The measure also for the first time would require women to register for the possibility of future military drafts and boosts parental leave to 12 weeks for all service members after the birth, adoption or foster care placement of a child.

“[This bill] provides for military families while strengthening America’s industrial base and the workers who contribute to our national security,” committee Chairman Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said in a statement.

“This year’s markup provides our troops and Defense Department civilians with a well-deserved pay raise, as well as new tools and reforms to protect the health and well-being of our servicemen and women and their families.”

The defense policy bill is one of the most significant pieces of legislation passed by Congress each year, setting spending priorities and defense policies for the coming fiscal year. The version adopted by the committee Thursday will still have to pass the Senate and survive negotiations with the House before it can be signed into law.

Still, the 23-3 committee vote to advance the legislation signals bipartisan support for the plan, a rarity in the politically divided Congress and a change from just a few weeks ago, when numerous Republicans on the panel indicated they may not offer support for the measure.

More defense spending

The largest change which may have swayed many Republican votes was the addition of $25 billion in top line spending for the Defense Department next year.

President Joe Biden’s proposed fiscal 2022 budget for the department was about $716 billion, a slight boost over this year’s spending levels but less of an increase than the expected rate of inflation.

Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate have lobbied against that figure for weeks, saying it is insufficient to counter threats like a growing Chinese military and terrorist groups worldwide.

“This is a big win for our national security and sends a strong message to both our allies and adversaries that America is prepared to stand up for ourselves and our friends,” ranking member Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., said in response to the committee’s funding increase.

“The world we face today is more dangerous than I’ve seen in my lifetime, and our military must be ready to meet any and all challenges we face.”

But the decision likely sets up a showdown later this year over defense spending levels with the House Armed Services Committee, whose chairman — Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash. — has called the $716 billion mark adequate for military needs.

House progressive lawmakers also criticized the $716 billion level as too high in their chamber’s appropriations committee debate earlier this month. They have noted that defense funding has seen significant increases in recent years, while other domestic agencies have seen flat budgets or cuts.

More equipment purchases

The higher topline would help pay for an expansion in weapons procurement and development next fiscal year.

Lawmakers called for additional funding for the F-35 program, including $85 million to buy an additional F-35A for the Air Force and $535 million to purchase an additional five F-35C aircraft. While both the Navy and Marines buy that version of the jet, the summary does not specify which branch is making those purchases.

The committee also added $175 million for power modules to help ameliorate a shortage of the joint strike fighter’s F135 engine.

In the area of shipbuilding, the committee backed funding to restore a second Arleigh Burke-class destroyer at a cost of $1.7 billion, as well as including $125 million in long lead material for an additional Arleigh Burke-class destroyer to be procured in FY2023.

Lawmakers also added $130 million for Navy’s biggest acquisition priority, the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program. That sum would underwrite “industrial base development and expansion” that would benefit both the Columbia and the Virginia-class attack submarine programs.

And another $350 million was added to the plan to accelerate the construction of the ninth America-class amphibious assault ship and $270 million for expeditionary fast transport vessels. However, a proposed purchase of used sealift vessels received a $300 million cut, with the committee noting that “prior year funds have not been obligated.”

The bill also increases funding for a wide range of aircraft programs: $575 million for five more Boeing F-15EX fighter jets for the Air Force, $191 million for a Northrop Grumman E-2D aircraft for the Navy, $306 million for two Lockheed Martin C-130Js, $192 million for two KC-130J tanker aircraft and $250 million for two CH-53K helicopters for the Marine Corps.

Unmanned aviation also saw a boost, with SASC authorizing an additional $323 million for two MQ-4C Triton surveillance drones for the Navy.

For the Army, the committee authorized an increase of procurement funding for a range of combat vehicles, including a combined $746 million for the Abrams tank, Bradley fighting vehicle, Paladin self-propelled howitzer, and Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.

The committee also added $377 million for UH-60L Black Hawk and CH-47F Block-II Chinook helicopters.

Bolstering research and development of advanced technologies meant to counter the fast-paced China threat was also a goal of the bill. The Committee added $1 billion in additional science and technology funding to pay for research and prototyping activities in areas such as artificial intelligence, microelectronics, advanced materials, 5G and biotechnology.

It also authorized an additional $500 million for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which conducts some of the department’s most high-risk technology development efforts.

