies, said the services should actively be competing for missions.

“I find it encouraging that we’re at a place now where these services are competing for the best ideas to contribute to a role that traditionally the Air Force and Navy have played in the theater,” Sayers said.

Ultimately the services will probably end up fielding complementary capabilities, Sayers said.

“The Army will have a larger footprint and have more types of munitions and at a longer range,” he said. “I think if it’s the Marine Corps, we’re talking more mobile, expeditionary capabilities at shorter ranges between 500 and 1,000 miles. I could see the Army having a longer-range anti-ship missile, a ballistic missile and maybe a land-attack missile: Overlapping capabilities.

“That’s the kind of thing we should be encouraging: Not having the same capabilities but complementary capabilities with varying ranges and missions.”

Tom Karako, a missile defense expert and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed that the mission will likely end up being shared.

“The problem set that we face from major powers is disproportionately missile rich, and the real question at issue isn’t whether one service or another service does long-range strike the best,” Karako said. “It’s a question of how serious we are about implementing the new joint concept … which includes all the services being able to defend themselves and strike deep.

“[Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. John] Hyten has articulated this on multiple occasions, and a lot of the inter-service rivalry here seems to be stuck in the roles and missions conversation of 60 years ago, rather than thinking about how we can seriously adapt for the future,” Karako added.

“It may end up making a lot of sense for long-range strike to be shared among multiple services, rather being one particular service’s rice bowl.”

Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Plehn told a virtual audience at the annual Defense News Conference Sept. 9 that increasing involvement in the region by Russia and China could have consequences, even comparing their behavior to the kind of transnational criminal organizations that SOUTHCOM regularly combats.

“I would reinforce the point that the United States of America derives tremendous security benefit from a peaceful, stable, secure Western Hemisphere.” Plehn said. “But in respect to great power competition, China and Russia don’t value the same things as our Western democracies value. They don’t cherish the same principles we do and that we steadfastly defend with our partners.

“They thrive – China and Russia – much like trans-national criminal organizations on non-transparent political and business decisions. And they use that to their greatest advantage.”

Russia has longstanding ties in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. In 2018, Russia made headlines when two Tu-160 bombers visited Venezuela in the middle of political upheaval in the country. And China, as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, has been seeking to pour money into projects in the region, with Chinese President Xi Jinping setting goals as high as $250 billion for infrastructure projects.

But countries in Asia and Africa have been wary of the terms of the Chinese investment deals, a fact Plehn made reference to, adding that Chinese and Russian interests could be destabilizing to the region.

“Certainly I think the world is coming to realize that some of these non-transparent political and business decisions are occurring and they certainly are occurring in this hemisphere and we need to shine the light of day on that,” Plehn said.

“So, buyer beware, if you do business with them make sure you read the fine print because I guarantee that the contract is not written with the security and stability of the Western Hemisphere in mind, it’s written with the interests that they want to extract from us.”

China has signed memorandum of understanding agreements with more than a dozen Latin American and Caribbean countries for Belt and Road participation.

If approved, the proposal would potentially lower the price by promising General Dynamics a steady stream of work at its shipyard as the Pentagon and its network of suppliers grapple with COVID-19’s economic shocks. General Dynamics and the Navy have been negotiating the terms of a two-ship purchase, but nothing can be finalized until Congress authorizes the block buy.

As the House and Senate Armed Services committees ready their drafts of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, it’s customary for the Defense Department to send legislative proposals for the annual policy bill. It was unclear how Congress will ultimately react to this one, but at least one key lawmaker would “seriously consider” the proposal.

Senate Armed Services Seapower Subcommittee Chairman David Perdue, R-Ga., “certainly supports and has been working toward better business practices in the Department of Defense. He would seriously consider any proposal that achieves cost savings or increases efficiency,” said his spokesperson, Jenni Sweat.

The Columbia-class program is meant to design and build 12 new ballistic missile submarines to replace the Navy’s current force of 14 aging Ohio-class boats. The president’s budget estimated the cost of the lead Columbia-class sub at $14 billion, the second at $9.3 billion, and total procurement costs for all 12 at $110 billion.

