The three countries announced the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort, or ICE Pact, in a joint statement during the NATO summit in Washington on Thursday. The trilateral agreement aims to build “best-in-class Arctic and polar icebreakers and other Arctic and polar capabilities in each of our respective countries by sharing expertise, information, and capabilities.”

The pact aims to “leverage shipyards” in all three countries to build the icebreakers by collaborating on information sharing and workforce development while encouraging allies and partners to buy the vessels from those states.

“We are seeing an increasing need for those icebreakers from partners around the world who want to operate in both the Arctic and the Antarctic region and can operate there with greater freedom than before because of the impacts of climate change,” said National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

“There are authoritarian nations that are offering icebreakers to the world who want to corner the icebreaker market. We’re determined to have democracies in the lead and producing icebreaker capabilities.”

Sullivan noted that “both Canada and Finland have considerable experience in shipyards and producing icebreakers.”

The U.S. operates two Polar icebreakers, both of which are nearing the end of their usable life.

“The U.S. is currently producing icebreakers for our Coast Guard, but we would like to expand that to include building icebreakers here in the United States – American-made, American-jobs to sell to countries around the world as well,” said Sullivan. “We then will have the industrial base for a capability that has economic and strategic purposes.”

The Coast Guard is already working with Bollinger to build the first Polar Security Cutters.

“As the premiere builder of American-made polar icebreakers, Bollinger Shipyards is proud to support the United States and our NATO allies with our deep expertise and capacity,” said CEO Ben Bordelon. “We have made, and will continue to make, significant, long-term investments in our facilities, infrastructure and workforce.

“Our goal is to create a world-class American-owned shipyard capable of producing the first fleet of American-made polar icebreakers in over half a century, and we’re honored that responsibility lies with Bollinger.”

Bollinger touted the 1,000-worker benchmark as “a substantial reversal of a decade-long trend of declining employment under the Pascagoula facility’s previous owner.”

Competition for employees among shipyards in the Gulf of Mexico is fierce, with employers vying to hire for positions ranging from engineers to welders to a whole host of other positions from a limited workforce pool.

The Biden administration in 2022 released a 10-year Arctic strategy that calls for the procurement of additional icebreakers as a key pillar.

The strategy emphasizes deterring increased Russian and Chinese activity in the region as global warming rapidly melts the polar ice caps, drastically transforming the environment.

In June, Laurynas Kasčiūnas traveled to Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s largest defense conference — and one, since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, that’s seen far more Europeans in attendance.

And this month he was in Washington for the NATO Summit. This time, he didn’t have to go do the Indo-Pacific. It came to him.

For the third straight year, a group of countries with ties to the alliance, called the Indo-Pacific Four, have sent officials to attend the summit in person. Members of NATO say this is a sign that the two regions increasingly see their security as shared.

“It’s interlinked,” Kasčiūnas said in an interview.

That point was obvious in the Washington summit’s communique — a plan for the alliance over the next year. Alongside critiques of North Korea, it featured the harshest-ever criticism of China, urging an end to support for Russia’s defense industry.

“The [People’s Republic of China] continues to pose systemic challenges to Euro-Atlantic security,” the document reads.

And yet, it’s still hard to see how those interests become action.

The Washington Declaration includes a list of “flagship projects” on cyber, disinformation, technology and Ukraine-related issues for the two regions. Members of the alliance point to these as signs of real commitment.

“It’s not just about political messaging,” a senior NATO official told reporters before the summit. “It’s about practical cooperation.”

Others in the alliance, though, are more ambivalent about the new partnerships, or skeptical that they amount to much yet. And the side projects, while beneficial, only matter on the margins compared to what America and Indo-Pacific partners may really want from Europe, said Max Bergmann, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“The biggest thing Europe can do for the Indo-Pacific right now is take more responsibility for Europe,” he said.

‘East Asia tomorrow’

Only weeks before the NATO summit, Bergmann published a report on Europe’s role in Indo-Pacific security.

It tracked a rise in European countries sending their forces to the region, even temporarily. Beside the longtime players of Britain and France, countries such as Germany, Italy and the Netherlands have sent military vessels around Asia. Other European states are joining large military exercises hosted in the region as well.

Driving this increase is mainly Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago. Countries in Europe have seen how key China has been to Russia’s war effort, sustaining Moscow’s defense industry through a huge rise in trade. And countries in the Indo-Pacific started to take the threat China may pose to Taiwan or the Philippines more seriously.

“Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow,” Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio earlier this year. European officials have since echoed his quote.

At the summit, officials from the four Indo-Pacific countries — Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan — met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And Australia pledged its largest-ever package of military aid to Kyiv shortly after: $250 million of air defense interceptors, munitions and other supplies.

“We’re breaking down the traditional silos that have been around defense alliances,” said Matt Thistlethwaite, Canberra’s assistant minister of defense, in an interview.

He mentioned military exercises as an example. The week of the NATO summit, 20 nations participated in Pitch Black, a military drill in Australia’s Northern Territory. The list included NATO nations as well, including Italy and Spain joining for the first time.