UCMJ overhaul

Along with the funding fight, the language requiring women to register with the Selective Service System could cause friction with House lawmakers later this year.

The language reflects recommendations from an independent commission created under a prior authorization bill that found the reasons for excluding women from registering are largely moot now, with all combat posts open to both women and men. However, the idea has faced strong opposition, especially from some conservative lawmakers.

Another major showdown with House lawmakers this fall will center on proposed changes to how military prosecutors handle felonies and other criminal offenses.

The Senate panel included all of the controversial Military Justice Improvement Act in its authorization bill draft, a move that will remove legal decisions on sexual assault and other serious crimes from the traditional military chain of command. Instead, decisions on whether to pursue or drop charges will be handled by a yet-to-be-established independent office of military prosecutors.

The effort is the culmination of eight years of lobbying from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who has argued that military commanders should not have the ability to overlook and under-pursue serious crimes in the guise of sustaining military readiness.

“We have before us the opportunity to provide our service members with a military justice system worthy of their sacrifice,” Gillibrand said of the proposed changes on Thursday.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has backed plans to take sexual misconduct crimes out of the hands of military commanders, an acknowledgment that other efforts in recent years to prevent and punish such offenses have fallen short.

But he and others — including Reed — have resisted moving all serious crimes into a separate prosecutorial category. Gillibrand has countered that treating sexual misconduct differently from other crimes would only complicate the situation.

In the end, her arguments won over enough of the committee to be included in the final draft. House Armed Services Committee lawmakers are expected to have a similar contentious debate when they take up the matter in September.

The committee’s authorization bill also includes several other provisions related to sexual assault prevention and response, including plans to make sexual harassment a standalone offense punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Pay and benefits boosts

Along with the 2.7 percent pay raise, committee members approved plans for military end strength of more than 1.3 million active-duty troops.

The number of Army soldiers would drop by 900 (to 485,000) compared to this year’s levels, the Navy’s sailors total would drop by 1,600 (to 346,200), and the Marine Corps would cut its troop numbers by 2,700 (to178,500). All of those are in line with White House plans to draw down the total number of servicemembers.

The Air Force would see a decrease of about 4,200 personnel (to 329,220) under the Senate plan. That’s 1,000 more than what the administration requested.

Senators also included in their authorization plan language requiring that National Guard and Reserve members receive the same monthly incentive payouts as active-duty troops.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., has pushed for the pay equity in recent years, citing concerns that some part-time troops are receiving less money for identical training and work as their active-duty counterparts.

The legislation includes 12 weeks of parental leave for all service members, fixing a disparity between services in time off allowed for parents.

It would also establish a “Basic Needs Allowance” to ensure that lower-paid troops have enough money to avoid financial distress, an idea that has been proposed but ultimately rejected several times in recent years.

As it does every year, the authorization bill also includes language needed to renew dozens of military specialty pays and bonuses. If the legislation is not finalized by Jan. 1, military officials will have to delay awarding many of those payouts.

The full Senate is expected to vote on the authorization measure after their August recess. The House Armed Services Committee is expected to finalize its companion legislation at the start of September, with a potential chamber vote later in the month.

The new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1, but the final bill is not expected to be completed by then. The authorization bill has passed out of Congress for 60 consecutive years, but only once in the last 11 years has Congress finished their work on the bill before the start of the new fiscal calendar.

“We’ve got a portfolio of about 20 technology programs spanning different functional areas providing the tools needed to do this very rapid, just-in-time integration to meet mission needs,” Tim Grayson, who leads the DARPA Strategic Technology Office, said during a July 20 event hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

“Our real big challenge now is how to transition those. We don’t have a nice, clean-cut program office where we can take our tools and put them directly in a classic, conventional program of record. They’re not designed to do those kinds of things. They’re enabling infrastructure.”

Typically, DARPA produces an advanced technology that could be turned into a program of record by the services, which then continue to mature that product before competing a contract.

But many technologies DARPA is developing for the Pentagon’s future war-fighting strategy of Joint All-Domain Command and Control don’t need further development, Grayson said. They need the people who will use the new technologies so that the services can implement the advances.

“What we’re really talking about doing is not buying technology, but buying bodies — buying human beings that will go out and use these tools to conduct mission planning,” he said. “If you put it in that context, it does not sound like RDT&E, but because it’s technology and because it’s coming from DARPA, because it smells like still needing to develop something … the current mindset is, it’s got to go to some program of record.”