The Navy wants to procure the first Columbia-class boat in fiscal 2021, the second in fiscal 2024, and the remaining 10 at a rate of one per year from 2026 through 2035. The Navy has already spent about $6.2 billion in advanced procurement for the Columbia, which leaves about $8.2 billion remaining for the first boat.

A summary of its new legislative proposal, obtained by Defense News, said the move is intended to “permit the Navy to enter into one block buy contract for up to two Columbia-class submarines (SSBN 826 and SSBN 827), providing industrial base stability, production efficiencies, and cost savings when compared to an annual procurement with options cost estimate.”

Complicating matters is the potential for the coronavirus pandemic to create construction or funding issues that delay SSBN 826’s first scheduled patrol in 2031, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report. To boot, it was unclear whether the Navy had accurately projected costs or whether stable funding would be available across the Navy’s procurement portfolio.

The Navy is confident the program is on track and negotiations are ongoing in line with what the Navy has previously disclosed, said Capt. Danny Hernandez, spokesman for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition.

“The Columbia program is on track, it is our top acquisition priority,” Hernandez said in an email. “Per the Navy’s Budget Submission, the Navy plans to award a contract modification for construction of the first two Columbia-Class ships as a priced option in FY20.

“Formal option exercise and SSBN 826 construction start are planned for October 2020, following required Congressional authorizations and appropriation of funds.”

This week, the Navy and General Dynamics were still negotiating on the terms of the two-ship buy, but what the ultimate savings would be for contracting for two together was not clear yet, according to a source familiar with the talks. No final deal can be negotiated until Congress has authorized the contract.

Also unclear is how perturbations in the system from the COVID-19 outbreak might impact the supply and labor system, the source said.

Indeed, the potential impact of COVID-19 on an already stressed submarine industrial base is one reason the strategy could be important, said Bryan Clark, a retired submarine officer a senior fellow at the Conservative Hudson Institute think tank.

“There has already been advanced procurement money provided by Congress that has been used to build missile tubes, nuclear reactors and propulsion plants,” Clark said. “But there is a bunch of other equipment on the ship that you would like to buy in quantities: Pumps, valves, fans, a lot of habitability systems.

“If you double the number of ships, you double the number that you buy and maybe you reduce your costs, but more importantly you support your industrial base.”

To date, disruptions to the submarine supplier base and the Electric Boat shipyard have been comparatively mild, two sources familiar with the situation said.

General Dynamics is interested in locking in a larger block buy for the remaining ten boats, and a source familiar with the company’s thinking said the precise savings would be clear once the company gets further along with construction of the first boat. The third ship will officially be procured in 2026, so it gives the parties time to understand the program better.

The Navy has been public about its desire to buy the first two submarines as a block but given that it’s a new start program, that seemed premature, said Project On Government Oversight military analyst Dan Grazier. He noted that a multi-year procurement, under the law, would require a stable design, while a block buy would not.

“The Navy claims the Columbia’s design is much further along in the process than the Ohio was at this point, but the Navy’s track record of designing and building ships recently is quite poor,” Grazier said.

“The Zumwalts, LCSs, and the Ford-class ships were designed using similar methods and the results have proven to be both costly and disappointing. It would be better to build the first boat and make sure the design actually works as intended because if it doesn’t, then the money we save now will actually cost us much more in the future.”

Clark, on the other hand, argued that while early multi-ship buys on new classes of ships are usually a bad idea, Columbia might be a special case where the risks associated with early block buys are sufficiently offset.

“You wouldn’t want to do a block buy if you thought the design was going to change significantly, as in you were going to buy one or two hulls and then revise it based on the results of testing or production issues,” Clark said. “On this one, more of the design is more complete so they are confident it is mature.

“And with the experience General Dynamics has with submarine construction, they are confident in their path to build it without significant design changes.”

The Navy is aiming to have more than 80 percent of the Columbia’s design complete prior to construction starting later this Fall, double where they were at the start of construction on the lead boat of the Virginia class.

The Columbia class is not the only big-ticket weapons program where the Pentagon is seeking latitude from Congress in pursuit of savings. For the Lockheed-made F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, DoD has separately proposed to use department funds to again bulk buy F-35 components ― “material and equipment” in “economic order quantities,” the proposal synopsis says ― for Lot 15 in fiscal 2021 through Lot 17 in 2023.