Thistlethwaite said there was even a revived push this year to open a NATO office in Japan. The plans were never ambitious — only a few junior officers to be stationed in Tokyo to avoid long flights between there and Brussels. But they collapsed last year after some in the alliance, in particular France, said the new office would provoke China. Bejing chafes at any sign that countries are forming an alliance against it and regularly accuses the U.S. of building an Asian version of NATO.

Despite the new talks, opposition to the office within the alliance hadn’t ended. Speaking before the summit, a European official told reporters that his country didn’t support the office and didn’t feel pressured to anymore.

“This issue was not discussed at all for the Washington Summit,” the official said.

Theaters

The same official made the traditional counterarguments for NATO becoming involved so far from its borders: it lacks the expertise and the capacity to do so, and the risks may outweigh the benefits.

European countries have been trying to surge their defense industries since Russia’s full-scale invasion. But more than two years later, the results have been slow.

The incremental progress means that America is still somewhat tied down in Europe. Most in Washington say it’s in America’s interest to support Ukraine’s self-defense, and the administration has spent more than $51 billion on security aid for Kyiv since 2022.

But the last two presidents have said their top challenge is China. And while the weapons going to Ukraine mostly wouldn’t matter for Taiwan or the Philippines, some of America’s forces are in a zero-sum game.

“The United States should clarify to NATO allies the impact an Indo-Pacific contingency would have on the European theater,” reads Bergmann’s report.

And if European countries are to become more involved in Asian security, they should weigh carefully whether they do so under the label of NATO, multiple analysts and officials told Defense News. Because the alliance is so reflexively threatening to China, the earlier European official said, using it could be “counterproductive” toward maintaining peace.

Still, the official supports lower-level cooperation like that seen in the Washington Summit’s final plan. This kind of work is what the two regions will likely focus on in the near future, said Bonnie Glaser, an expert at the German Marshall Fund: countering terrorism and disinformation, protecting against climate change and work on cybersecurity.

Even getting the two regions to see each other as security partners has been a win for this White House, she argued.

“When [U.S. President Joe] Biden came to power, Europe’s attention to possible war in the Taiwan Strait was negligible at best,” said Glaser.

It marks a rapid turnaround in a short period dominated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and comes a decade after NATO allies agreed to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense with 20% of that going to major equipment purchases.

Still, some allies on Europe’s eastern flank and Republicans in the U.S. say that’s not enough. They’re pushing to increase the alliance’s defense spending targets beyond 2%, given the war in Ukraine and the risk of an American conflict with China.

None of that stopped President Joe Biden from lauding Washington’s progress in getting its NATO allies to shoulder a greater share of the defense burden, a longstanding gripe of U.S. presidents from both parties.

“In the year 2020, the year I was elected president, only nine NATO allies were spending 2% of their GDP on defense,” Biden said in his opening remarks to kick off the summit on Tuesday. “This year, 23 will spend at least 2 percent. And some will spend more than that.”

Still, some in the alliance consider that an almost hollow victory. The Wales Summit was 10 years ago, well before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“We reaffirm that, in many cases, expenditure beyond 2% of GDP will be needed in order to remedy existing shortfalls and meet the requirements across all domains arising from a more contested security order,” the allies wrote in a joint communique on Wednesday.

The Baltic states in particular are pushing their allies to go beyond the mandatory 2% floor for defense spending as Russia shows no signs of backing down after more than two years of war in Ukraine.

“We’ll start to talk at least about 2.5% as a floor,” Lithuanian Defense Minister Laurynas Kasčiūnas told Defense News, pointing to NATO’s “capability gaps.”

“When we analyze what the countries need to develop in the near-future, for a decade maybe, it’s not even 2.5%. It’s not even 3%. It should be more if you want more air defense systems, if you want more long-range strike capabilities.”

Tuuli Duneton, Estonia’s Undersecretary for Defense Policy, praised the 23 countries who now meet the 2% spending target but added “we should start already the discussions on putting the target for defense spending even higher.”

“We would support to have the discussion to set in the new target for the next NATO summit in the Hague to either 2.5% or 3% of GDP,” Duneton told reporters.

The U.S. spends roughly 3% of GDP on defense, but the Congressional Budget Office projects that will fall to 2.5% by 2034.

Republicans in the U.S. are also starting to join the Baltic countries’ call to move the defense spending floor beyond 2% of GDP.

“Given these dangerous times, the alliance must do more,” Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said in a Tuesday statement. “We must start working toward a greater defense spending commitment than the current 2% of GDP defense spending benchmark that better reflects this new era of authoritarian aggression we find ourselves in.”

Trump said this year that should he return to the White House, he would allow Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies who do not meet the minimum defense spending benchmark.

The former president’s allies are calling on NATO allies to replace the U.S. as Ukraine’s primary security guarantor – a task made all the more complicated by years of Europe’s chronic underinvestment in weapons production lines.

“The things that Europeans most need are not necessarily guys with guns, as important as they are, but lift, logistics, C4ISR, long-range munitions, air defense, but those are exactly the things that are most needed in the Pacific and are most difficult to reconstitute,” Bridge Colby, Trump’s former assistant secretary of defense for strategy, said Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation.