One recent success story is the DARPA’s System-of-systems Technology Integration Tool Chain for Heterogeneous Electronic Systems program — also known as STITCHES.

The tool can autonomously write a software patch that translates messages between platforms using incompatible data types. The Air Force recently started to integrate STITCHES, though Grayson said its path has been a “rocky road.”

Although STITCHES has been validated in 19 experiments, the services have been slow to adopt it because they can’t figure out whether to pay for it with research and development funding or money set aside for sustainment, according to FedScoop.

The Air Force’s 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing, which was established in June, is starting a “STITCHES Warfighter Application Team” that will teach units how to use the STITCHES software and act as a help desk to support to established users of the tool.

“Someone from across the Air Force — or maybe, depending on policies, from across DoD as a joint activity — will call up SWAT and say I’ve got an integration problem,” Grayson said. “This can be anything from getting a new box on a platform to doing some large-scale JADC2 [combatant command] kind of exercise. The STITCHES team will go out [and] help them with that.”

However, Grayson acknowledged that most technologies under development by DARPA do not have a clear path to become part of the services’ JADC2 efforts: the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System, the Army’s Project Convergence and the Navy’s Project Overmatch.

There are “bits and pieces” that have been adopted by the services, he said. For example, the Air Force tested STITCHES and the agency decision-making tool Adapting Cross-domain Kill-webs, or ACK, during an ABMS experiment in September 2020.

Naval Air Systems Command has started to adopt DARPA’s Dynamic Network Adaptation for Mission Optimization (DyNAMO) — which helps route information across networks to the user who needs it — for the Marine Corps.

“The challenge we have now that we are working with things like ABMS and the other JADC2 elements is, how do we keep coherence?” Grayson said. “Maybe the answer is experimentation, maybe it’s program of record transition, but we’ve got to maintain some kind of coherence across this federated portfolio as these programs go off and have their own lives.”

The service on July 1 awarded Raytheon a cost-plus-fixed-fee deal for the engineering and manufacturing development stage of the LRSO program, with contract options that max out at about $2 billion.

During the program’s EMD stage, Raytheon will continue maturing its LRSO design and prepare for full-rate production of the weapon in 2027, the contract announcement stated.

LRSO is slated to replace the AGM-86B air-launched cruise missile, which was designed in the 1970s. Air Force officials have argued that the legacy ALCM has become more difficult to maintain as its supply base becomes obsolete, and its effectiveness gets increasingly compromised as adversaries field more sophisticated air defense systems.

The Air Force could buy more than 1,000 LRSO missiles, which are projected to have a range in excess of 1,500 miles.

During a July 2 briefing, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the Defense Department aims to keep LRSO development on track, even as it executes a Nuclear Posture Review that could eventually call for the weapon’s cancellation.

The Pentagon’s fiscal 2022 budget requests full funding for the military’s nuclear modernization priorities, including $609 million for the LRSO program. That money ensures efforts like LRSO, the B-21 bomber and the Columbia-class submarine proceed, even as the department studies whether to make changes to the nuclear enterprise.

“As we continue with nuclear modernization we are going to continue to review ongoing programs to assess their performance, schedule risks and projected costs so you can define the right balance of maintaining the necessary nuclear capabilities with cost-effective solutions,” Kirby said.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated in December 2020 that the Pentagon would save $12.5 billion from FY21 to FY30 by canceling the LRSO program and the W80-4 warhead it will carry.

In 2017, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin each received a contract worth about $900 million for the 54-month technology maturation and risk reduction phase of the LRSO program. At the time, the service planned to downselect to a single vendor in FY22 during the EMD period.

However, the Air Force announced last year that it would sole-source the LRSO design developed by Raytheon, effectively booting Lockheed from the competition two years early.

“Our competitive TMRR phase, which included both Lockheed Martin and Raytheon as the prime contractors, enabled us to select a high-confidence design at this point in the acquisition process,” Maj. Gen. Shaun Morris, who leads the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, said at the time.

China has not yet caught up with the United States in most areas of advanced military technology, and the U.S. industrial base is well positioned to retain its edge, said Northrop CEO Kathy Warden, speaking during an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations. But one sector that is “particularly problematic” is China’s growth in advanced computing, including in the development of artificial intelligence and applications used to process and interpret large amounts of data.