Lawmakers have historically been supportive of such moves, and Congress authorized the purchase of F-35 economic order quantity buys in the fiscal 2020 defense policy bill.

In October, the Defense Department and Lockheed finalized a deal for F-35 lots 12, 13 and 14, but the order is structured so that lot 13 and 14 fall under separate contract options, differentiating it from a block buy.

Lt. Gen. Eric Fick, who leads the F-35 program on behalf of the government, has said that arrangement would likely continue over the next several production lots.

“To date, we are pursuing a base-plus-options production contract vehicle for [lots] 15 to 17,” Fick said in March at the McAleese and Associates conference. “The business case that supports a three year multi year has not been there. We have not seen from Lockheed a business case that merits tying up three years of appropriated funds.”

Clarification: The story has been updated to clarify the specific transaction for which the Navy is seeking authority from Congress.

A bipartisan group of 17 senators is warning the Navy that its decision not to seek a second Virginia-class submarine in the FY21 budget proposal would contradict the National Defense Strategy, weaken the defense-industrial base and compromise Navy readiness.

It’s the latest sign the U.S. Navy’s proposed shipbuilding budget is experiencing a bow wave of congressional backlash ― particularly over its decision not to seek a 10th Block V submarine. Given the bipartisan outrage at shipbuilding cuts, it appears likely that major changes to the Navy’s budget are in store once Congress gets its hands on it.

The letter protesting the cut sent to Navy Secretary Thomas Modly was drafted by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and was signed by the Senate Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Marco Rubio of Florida, Josh Hawley of Missouri, and Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

Click here to view the entire letter.

Recent budgets have funded at least two Virginia-class submarines per year ― and for 2020, Congress added $200 million in advance procurement for a 10th.

“Fast attack submarines will help ensure our asymmetric advantage and undersea superiority during a potential conflict with near-peer adversaries, and investment in the Virginia Class program is an indicator of progress toward countering Russian and Chinese aggression,” the letter read, adding that a delay would contribute to “supplier instability.”

The Navy in December awarded a $22.2 billion contract to General Dynamics for the construction of nine Virginia-class submarines. General Dynamics Electric Boat, based in Groton, Connecticut, with facilities in nearby Quonset Point, Rhode Island, was the main contractor, and Huntington Ingalls Industries, based in Newport News, Virginia, was the main subcontractor.

Those states and others were well represented in Blumenthal’s letter. It was also signed by Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.; Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.; Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.; Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.; Krysten Sinema, D-Ariz.; Maggie Hassan, D-N.H.; Mark Warner, D-Va.; Bob Casey, D-Pa.; Tim Kaine, D-Va.; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii.

In an interview earlier in the week, Blumenthal echoed an accusation that the Trump administration used the sub’s funding to boost the nuclear weapons budget, which was first leveled by House Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee Chairman Joe Courtney, D-Conn.

“They’re using the Navy as a kind of piggy bank to fund other programs, and that’s very dangerous to our national security,” Blumenthal said.

Earlier in the week, Courtney called the shipbuilding budget request for eight ships “dead on arrival” and said it fails to support the administration’s goal of a 355-ship Navy.

“This weak, pathetic request for eight ships — of which two are tugboats — is not only fewer ships than 2020, but fewer ships than the Navy told us last year it planned for 2021,” Courtney said in a statement Monday.

Courtney joined with the subpanel’s top Republican, Rep. Rob Wittman of Virginia, to request the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan by the end of the month ― and a written update on the status of the Navy’s long-awaited force structure assessment.

On Wednesday, the House Armed Services Committee’s top Republican, Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas, voiced similar concerns but also touted the idea of a special fund for the Columbia-class submarine, which has eaten up much of the Navy’s FY21 shipbuilding budget. (Appropriators are not on board with the idea, he noted.)

“We need more ships, and eight ships a year is clearly not enough,” Thornberry told reporters.

In a column this week in The Hill, Wittman cited China’s attempts to grow as a sea power as reason for the U.S. to build a 355-ship Navy.

“The bottom line is that China is investing monumental amounts in its naval force — further indicating that we have entered into a full-scale strategic competition,” Wittman said. “These buildups and expansions have the potential to challenge U.S. maritime leadership in critical parts of the world. A bigger Navy would help advance our interests in this emerging maritime security environment.”