“The best way to manage the situation is to be practical and candid with our European allies and say ‘here’s what we can provide.’ And this is what I’ve said to the Europeans is ‘we’re going to have to withhold some of these key capabilities.”

Collin Meisel, the associate director of geopolitical analysis at the University of Denver’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures, cautioned “it’s going to take years for the European countries to make up that shortfall and be able to provide adequate support for Ukraine.”

“If the U.S. pulls back its materiel support of Ukraine, then Ukraine is going to be in pretty rough shape.”

He also noted that when Ukraine military aid is framed as a percentage of GDP, the U.S. ranks far below multiple European countries, including countries like the Netherlands that have not met NATO’s 2% of GDP benchmark for overall defense spending.

And the spending targets themselves don’t guarantee a ready military.

“Greece is the poster child for this,” said John Deni, a former political adviser to U.S. military leaders in Europe.

Athens has long spent more than 2% on defense, he noted, but much of it goes to areas that don’t create a strong force, such as personnel and pensions.

“It’s a jobs program,” Deni said.

The 2% and 20% thresholds are the only public thresholds — affirmed as a floor, rather than a ceiling in the 2022 communique in Vilnius, Lithuania.

NATO has 11 private metrics to measure burden sharing, which help assess the readiness of each force, Deni said. It’s also working to finalize regional defense and deterrence plans that will in part guide procurement decisions for member states. Proponents of increasing the 2% benchmark hope these regional plans will also grow military spending.

“It’s not only the percentage itself that matters, but taking into account that NATO military authorities have been assessing based on the regional plans: all military requirements for defense forces and capabilities” said Estonia’s Duneton. “The increased defense spending is most of all necessary for us to be able to deliver on those critical capabilities.”

This story was updated on Wednesday at 4:48 PM to include a statement from the NATO summit communique.

Speaking at Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C., the site where the original members of the alliance signed the North Atlantic Treaty, Biden framed it as “a historic donation of air defense equipment for Ukraine.”

“The United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Italy will provide Ukraine with equipment for five additional strategic air defense systems in the coming months,” he said. “The United States and our partners intend to provide Ukraine with dozens of additional tactical air defense systems.”

The United States, Germany and Romania will donate additional Patriot batteries while the Netherlands donates Patriot components. Additionally, Italy will donate a SAMP-T system.

The five countries noted in a statement that they are working on a “further announcement this year of additional strategic air defense systems for Ukraine.”

The U.S. and various allies also “intend to provide Ukraine with dozens of tactical air defense systems, including NASAMS, HAWKs, IRIS T-SLM, IRIS T-SLS and Gepard systems,” according to the joint statement.

Biden’s announcement comes weeks after the U.S. moved Ukraine up to the front of the queue for Patriot and NASAM interceptors.

“Ukraine will receive hundreds of additional interceptors over the next year, helping protect Ukrainian cities against Russian missiles and Ukrainian troops facing their attacks on the frontlines,” he said.

The White House has said that Ukraine will receive many of these interceptors by the end of the summer. Over the next 15 months, Kyiv will take precedence over several other countries seeking to buy U.S. air defense systems. The administration has not divulged which countries will face delays in acquiring interceptors as a result of the decision, except to note that the decision will not impact Taiwan or Israel.

Biden’s announcement comes one day after a Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital, killing at least 31 people. The barrage targeted five Ukrainian cities with 40 missiles, wounding more than 150 people, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is in Washington this week for the summit.

Other NATO member countries are expected to announce additional security packages for Ukraine at the summit this week.

“Together we’ve built a global coalition to stand with Ukraine,” said Biden. “Together we’ve provided significant economic and humanitarian assistance. And together we’ve supplied Ukraine with the weapons it needs to defend itself: tanks, armored vehicles, air defense systems, long-range missiles and millions of munitions.”

“The United States and nearly two dozen allied partners have signed a bilateral security agreement with Ukraine,” he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, upset that his country wouldn’t get a timeline for membership, scolded the alliance online.

“Ukraine also deserves respect,” he wrote.

In order to avoid a repeat of last year, the 2024 summit in Washington has been much more closely coordinated. Multiple European officials told Defense News that planning began months earlier than usual. And many delegations are using the same slogan: “Managing expectations.”

Now that the summit has arrived, the events around it are proving difficult to manage.

French President Emmanuel Macron, a persnickety but dogged NATO advocate in Europe, is facing political gridlock after parliamentary elections left the National Assembly, the lower house, fractured from the extreme left to the extreme right.

And while Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban met with Zelenskyy in Kyiv last week, he went on to visit Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow shortly thereafter. Orban, who has previously slow-walked European aid to Ukraine, framed his visits as a peace mission but his suggestion that Ukraine order a truce before peace negotiations drew a frosty response from Kyiv.