“If there were an area I would point to where that capability has shrunk to an alarming state, that would be the one that I would highlight,” Warden said. “It’s not an area that the U.S. has been investing significantly in in previous years.”

There are signs that might be changing under the Biden administration, she said.

The Pentagon boosted funding in its fiscal 2022 budget request for a variety of areas closely related to advanced computing. It aims to spent $2.3 billion on microelectronics, $398 million for 5G network capability and $874 million on artificial intelligence.

President Joe Biden’s proposed $2.3 trillion infrastructure package also includes $50 billion for domestic research and production of semiconductors. That investment would match spending on semiconductors made through the CHIPS Act, which became law as part of the 2021 defense authorization bill. (The bill’s entire name is “Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America Act.”)

Warden said the bipartisan support for the act shows “strong progress being made” to incentivize semiconductor production in the United States. Currently, companies in China, Taiwan and South Korea lead in the manufacturing of advanced semiconductors and other microelectronics.

“Having the ability to control a supply chain in semiconductor and chip production could become a national imperative,” she said. “And we don’t want to wait until a conflict puts us into a position where it is a national imperative to realize that we don’t have the necessary capacity under U.S. control. That doesn’t mean it needs to all be onshore, but we do need to have clear access deep into the supply chain for semiconductors.”

While microelectronics are used in commercial products such as smartphones and personal computers, Warden argued that private industry is not incentivized to develop and manufacture the novel, advanced chips and semiconductors needed to ensure the U.S. military’s superiority.

Warden likened U.S. spending on microelectronics to investments made by the Pentagon during the 1950s and 1960s, which ultimately resulted in the invention of GPS and major advances in computers — both of which ultimately filtered to the commercial sector.

“I would submit that those [technologies] would not have matured at the rate they would have if we didn’t have strong government [research and development] spending,” she said. “And we certainly wouldn’t have found competitive differentiation from a national security perspective … if they’d have all originated in the commercial space because they would have been in the hands of all nations more simultaneously.”

“In the last several months we have finalized with the Army and the Navy … what we as all of the services agree are the forces that should be transitioned in,” Gen. David Thompson, the vice chief of space operations, said during a panel at the C4ISRNet Conference.

“You can expect details from both services soon,” he added. “The timeline is in work now, and you’ll see later this year — and continuing into the next year — it will be a phased process by which that transition occurs.”

Thompson pointed to the Navy’s Mobile User Objective System as one example of a mission that will transfer over to the Space Force. MUOS is a constellation of five Ultra High-Frequency narrowband communications satellites, and is currently managed by the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command’s space program office.

“That system, its operation center and the sustainment folks that support it are already in the process of the plan to transfer in, in the coming years,” he said.

As far as what kinds of units will transfer in from the Army, Thompson said he wanted to wait until the Army is ready to make an announcement.

“I won’t go into detail there, because we want to finish the planning,” he said. “We’re going to communicate what’s happening together with the Army. They’ve been a good partner in that.”

The Space Force is set to grow from about 2,400 active-duty members to about 6,400 people by the end of 2021, Chief of Space Operations Gen. John “Jay” Raymond said in December. Some of those new guardians are expected to transfer in from the Army and Navy.

In a February interview with Military Times, Raymond said he expected at least 34 soldiers and sailors to transfer into the Space Force this year, with hundreds more joining them in 2022. However, he stressed that troops would not be forced to move to the new service.

“You can’t order somebody to come in the Space Force,” he said. “It’s all voluntary.”

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force general in charge of managing the service’s bomber inventory slammed the Army’s new plan to base long-range missiles in the Pacific, calling the idea expensive, duplicative and “stupid.”

“Why in the world would we entertain a brutally expensive idea when we don’t, as the [Defense] Department, have the money to go do that?” Gen. Timothy Ray, who leads Air Force Global Strike Command, said during the Mitchell Institute’s Aerospace Advantage podcast recorded March 31.

“I’ve had a few congressmen ask me. And you know what? Honestly I think it’s stupid,” he said. “I just think it’s a stupid idea to go and invest that kind of money that recreates something that the service has mastered and that we’re doing already right now. Why in the world would you try that? I try to make sure that my language isn’t a little more colorful than it is, but give me a break.”

The long-range precision fires effort currently ranks as the Army’s top modernization priority, and the service has plans to field a ground-launched hypersonic missile system by 2023.