Wicker has introduced legislation called the SHIPS Implementation Act, which proscribes a shipbuilding plan for the Navy. If passed, the Navy would be bound to procure 39 new ships over the next five fiscal years.

Not every lawmaker is convinced of the need for a 355-ship Navy. Senate Seapower Subcommittee Chairman David Perdue, R-Ga., on Tuesday questioned whether that goal supports the National Defense Strategy — a question he plans to ask Pentagon leadership.

Asked whether the FY21 request supports that goal, he demurred. “You’re looking at one year’s budget. You have to almost look at a 10-year plan. The 355, I think that’s over the next 30 years,” Perdue said. “I haven’t really been through this president’s recommendation yet, but I do have the concerns that the allocation of the budget over the next 10 years support the NDS.”

Columbia questions

That this has become an issue for the Navy in 2021 is unsurprising. The service has warned for years that its shipbuilding budget would be adversely impacted by the next-generation Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, the first of which is being funded this year.

The first boat is going to cost the Navy $14 billion over three years, and the whole 12-ship class will cost in excess of $109 billion.

Successive generations of senior Navy leaders have argued that the service should not bear the sole burden for the Columbia-class bill, since it is part of the national strategic deterrent. But Defense Secretary Mark Esper, in an exclusive interview with Defense News, said the Navy will be on the hook for Columbia just like the Air Force is for bombers and Ground Based Strategic Deterrent missile system.

“Clearly the Columbia is a big bill, but it’s a big bill we have to pay,” Esper said. “That’s the Navy’s bill. The Air Force has a bill called bombers and Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, so that’s a bill they have to pay.

“We all recognize that. Acting Secretary [Thomas] Modly and I have spoken about this. He believes, and I think he’s absolutely correct, that there are more and more efficiencies to be found within the [Defense] Department, the Navy and the Marine Corps, that they can free up money to invest into ships, into platforms.”

But in comments to USNI News, Thornberry said he disagreed with that view, and said lawmakers made it clear that they’d like Columbia paid for outside the shipbuilding account.

“On a bipartisan basis, we still think what we thought, and that is: If this is really the most important thing to defend the country and the top mission priority of the Department of Defense, then we ought to look at some sort of separate funding line,” Thornberry told USNI. We shouldn’t have to make those difficult choices.”

In a letter to Mark Esper in January, Courtney echoed this call, saying that the Defense Department needed to look again at Congress’ sea-based strategic deterrent fund, which was set up in 2015 to give the DoD a way to pay for Columbia from across the enterprise, not just from shipbuilding.

“Given the fact that over 70 percent of the nation’s nuclear deterrent will be deployed on Columbia-class submarines for forty years or more, this ‘once in a multi-generational’ expense should not be disproportionately borne by one branch of the military,” Courtney wrote.

In it’s FY21 budget request, the Navy said the fund would be used to pay for Columbia, but all the money was coming from Navy shipbuilding.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is seeking to divert $3.8 billion, largely from its fiscal 2020 weapons procurement budget, in order to fund President Donald Trump’s border wall, according to a reprogramming request to congress obtained by Defense News.

Among the victims of the cuts: a mass of aircraft purchases including F-35 joint strike fighters, C-130J cargo aircraft, MQ-9 Reaper drones and P-8 maritime surveillance planes, as well as ground vehicles and naval priorities — choices that drew quick, bipartisan condemnation from key defense lawmakers as reports of the plan filtered out Thursday.

Overall, the plan would shift $2.202 billion in FY20 defense appropriations and $1.629 billion in FY20 overseas contingency operations funding towards the wall, a key priority from president Donald Trump ahead of the November presidential elections.

Air Force and Navy aviation spending takes the brunt of the cuts proposed by the Pentagon, with aircraft procurement going down by $558 million for Navy and Marine Corps and $861 million for the Air Force. Importantly, all of the funding decreases target items that were specifically added by Congress during the budgeting process, which could incur rancor from lawmakers.