Even more concerning for NATO is the state of its main backer. U.S. President Joe Biden is trying to contain a crisis at home after a catastrophic debate two weeks ago. Supporting the alliance has been one of Biden’s signature issues. Now, many in his own party say he shouldn’t even be the nominee — making the return of a NATO-skeptic Donald Trump to the presidency more likely.

The upshot is a split 75th birthday for NATO. By some measures, like membership and spending, the alliance is stronger than ever. And yet, many members are searching for ways to “Trump proof” its support for Kyiv while trying to protect their own security. Despite a more unified message this year, and a large package for Ukraine, European officials acknowledge the political situation is a major distraction.

“Right now the policy is support Ukraine,” said Evelyn Farkas, a former Pentagon official focusing on European security. “Could it change? Sure. But right now, the big affirmation is going to be NATO at 75 years and look what we’re doing to help Ukraine.”

A senior U.S. administration official told reporters on Friday that allies “will reaffirm that Ukraine’s future is in NATO, will make significant new announcements about how we’re increasing NATO’s military, political and financial support for Ukraine.”

“The Washington summit will send a strong signal to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin that if he thinks he can outlast the coalition of countries supporting Ukraine, he’s dead wrong.”

Three-part package

As has been the case since Russia’s full-scale invasion over two years ago, the biggest part of this NATO summit will be backing Ukraine.

Heading into the meetings, officials and analysts outlined a three-part package.

The first piece will be equipment, likely including urgently needed air defense batteries and interceptors for Kyiv.

NATO will also take a larger role in the process. To this point in the war, the U.S. has led the effort, with a monthly meeting convened by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. This Ukraine Defense Contact Group has helped raise and direct around $100 billion in aid.

The alliance is now taking on some of those tasks. In June, NATO announced a command of 700 personnel in Germany that would also help steer aid to Ukraine moving forward. Speaking with reporters on the condition of anonymity before the summit, a European official predicted this group would take on more authority over time.

“We are crossing that line,” the official said. “We are giving NATO greater role in terms of assistance to Ukraine.”

Biden will host an event at the summit with Zelenskyy and nearly two dozen allies and partners who have signed bilateral security agreements with Ukraine.

A final part of the package is what the final communique will say about membership for Ukraine. The delegations are still haggling over how to word it — a “bridge,” an “irreversible” path or some combination of the two. Whatever the language, the same European official said it needs to be firmer than the conditional phrasing of the Vilnius communique.

To many in Ukraine, though, this back and forth misses the point.

“We know we will probably not get an invitation to joint NATO,” said Oleksandr Merezhko, chair of the Committee on Foreign Policy Committee in Ukraine’s parliament. “The question is what we will get instead.”

Parsing the words in the communique when Ukraine has known membership isn’t on the table ignores more important questions: like the alliance’s readiness and Russia’s threat beyond Ukraine, argued Maksym Skrypchenko, who leads the Transatlantic Dialogue Center, a think tank in Kyiv.

“People [in Ukraine] are very frustrated with NATO,” he said. “They feel like NATO isn’t working and Russia can invade the Baltic states and nothing will happen.”

‘Done this before’

Despite that mood, there are signs that the Washington summit is more unified than last year’s.

In a post last week, Zelenskyy predicted “there are good things to come” on air defense, membership and security agreements.

NATO will also have a clutch of good news to celebrate. It’s hit a record number of members spending at least 2% of GDP on defense — expected to hit 23 this year compared to only three a decade ago. It has a new member, with Sweden ending a long accession process in March. And there’s a new secretary general coming, now that former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte earned enough support in June.

That said, the political malaise surrounding the summit will make the work harder, multiple analysts and officials said. Asked whether the optics of a weakened American and French president would distract from the real policy discussions, another European official was terse.

“Yes,” the official said.

Hence, despite the carefully coordinated messaging, many members of the alliance will arrive in Washington looking for reassurance, or even trying to hedge against the whiplash of a second Trump term by meeting with his campaign or conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation.

Others are skeptical such an approach could work.

“I find this notion of future-proofing or even Trump-proofing the alliance, to be frank, a little bit laughable,” John Deni, a former adviser to American military leaders in Europe, said on a press call hosted by the Atlantic Council.

Deni’s argument was two-fold.

One, there is no country in NATO with the ability to replace a more distant United States, economically or militarily.

And two, NATO has been through these political transitions in the past, including with American leaders thought to be insufficiently committed to Europe.

Every expert on the call with Deni argued that second point: An alliance doesn’t last 75 years without learning how to survive.

“What I say to Europeans all the time is stop freaking out about Trump,” said Rachel Rizzo, an expert at the Atlantic Council. “You’ve done this before.”

The $833 billion legislation would buy additional F-35s beyond the Pentagon’s budget request while only procuring one Virginia-class attack submarine for FY25 instead of the usual two vessels the bill usually provides.

The procurement plans put the bill at odds with large swaths of lawmakers on the Armed Services Committee who drafted the FY25 National Defense Authorization Act, which would reduce F-35 purchases below the Pentagon’s requested levels and partially fund a second Virginia-class submarine.