In March, the Army unveiled a new strategy paper laying out its plan to function as an “inside force” that would forward-deploy troops and ground-based missiles in the Pacific capable of destroying Chinese defenses.

Developing strategic counterfire and hypersonic weapons is “hugely important” for the Army to be able to neutralize ships, air defenses, and anti-access/area denial capabilities that could suppress the service’s maneuverability, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said during a March 25 event at the Brookings Institute.

“When you take a look at what some of our competitors have done with anti-access/area denial, they put up very elaborate air and missile defense systems, they’ve put up very elaborate anti-ship capabilities, and they’re basically trying to expand themselves,” he said. “The argument that we have is that you want to have multiple options to do that.”

That position has rankled some air power advocates who believe the Air Force’s bomber fleet presents a more effective option for penetrating enemy airspace and destroying missile defenses, but Air Force leaders have largely stayed silent on their concerns about how the Army’s plans could eat away at the defense budget.

In the podcast, Ray argued that the Army hasn’t proved it can get allies and partners in the Western Pacific to sign on to host the weapon systems the service hopes to develop.

“There are a lot of countries that have to agree to this. I could see some of them probably agreeing in the European theater, maybe in the Central Asian theater, but I don’t see it coming together with any credibility in the Pacific any time real soon,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Air Force is regularly flying bomber task force missions across the globe, thus positioning long-range strike assets in theater that are ready to quickly respond to a crisis, Ray said. By 2022, the service will have fielded its first air-launched hypersonic missile.

“You’ve got a bird in the hand, a proven capability, a team that knows what it’s like, understands how we could do things around the globe so quickly, knows how to integrate the kill chains,” he said. “Why are you trying to recreate that, unless there’s a parochial interest?”

It remains to be seen whether Ray’s comments are the first strike in what will become a larger conflict between the Army and Air Force, or simply the frustrations of a single general officer.

Air Force Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that the Joint Warfighting Concept calls for all the services to be able to conduct the long-range strike mission.

“Everything [now] is about lines,” Hyten said in August, according to Aviation Week. “But in the future, those lines are eliminated, which means an Army capability can have on its own platform, the ability to defend itself or strike deep into an adversary area of operations. A naval force can defend itself or strike deep. The Air Force can defend itself and strike deep. The Marines can defend themselves or strike deep.”

During a joint appearance earlier this week with McConville, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown noted that the services must work together despite having “a different perspective of how we look at the battlefield or a strategic environment.”

After the publication of this story, an Air Force official told Defense News that Brown and McConville had spoken to each other on April 2 about Ray’s remarks.

“They know the Air Force and the Army need to continue to work together in defense of the nation and look forward to making further progress toward that end,” the source said.

Brown also released his own statement.

“Each of the services is charged with organizing, training and equipping forces to capitalize on unique capabilities, meet national security requirements, and to support our joint team. I would highlight that in addition to our four other core missions – air superiority, rapid global mobility, ISR and C2 – the U.S. Air Force provides our nation with an unparalleled 24/7 long-range global strike capability,” he said. “The Air Force will continue to work closely with all of our joint teammates to provide the capabilities the nation requires.”

“What does the F-35 give us? And is there a way to cut our losses? Is there a way to not keep spending that much money for such a low capability because, as you know, the sustainment costs are brutal,” Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said a Brookings event.

Air Force officials recently said they are conducting a study to find the best mix of fighters including Lockheed Martin’s F-35, Boeing’s F-15EX and a replacement for the service’s oldest F-16s. Smith was thinking along similar lines.

“What I’m going to try to do is figure out how we can get a mix of fighter-attack aircraft that’s the most cost effective. And I am telling you right now a big part of that is finding something that doesn’t make us have to rely on the F-35 for the next 35 years,” he said.

Though the Joint Strike Fighter was conceived as a relatively affordable fifth-generation aircraft, it’s generally acknowledged as the world’s most expensive weapons platform. Flying the F-35 currently costs $36,000 per hour, and it has a projected lifetime cost of $1.7 trillion.

As of January, the F-35 was still struggling to meet its goal mission-capable rate, which is the percentage of aircraft that can meet at least one assigned mission. Only 69 percent met the threshold, well short of the military’s longstanding 80 percent goal.

While the F-35 was designed to replace the F-16 — among several other aircraft variants — Air Force officials said this month they were exploring less expensive options, including buying new F-16s from Lockheed, evaluating low-cost tactical drones and pursuing a clean-sheet fighter, as described by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown in February.