For the Navy, the Pentagon would cut two of the six F-35B short takeoff and landing aircraft added to the FY20 budget by Congress and two MV-22 Ospreys, stating that “current funding is more than sufficient to keep the production line open.” It also seeks to eliminate funding for one of the nine P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft funded in FY20, stating that the additional aircraft is “[in] excess to the 117 aircraft required.”

In the Air Force’s budget, the Pentagon slashed funding for four of the eight C-130Js added by Congress for the Reserve and Air National Guard. The department stated that funding for those planes can be rescheduled to fiscal year 2021, when the period of performance for the associated contract starts.

The request would eliminate eight MQ-9 Reaper drones, culling most of the funding added by Congress for an increase of 12 MQ-9s. “The program is currently undergoing a strategic review,” the department stated in written justification, referring to an ongoing debate within the Air Force about how many Reapers to buy and retain over the next decade. “Procurement, if necessary, can be rescheduled to a later fiscal year.” Combatant commanders have consistently said they need more surveillance assets around the globe.

It also strips $156 million for advanced procurement for the F-35A and removes $180 million for light attack aircraft for the Air Force, which the service has decided against procuring but has been widely supported by lawmakers as a low-cost alternative for the counter-terrorism fight.

The Army would stand to lose $100 million in funding for National Guard Humvee modernization and $194.5 million in Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck funding. However, with the Humvee set to be replaced by JLTV, the Army is unlikely to be heavily impacted by these funds being shifted around.

The reprogramming request also cuts $650 million in advanced procurement funding for an America-class Amphibious Assault Ship, LHA-9, which is being built in Mississippi at Ingalls Shipbuilding. On its website, Huntington Ingalls Industries says the advanced funding provided by Congress, “enables a hot production line and a supplier base of 457 companies in 39 states to build this powerful warship.”

The reprogramming also cuts funding one expeditionary fast transport ship, which is built in Alabama at Austal USA, which has been an area of interest for the powerful Republican chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Richard Shelby. The ship was deemed “excess to current programmatic need,” the reprogramming document says.

“The procurement exceeds the program-of-record requirement,” the document reads. “This is a congressional special interest item.”

In addition, the National Guard and reserves would lose about $1.3 billion in what the reprogramming request describes as unnecessary funding, given historic underexecution of prior year funds.

Congressional reaction

Last year, the Defense Department had budgets, largely for military construction projects, diverted into funding a stretch of the wall project. Those project cuts included the rebuilding of several DoD schools both in the U.S. and abroad, special operations training centers in Europe and Hurricane Maria relief for Puerto Rico National Guard facilities. Overall, more than 100 projects had funding delayed.

Asked on Tuesday about a potential reprogramming of defense funds to pay for the wall, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said: “We did receive the request from DHS, that’s all I’ll say right now. We’re working our way through the process, we’re doing all those things we need to do. So when we’re ready to make an announcement, we’ll make an announcement.”

Both Democrat and Republican leaders immediately criticized the move as an attempt to usurp Congress’ power of the purse that would endanger national security.

House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita M. Lowey, D-N.Y., and Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., said in a joint statement that Trump was, “once again disrespecting the separation of powers and endangering our security by raiding military resources to pay for his wasteful border wall,” and “orchestrating this backdoor mechanism to prop up a political vanity project.”

In a separate statement, Texas Rep. Mac Thornberry, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said he supports building a border wall, but slammed the Pentagon for going against congressional direction for spending defense dollars, saying the unilateral movement of already approved spending by Congress “undermines the principle of civilian control of the military and is in violation of the separation of powers within the Constitution.”

“The re-programming announced today is contrary to Congress’s constitutional authority, and I believe that it requires Congress to take action,” Thornberry said. “I will be working with my colleagues to determine the appropriate steps to take.”

In a statement, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Chris Mitchell “The Department of Defense is committed to supporting the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to secure the southern border by constructing fences and roads and installing lighting to block drug smuggling corridors.

“Last month we received a new request from the Department of Homeland Security asking for assistance in blocking drug-smuggling corridors on Federal land along the southern border of the United States,” Mitchell said. “In response, the Secretary of Defense authorized support of $3.8B to build approximately 177 miles of fencing that will help to protect our borders. We will continue to support DHS and other agencies as needed to keep our homeland is secure.”

Jen Judson in Washington contributed to this report.