“The only way to prevent Chinese aggression is by fielding and operating capability that demonstrate America’s military advantage,” defense appropriations Chairman Ken Calvert, R-Calif., said on the House floor on Thursday. “To this end, the bill increases investments in fifth and sixth generation aircraft, procures deliverable capability, including several [Indo-Pacific Command] unfunded priorities.”

“This bill procures where we can, trains where we must and invest in capabilities that will make our adversaries wake up every day and say ‘today is not the day to provoke the United States of America.”

The spending bill would procure 76 new F-35s, eight more than the 68 requested by the Defense Department. Conversely, the National Defense Authorization Act – which the House passed 217-199 earlier this month – would cut F-35 procurement down to 58 aircraft.

The House Rules Committee, which oversees amendment votes, opted not to hold a vote on a proposed bipartisan amendment that would have reduced F-35 purchases in the spending bill. This prompted a sharp rebuke from Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, amid mounting frustration on Capitol Hill with manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

“At a projected total lifecycle cost of over $2 trillion dollars, the F-35 is the largest program in DoD history despite routinely not meeting cost, schedule, and performance metrics,” Smith said in a Wednesday statement with Rep. Donald Norcross of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the tactical air and land forces panel.

“This is unacceptable program execution and Congress should not reward this behavior by buying additional aircraft above the President’s budget request.”

The spending bill also overrides the Armed Services Committee on Virginia-class submarine procurement for FY25, in addition to the F-35 purchases. Appropriators have sided with the Navy, which requested just one attack submarine purchase for FY25, due to production delays amid industrial base constraints. In contrast, the National Defense Authorization Act sought incremental funding for a second Virginia-class vessel.

“We have to rebuild the industrial base in order for us to build submarines,” Calvert told Defense News earlier this month. “I want more submarines. But in order for us to get there, we have to rebuild the industrial base to get the necessary workforce to build the submarines. So we’re focusing on fixing the problem in order for us to build more submarines.”

The decision comes despite intense pressure from a large, bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Rep. Joe Courtney of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House’s seapower panel. His Connecticut district includes General Dynamics Electric Boat, which makes the Virginia-class submarines.

Courtney and Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., recently led 131 other House lawmakers in a letter to defense appropriators beseeching them to fund two Virginia-class submarines against the Pentagon’s wishes.

“Preserving a consistent production schedule is essential for shipyard and industrial base stability, and to meet the Navy’s operational requirements,” the lawmakers wrote in a May letter to Calvert and Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., the panel’s top Democrat.

Policy riders: Ukraine and Israel

The spending bill also includes several socially conservative policy riders, such as limits on abortion access for troops and military diversity initiatives, which prompted most Democrats to vote against the bill.

“We need to foster a climate in our military that honors and appreciates all Americans who choose to take the oath to serve,” McCollum said on Thursday. “Unfortunately, at this time, this bill does not reflect that sentiment.”

McCollum also criticized the legislation for omitting $300 million in annual Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funding that the defense spending bill has provided annually since FY16.

“Failure to continue funding that has long been standing bipartisan support for Ukraine, it sends a terrible signal, and it will only embolden [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” said McCollum.

Still, $300 million is a small trickle compared to the $13.7 billion in the initiative’s funding Congress passed in April as part of a massive foreign aid bill, which included a total $60 billion in economic and security assistance for Ukraine.

The House voted down 308-103 an amendment from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to cut off all aid to Ukraine. It also struck down 335-76 another Greene amendment to reduce Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s salary to $1 – a provision Republicans adapted last year before stripping it from the final spending bill after negotiations with the Senate.

The House adopted numerous other amendments that would invest more money in various research and development accounts by taking money away from a variety of operations and maintenance programs.

Lastly, the bill bars the Pentagon from using funds “to withhold, halt, reverse or cancel the delivery of defense articles or defense services” for Israel, and forces the president to transfer withheld weapons to the Israeli military within 15 days.

Both the Defense and State department spending bills would ban funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which delivers humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip.

The defense spending bill also includes a provision that would eliminate the military’s makeshift pier off the coast of the Gaza Strip, which has struggled to deliver an adequate level of humanitarian aid to Palestinians facing famine-like conditions.

The House’s FY25 defense spending bill would procure 76 new F-35s, eight more than the 68 requested by the Defense Department. This puts the spending bill at odds with the House’s FY25 National Defense Authorization Act, passed 217-199 earlier this month, which would cut F-35 procurement down to 58 aircraft.

“At a projected total lifecycle cost of over $2 trillion dollars, the F-35 is the largest program in DoD history despite routinely not meeting cost, schedule, and performance metrics,” Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the committee, said in a Wednesday statement with Rep. Donald Norcross of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the tactical air and land forces panel.

“This is unacceptable program execution and Congress should not reward this behavior by buying additional aircraft above the President’s budget request,” the statement read.

Smith and Norcross highlighted that the Defense Department stopped accepting F-35 deliveries from manufacturer Lockheed Martin last year “until the enterprise could successfully deliver, test, and field the next version of the Operational Flight Program” — a benchmark it has not yet met nearly a year later.