In broader remarks emphasizing more modest, cost-effective goals for the military, Smith said Congress must “seriously scrub” the Pentagon’s big-ticket weapons programs. Though Smith holds a powerful job, the F-35 enjoys strong support in Congress, and the lawmaker lamented that the country seems to be locked into the program.

“We have wasted a spectacular amount of money on weapons systems that either haven’t worked at all or who have not lived up to their promise,” Smith said. “The failure we wind up tolerating is failure on a massive freaking scale. Think F-35.”

In a statement to Defense News, Lockheed spokesman John Torrisi pointed to U.S. Marine and Air Force deployments of the jet and that it has flown more than 1,000 combat missions.

“We look forward to continued engagement with Chairman Smith and other key members of Congress on the vital F-35 program during the coming Defense Authorization and Appropriation cycle,” Torrisi said. “The F-35 is the most survivable, connected fighter in the world today.”

One of the reasons the Air Force is reevaluating the F-35 program is a tacit acknowledgment that the flat budgets projected in the near future may not allow the service to buy all 1,763 F-35s in its program of record.

The F-35 remains the “cornerstone” of the fighter fleet that the Air Force is pursuing, Brown told reporters during a Feb. 25 roundtable. However, he said there are “cost pressures” on the program.

“The reason I’m looking at this fighter study is to have a better understanding — not only the F-35s we’re going to get, but the other aspects of what complements the F-35 in looking 10 to 15 years out,” he said. “I want to make sure we have the right capability. That includes [the option of] continuing to buy the 1,763 [F-35s] like we’ve already outlined, but we also have a look at it to make sure it has the capability we need with Block 4 [upgrades] but also is affordable.”

At the same time, the service also needs capacity to support operations in the Middle East or other tasks such as defending U.S. airspace — missions that don’t require stealthy fifth-generation fighters that are more costly to operate.

“Geopolitics change faster than our programs of record. [With] the geopolitics we have now … frankly we need a significant capacity,” said Gen. Mark Kelly, who leads Air Combat Command.

“In a perfect world … a budget-unconstrained environment would have a huge number — capacity — of huge capability fifth-gen airframes for every squadron in the combat air forces. The challenge with [that] is the reality of fiscal requirements of a nation that is coming out of a pandemic and the impacts of it, and the demand signal of being really busy around the world.”

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters during a Feb. 3 briefing that the new service has the “full support” of the Biden administration.

“We’re not revisiting the decision,” she said.

The U.S. Space Force has been a notorious and controversial presence in U.S. politics since 2018, when then-President Donald Trump took on the new military branch as a pet project.

Although the idea of a separate service for space originated in Congress and developed bipartisan support, Trump’s involvement in its establishment — which included his campaign selling Space Force-branded merchandise and recommending that his wife, Melania Trump, design the uniforms — made it a pop culture punching bag, as exemplified by the Netflix comedy series “Space Force.”

Psaki was asked during a Tuesday press briefing whether the Biden administration would ultimately seek to abolish the new space service, which was formally signed into law in December 2019.

“Wow, Space Force. It’s the plane of today,” she said, referencing previous questions about the Air Force One’s paint job.

“It is an interesting question,” she added. “I am happy to check with our Space Force point of contact. I’m not sure who that is. I will find out and see if they have any update on that.”

Psaki’s response raised the ire of Republicans, including House Armed Services Committee ranking member Mike Rogers, R-Ala., who criticized it as being disrespectful to members of the service and demanded an apology.

Later that night, Psaki tweeted that the Biden administration would continue working with the Space Force, but did not outright confirm that officials would continue to support the new service.

“We look forward to the continuing work of Space Force and invite the members of the team to come visit us in the briefing room anytime to share an update on their important work,” she tweeted.

On Wednesday, Rogers told Defense News he hadn’t had any underlying concerns about the branch’s future because the incoming administration had signaled its support. However, he remained displeased Psaki hadn’t apologized and at her unfamiliarity with the branch and its creation by Congress, where it enjoys “very bipartisan support,” Rogers added.