The two Democrats and Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., introduced a bipartisan amendment that would have cut F-35 procurement in the spending bill and bring it in sync with the 58 F-35s authorized in the National Defense Authorization Act.

But the House Rules Committee, which oversees amendment votes, opted not to put Smith’s proposed F-35 reduction on the floor for a vote. The new House Appropriations Committee chairman, Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., previously chaired the Rules Committee.

Smith’s proposed reduction of 18 fighter jets from the spending bill would have amounted to a roughly $2 billion procurement cut for the Air Force and Navy.

The Smith amendment would have shifted funds in the form of $526 million to the Air Force to help address F-35 performance issues with development, production and testing.

“It is the duty of Congress to support the long-term viability of the F-35 program and ensure the vast sums of taxpayer money footing the bill are spent where they can ensure program success,” said Smith and Norcross. “A simple short-term reduction in acquisition rates would enable us to mitigate the known systemic problems, correct course and get the F-35 program and workers up and running at full speed.”

Lockheed Martin has faced intense bipartisan scrutiny from the Armed Services Committee for repeated F-35 delays, most recently with the Technology Refresh 3 upgrades. The TR-3 hardware and software upgrades would provide F-35s with better displays, computer memory and processing power.

Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., attempted to amend the NDAA with a provision that would have authorized the defense secretary to seize intellectual property from Lockheed Martin and open it up to competition, taking aim at the F-35′s software problems.

Moulton sought a vote on the amendment when the Armed Services Committee marked up the legislation in May but had to withdraw it after a Congressional Budget Office cost determination. But multiple committee members, including several Republicans, said they would support Moulton’s efforts to seize intellectual property from Lockheed Martin in the years ahead should F-35 issues persist.

Smith urged caution on Moulton’s efforts, despite his shared frustrations with Lockheed’s execution of the F-35 program.

“In law, we would possibly have to compensate them for that, which would be really, really, really expensive,” Smith said.

Despite efforts from Smith and his fellow Armed Services Committee members to cut F-35 procurement next year, appropriators will have the final word on how many of the aircraft to buy in the defense spending bill.

Further compounding the uncertainty, the Senate version of the FY25 NDAA would procure 68 F-35s — the same number requested by the Pentagon. It remains unclear how many F-35s Senate appropriators seek to procure, as they have yet to release their FY25 defense spending bill.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby announced the reshuffle in a briefing today, calling it “difficult but necessary.” In the short-term, he said, Patriot and NASAM interceptors that had been slated for other countries will now go to Ukraine.

“As a result, deliveries for these missiles to other countries that are currently in the queue will have to be delayed,” Kirby said.

The White House expects Ukraine will receive these air defense weapons by the end of the summer. Kirby said the number will be in the hundreds, and that the decision should give Ukraine what it needs for the next 16 months. At that point, the countries who currently have air defense missiles on order can expect to start seeing theirs delivered.

“To be clear, those countries will still receive the missiles they have ordered,” Kirby said. “It’s just that the delivery will take a little longer.”

He did not say which countries would be affected by the delays, but noted that the decision will not impact Taiwan or Israel.

Lockheed Martin is fully funded by the U.S. Army to build 550 PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) missiles a year at its Camden, Arkansas, production line and hit a rate of 500 per year in December 2023.

While the Army has yet to fund another missile production increase, Lockheed has invested internally to build 650 interceptors a year.

In 2023, Lockheed signed six letters of approval with international customers.

There are 19 countries with the Raytheon-made Patriot and that customer base is growing. Switzerland purchased five batteries and 75 missiles in November 2022 and Romania plans to buy additional fire units. At least two other European countries are close to announcing plans to buy Patriot, according to Raytheon this spring.

Slovakia has recently expressed interest in purchasing Patriot, and Germany has said it intends to grow its Patriot force.

The decision is one of the most extraordinary measures America has taken to protect Ukraine since the full-scale war with Russia began two years ago. For months, Pentagon leaders have said that air defense is at the top of the agenda for the countries supporting Kyiv. And they’ve taken recent steps to prove it.

“Air defense has been at the top of my agenda for a long time,” said U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at a June press conference.

Austin spoke at NATO headquarters in Brussels, shortly after a meeting of countries that gather each month to coordinate support for Ukraine. Just before the summit, multiple outlets reported that the U.S. was sending another Patriot system to Ukraine — though neither Austin nor Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown would confirm the news.

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy said in June his country needs seven Patriot systems, one of the most advanced air defense systems in the world. Germany announced earlier this year that it would send one to Ukraine. The Netherlands similarly committed to assembling and sending another system.

Other countries have committed different air defense systems altogether, such as NASAMS.

“It’s not just Patriots,” Austin said at the June presser, listing out other systems. “It’s a number of capabilities that Ukraine needs, and they need the interceptors to complement the platforms.”

Short supply

Despite their importance, both air defense batteries and the interceptors they fire are in short supply. The U.S. and its allies have spent much of the war sourcing whatever extra weapons are available — especially as Ukraine faced drone and missile barrages on its cities and critical infrastructure. The decision this week reflects how tight the supply chain for these systems is. Rather than expanding capacity, the U.S. has reordered it.

“It’s a reminder of the importance of expanding inventory,” said Tom Karako, an expert on air defense at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, of the decision.

Karako said that the money meant to expand that capacity included in the April national security supplemental — a massive refresh of security aid to Ukraine and other countries — hasn’t been spent yet. Though there is around $48 billion for military aid to Ukraine in the package, the amount marked for air defense isn’t specified, he said.

“You don’t just turn on a dime and start spitting out Patriots like a Xerox machine,” Karako said.

The White House didn’t specify what countries will be affected by the reshuffle, though Karako said that the likely candidates will be in Europe and the Middle East.

Kirby said that Washington would do what it could to shorten any delays.

Still, he said, “each country is going to have a different set of circumstances that apply to that based on what they’ve ordered and what their own self-defense needs are.”

Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York and Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland – the top Democrats on the foreign affairs panels in both chambers – confirmed Monday that they’ve lifted their months-long blockade of 50 Boeing-made F-15 fighter jets; Raytheon-made Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles; and Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions kits, which convert so-called dumb bombs to precision-guided munitions.

Shortly thereafter, Netanyahu released a video in English attacking President Joe Biden for his April pause on delivery of some 3,500 air-to-ground munitions for Israel, including 500- and 2,000-pound bombs. He said he raised the issue during a recent meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“It is inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunition to Israel,” Netanyahu said on Tuesday. :Israel, America’s closest ally fighting for its life, fighting against Iran and other common enemies. Secretary Blinken assured me the administration is working day and night to remove those bottlenecks.”

The Washington Post first reported Monday that Meeks and Cardin have released their holds on the hold on F-15s, which are not slated for delivery until the end of the decade, after pressure from the Biden administration and pro-Israel advocates. The Washington Post also reported that the Biden administration is considering releasing its own hold on the 3,500 heavy bombs for Israel, which were slated for immediate delivery.

“We continue to have constructive discussions with the Israelis for its release, but I don’t have any updates beyond that,” a National Security Council spokesperson told Defense News regarding the munitions hold.

Blinken said Tuesday that the U.S. continues to “review” the heavy bomb delivery but added “everything else is moving as it normally would move.”

Biden withheld the heavy bombs in May ahead of Israel’s Rafah offensive in the southern Gaza Strip, voicing concern that they would exacerbate civilian casualties in a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and brought the population to the brink of famine. The last president to publicly withhold weapons shipments to Israel was Ronald Reagan in 1982 after seeing pictures of civilians killed in Lebanon.

Meeks also cited civilian casualties, widespread starvation and restrictions on humanitarian aid in April as factors in his decision to hold the F-15 sale before reversing course.

“I have been in close touch with the White House and [National Security Council] about this and other arms cases for Israel and have repeatedly urged the administration to continue pushing Israel to make significant and concrete improvements on all fronts when it comes to humanitarian efforts and limiting civilian casualties,” Meeks said in a statement. “I continue to support the administration’s pause on certain munitions transfers due to concerns about ongoing civilian casualties in Gaza. The aircraft in question will not be delivered until years from now, and I remain supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself against the real threats posed by Iran and Hezbollah.”

Congressional pressure

Although Meeks lifted the F-15 hold a few weeks ago, the State Department has yet to formally notify Congress of the sale. Nor has it formally notified Congress of a separate $1 billion sale in tank ammunition and tactical vehicles. The notifications would trigger a formal congressional review period in which senators critical of Israel’s Gaza offensive could trigger floor votes seeking to block either sale.

Congress has also moved legislation seeking to undo Biden’s pause on the heavy bomb delivery and restrict the president’s ability to restrict future arms transfers to Israel.

A provision in the House’s fiscal 2025 defense spending bill would bar the Pentagon from using funds “to withhold, halt, reverse or cancel the delivery of defense articles or defense services” for Israel, and force the president to transfer withheld weapons to the Israeli military within 15 days.

The Appropriations Committee advanced the defense spending bill last week in a 34-25 party-line vote with the full House set to vote in the weeks ahead.

Some Democrats also joined Republicans in May to pass 224-187 a more stringent bill undoing Biden’s heavy bomb hold, but the Democratic-held Senate has refused to hold a floor vote amid a White House veto threat.

Congress invited Netanyahu to address a joint session on July 24. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., both signed off on the invitation alongside Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Meanwhile, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Cory Booker, D-N.Y., convened a private meeting Tuesday for senators with several CEOs – including major Republican donors – to urge Congress to continue arms sales for Israel, Punchbowl News reported. Palantir CEO Alex Karp and Booz Allen Hamilton CEO Horacio Rozanski were reportedly set to attend the meeting alongside several finance and tech CEOs.

Both the Senate and House defense policy bills for fiscal 2025 would require the Air Force to once again make these conventional bombers part of the nuclear triad nearly a decade after removing those capabilities to comply with limits under the New START treaty. The current treaty is set to expire in February 2026.