“It’s a very serious branch taking on a very serious national security threat, so her ignorance on the topic disturbed me, and then her flippant attitude disturbed me. But what more disturbed me was, today, after she had been informed that it was a serious branch of the military dealing with a serious threat, she couldn’t bring herself to say: ‘I made a mistake,’ ” Rogers said. “I was glad to see her acknowledge what I already knew, and the administration has said before — that is, they’re fully supportive of the Space Force and [know] its worth.”

Chief of Space Operations Gen. John “Jay” Raymond told reporters during a Wednesday morning roundtable that he would “welcome the opportunity” to speak to the Biden administration about the ongoing work of the Space Force, which includes tracking debris in space, running the nation’s GPS constellation, and managing satellites that provide communications links and help identify ballistic missiles.

“I’m very proud of the guardians in the Space Force,” he said.” I see the value of this force each and every day, and I’m happy to talk to anybody about the great work [it’s doing].”

For those who have been closely watching the universe of military space, the news of Biden’s support for the Space Force will come as little surprise.

Space experts — including Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies as well as Brian Weeden of the Secure World Foundation — told Defense News in January that the Biden administration will likely retain the Space Force.

“At this point we have spent thousands and thousands of hours and years of effort to create this new bureaucracy in the hope that it will address these challenges,” Weeden said. “At this point, we have no choice but to see that through. To now go back and spend even more time undoing all this stuff would be even worse.”

Joe Gould of Defense News and Nathan Strout of C4ISRNET contributed to this report.

For now, it’s a question that the White House has no intention of answering.

“I can confirm for you here the president has not spent a moment thinking about the color scheme of Air Force One,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters during a press conference Friday. Psaki was first asked about the Air Force One’s paint scheme shortly after Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

Biden’s ambivalence about the redesign of Air Force One is a sharp contrast to Trump, who made himself a notoriously visible character in the saga of the Air Force’s presidential aircraft recapitalization program.

After his election in 2016, Trump called for the program to be canceled due to high costs. He softened after meetings with Boeing executives, and in 2018 announced that the two new VC-25Bs — designated Air Force One when carrying the president — would be painted red, white and blue instead of the iconic blue and white scheme chosen by former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in the 1960s.

“I said, ‘I wonder if we should use the same baby blue colors?’ And we’re not,” Trump said during a 2018 interview on CBS News. “It’s going to be the top of the line, the top in the world. And it’s going to be red, white and blue, which I think is appropriate.”

So far, the Biden administration has not directed the Air Force to explore alternative livery designs for the new Air Force One planes, nor have officials indicated a plan to revert back to the Kennedy-era paint scheme, an Air Force spokeswoman said in response to questions from Defense News.

However, that’s also not a decision the Biden administration will have to make in the immediate future.

Aircraft paint and interiors are included within the $3.9 billion firm, fixed-price contract that Boeing and the Air Force agreed to in July 2018, the Air Force stated. Every year, a portion of that funding is doled out to Boeing as it makes progress on the development and build of the two VC-25Bs.

Boeing is still in the process of making major hardware modifications to the two Boeing 747-8 airliners that will become VC-25Bs — including adding power upgrades, a medical facility, and various other classified technologies needed to transform a commercial plane into a flying fortress.

The new Air Force One planes aren’t slated to be ready for operations until 2024. That gives the new administration time to determine a final paint scheme for the VC-25B and deliver its decision to Boeing, which will then begin painting the aircraft.

“The Air Force coordinates appearance options for VC-25B external paint livery and interiors with the White House Military Office. The Air Force will not speculate on VC-25B decisions to be made by the new administration or potential costs associated with unknown future decisions,” a service spokeswoman said, adding that “the Air Force is prepared for discussions with the new administration about the VC-25B program.”

Another source with knowledge of the program clarified further that the paint for the plane has not been ordered, as the Air Force has not provided contractual guidance to Boeing on a final livery design.

During a roundtable with reporters Jan. 19, Ellen Lord, who served as the Pentagon’s top acquisition official during the Trump administration, downplayed the impact Trump had on the Air Force One replacement program.

“The president had a lot of interest on a few programs. I don’t think he influenced the programmatics,” Lord said. “What he was interested in was the presidential aircraft. I was in the Oval for a meeting on that. But he, frankly, was focused on performance and the look of the aircraft, the color scheme and so forth.”

The Air Force estimates that it will spend a total of $5.3 billion on the Air Force One replacement program. That sum includes government testing, training, initial spares and military construction activities that were not baked into the $3.9 billion contract with Boeing for the two new aircraft.