Lawmakers are eager to beef up the U.S. nuclear arsenal given Russia’s suspension of the treaty and China’s rapidly expanding strategic warhead production. Opponents of the measure argue that the directives will make it more difficult to negotiate a new treaty while complicating efforts to significantly extend the lifespan of the B-52 bomber fleet first introduced during the Cold War.

“The treaty expires in 2026, and the prospect of Russia coming to the table for serious arms control discussions is incredibly unlikely,” House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said last week upon introducing the amendment to the FY25 defense policy bill, legislation the House passed 217-199 on Friday. “We need to be prepared to face a nuclear environment without any treaty limitations.”

The House bill would require the Air Force to begin reconverting the bombers within a month after the current treaty expires and complete the restoration of their nuclear capabilities by 2029. The House passed the B-52 amendment by voice vote over opposition from Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.

“The Department of Defense is not interested in doing this,” said Smith. “What they’re interested in doing is investing in the B-21, which is the next generation nuclear-capable bomber. This would cost a great deal of money. Also, they’re currently trying to extend the life of a number of B-52s out to 2050, which they think they can do. This would be another added expense to that.”

The Senate Armed Services Committee voted 22-3 on Friday to advance its version of the bill with a similar provision directing the restoration of nuclear capabilities across the entire B-52 fleet.

The Air Force’s 76 B-52s are the oldest bombers in its fleet and have been flying since the early 1960s. During the Cold War, the Air Force flew nuclear-armed Stratofortresses along the edge of Soviet airspace.

Today, it remains one of the key elements of the U.S. nuclear triad, and is capable of carrying the AGM-86B air-launched cruise missile, or ALCM, nuclear weapon.

Not all B-52s have that capability. The Air Force in 2015 began removing nuclear capabilities from about 30 B-52Hs to comply with New START requirements.

The Senate ratified New START in 2010. The treaty limits both countries to 1,550 deployed warheads. Although Washington and Moscow agreed to extend the treaty for five years in 2021, Russia suspended its participation in New START in 2023 amid heightened tensions with NATO over its invasion of Ukraine.

Air Force Global Strike Command declined to comment about the potential restoration of nuclear capabilities to the rest of the B-52 fleet.

Mark Gunzinger, a former B-52 pilot and director of future concepts and capability assessments at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said that if it does happen, the reconversions would probably take place during depot maintenance at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, as the B-52 fleet receives top-to-bottom upgrades.

Later this decade, the Air Force will begin a sweeping overhaul of the B-52 fleet, giving the six-decade-old bombers new engines, radar, avionics, digital cockpit displays, wheels and brakes, and other improvements.

The modernization is so significant that the service plans to redub these bombers the B-52J. The service eventually plans to have a fleet of two bombers, with the B-52J flying alongside the new B-21 Raider once the Air Force retires the B-1 Lancer and B-2 Spirit.

Deployed warheads

President Joe Biden’s arms control adviser Pranay Vaddi told the annual Arms Control Association conference in Washington this month that the U.S. has reached out to Russia about negotiating a follow-on agreement to New START but that Moscow has been unwilling to engage.

He said the Biden administration does not currently plan to increase the number of deployed warheads, though those decisions would be contingent on Russian and Chinese actions ahead of New START’s expiration.

“The reasons for having an increase in your day-to-day deployed nuclear weapons has to be pretty compelling for a decision to be made to do that,” said Vaddi. “One of the main triggers for that or the latest indicators that we have to pay attention to is what the [People’s Republic of China] ends up doing.”

“Those are important considerations for us to bear in mind as we march toward February 1, 2026.”

The U.S. deploys some 1,770 strategic nuclear warheads while Russia deploys around 1,822, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative. China currently has around 500 operational warheads and the Pentagon expects Beijing will reach 1,500 by 2035.

Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, argued the B-52 amendment and other measures in the defense bill could make negotiating a follow-up treaty with Russia more difficult.

“This provision as well as some other provisions that are in the bills that purpose steps to increase the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons are extremely premature, counterproductive and – given the skyrocketing cost of the existing nuclear weapons modernization program – they’re cost prohibitive,” Kimball told Defense News. “Some members of Congress unnecessarily panic and are looking for ways to increase the US stockpile without a clear national security rationale.”

Another provision in the Senate defense policy bill from Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska, the top Republican on the Strategic Forces panel, would require a plan to develop an additional 50 Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles on top of 400 ICBMs already deployed.

Gunzinger said that with Russia no longer adhering to the New START treaty, it makes sense to bolster the B-52 fleet’s nuclear capabilities given the potential threats the United States could face from China and Russia, as well as Iran and North Korea.

“We’re now facing a situation where there’s two nuclear peers,” Gunzinger told Defense News. “We have a nuclear triad that’s sized for a single nuclear peer, Russia.”

Gunzinger said the restoration could probably be done without much difficulty. The necessary wiring is probably still in place, he said, and physical components that had been removed could be re-installed.

“It’s doable, and that’s the beauty of maintaining bombers that can be re-equipped with the appropriate [nuclear weapons] components,” he said. “It’s a hedge against future uncertainty, and we are now in a future where it’s not one that we expected, even just a few short years ago.”