By the end of fiscal year 2021, the service will have obligated $3.81 billion on the program.

Because it could take months for the Air Force to move through the legal and bureaucratic processes necessary to decommission the Boeing OC-135B planes flown from Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., to execute the treaty mission, it appears the Biden administration would have ample time to reverse course. The treaty permits 30-plus nations to conduct unarmed, observation flights over each other’s territory.

“The final decision on disposition of Open Skies Treaty resources has not yet been made,” an Air Force official told Defense News on Tuesday. “The 45th Reconnaissance Squadron at Offutt AFB is still flying local OC-135 missions at a greatly reduced rate in order to maintain aircrew qualifications, while the Air Force continues to assess options for realigning, repurposing, or retiring the two 1960s-era OC-135B aircraft, as well as other associated equipment in accordance with DoD guidance.”

Despite reports the Trump administration might be scrambling to get rid of the OC-135B planes, a congressional source said the Air Force plans to keep the planes until the end of fiscal 2021 and service leaders had yet to make a firm decision about what to do with them.

The administration, with backing from a number of Republican lawmakers, announced in May it wanted out of the treaty because Russia was violating the pact, and imagery collected during the flights can be obtained quickly at less cost from U.S. or commercial satellites. U.S. allies tried to forestall the move and generally argue the treaty is a valuable channel for transparency and dialogue between Russia and the United States, the world’s top two nuclear superpowers.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at the time that the U.S. and allies in the pact lived up to their treaty commitments and obligations, but “Russia has flagrantly and continuously violated the treaty in various ways for years. This is not a story exclusive to just the treaty on Open Skies, unfortunately, for Russia has been a serial violator of many of its arms control obligations and commitments.”

The overflights were set up decades ago to promote trust and avert conflict, and Biden has panned the idea of a withdrawal, saying it would “exacerbate growing tensions between the West and Russia, and increase the risks of miscalculation and conflict.”

Given the partisan dynamics of the Senate, it’s unclear the upper chamber could muster the two-thirds majority required to re-ratify the treaty. However, Biden may be able to re-enter the treaty in a way that would not require formal advice and consent from the Senate, according to Alexandra Bell, the senior policy director at the Council for a Livable World.

One path is for Biden to craft an executive agreement requiring simple majority approval in both houses. Parties to the treaty would need to be on board and Congress would also need to approve funds for continued U.S. participation. Trump’s potential scuttling of the planes “might complicate diplomatic options, but the incoming Biden administration will likely make choices about the future of the treaty based on national security considerations, not the Trump team’s ‘salt the earth’ behavior,” Bell said.

Democrats and some Republicans have urged Biden to rejoin the treaty once in office.

In a statement to Defense News, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a retired Air Force brigadier general who commanded the 55th Wing at Offutt, noted that the OC-135s can be used to collect unclassified images during disaster response missions and other roles in support of civil authorities. They were used in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti to assess the damage and direct resources, he said.

“My hope is that the move to end Open Skies will be reversed as it is an essential operation. In the meantime, we should not make any moves to scrap the 135′s because the OC-135B aircraft already fill important additional roles above and beyond the Open Skies treaty,” Bacon said.

“The small cost of the two Open Skies aircraft is offset by the observations they enable, as well as the benefits they deliver outside of the treaty mission. Considering these benefits, and the potential that we may yet rejoin the treaty, it’s important to maintain the aircraft for the time being.”

Democrats have ripped Trump over a broader pattern of discarding arms control and non-proliferation agreements. Some question the legality of Trump’s pullout from Open Skies, citing language in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act that reaffirmed congressional support for the treaty and mandated the administration justify a withdrawal four months before any formal notification of withdrawal can take place.

This week, Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Bob Menendez, D-N.J., called the administration’s withdrawal “reckless” and encouraged Biden to rejoin the pact once Biden is inaugurated.

There are Senate Republicans who would likely oppose a reentry. Senate Airland Subcommittee Chairman Tom Cotton, and Sens. Ted Cruz and Richard Burr, have worked in various ways to support a withdrawal. Cotton has argued funding for the OC-135 should go toward nuclear weapons modernization.

“I am pleased that the Trump administration has taken the final and necessary step to formally withdraw from this costly and outdated agreement,” Cruz said in a statement Monday. “Russia will no longer be able to use this treaty to use our skies to spy on the American people.