WASHINGTON ― The Pentagon announced it will speed up its delivery of Patriot missiles and M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, opting to send a refurbished older model that can be ready faster and reach Ukrainian troops fighting Russia’s invasion force by this fall.

The original plan was to send Ukraine 31 of the newer M1A2 Abrams, which could have taken a year or two to build and ship. But Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has approved new plans to send the older M1A1 version from Army stocks, which will be easier for Ukrainian forces to learn to use and maintain as they fight Russia’s invasion.

“DoD, in close coordination with Ukraine, made the decision to buy the M1A1 variant which will enable us to significantly expedite delivery timelines, and deliver this important capability to Ukraine by the fall of this year,” said the Pentagon’s press secretary, Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder.

The U.S. will refurbish excess M1 hulls and ship them as the M1A1 SA variant, outfitting the 70-ton behemoths with 120mm cannons and 50-caliber machine guns. Poland in January signed a contract for 250 M1A2 Abrams SEPv3 tanks; U.S. Defense Department officials could not immediately say how they planned to juggle the Ukraine purchase and foreign military sales.

The Pentagon is committed to training Ukrainian troops on using and maintaining the tanks, but no details or timeline were forthcoming on Tuesday.

Separately, Patriot surface-to-air guided missile defense systems will be deployed to Ukraine faster than originally planned, Ryder said. That’s because Ukrainian soldiers will complete their training on the systems at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, faster than scheduled.

The U.S. pledged one Patriot battery in December, and Germany pledged an additional Patriot battery.

U.S. President Joe Biden announced in January he would send 31 General Dynamics Land Systems-made tanks to Ukraine, reversing course after Germany cleared the way for Europe to send its own main battle tanks.

Ukrainian leaders have pressed for the Abrams to strengthen their defenses in anticipation of Russia mounting a spring offensive, and earlier this year Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that August would be “too late” for the weapons to make a difference.

After visiting the Abrams factory in Lima, Ohio, Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., who co-chairs the Ukraine Caucus, criticized the Biden administration’s pace in deciding to send tanks to Ukraine.

“To folks who think I’m being too strong,” Quigley said, “what do you want the Ukrainians to do? Hurl rocks at the Russian tanks?”

Army officials were saying publicly for weeks that they were wrestling with faster options, once the decision had been made, but it was tough.

“A tank by itself is not a military capability. You have to send the whole package, and that includes ammunition, vehicles to maintain it, fuel, and you have to do the training on the system so that it can be sustained in combat,” Army acquisition chief Doug Bush said at a Defense News webinar earlier this month. “Efforts are underway to do it as quickly as possible.”

Beyond concerns about how quickly the tanks will arrive, it’s unclear whether they will arrive in large enough numbers to make a difference. Thirty-one tanks is enough to outfit three tank companies, said retired Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe, former commander of the Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Georgia.

“They need brigades, not companies. Right now we’re seeing this kind of ‘drip, drip’ with platoons and companies,” Donahoe said. “If you only give them one battalion, you don’t give them the capability to overmatch the Russians, which a number of Western-style armored brigades would give them.”

State Department and Pentagon officials said in letters to Capitol Hill on Monday that cuts floated by Republicans would harm efforts to deter and compete with China and “effectively zero out” aid to Ukraine.

House Republicans have reportedly pledged to cut federal spending for fiscal 2024 back to their fiscal 2022 levels as part of a January deal to elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as speaker. However, Republicans have also since come out against cuts to defense, which makes them less likely but leaves nondefense programs vulnerable.

The House Appropriations Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, sent a letter in January to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the leaders of all other federal agencies seeking more details on the impact of fiscal cuts by House Republicans. On Monday, she posted the replies.

Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord, in his March 17 letter, stuck up for the nondefense side, saying that even if the department was exempt from cuts, those cuts would be “just as harmful.” The federal government’s response to the Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine shows the value of integrating all forms of assistance, he added.

“No one agency could achieve the effects we are producing as a team, and deep cuts to any one of the agencies would undermine the effort as a whole,” McCord’s letter read.

The State Department ― which requested billions of dollars for Indo-Pacific missions and to counter Chinese influence though security, infrastructure and economic support to U.S. allies and partners around the globe ― said those efforts would be hurt.

A rollback to FY22 levels would include a $2 billion cut to the State Department’s security sector assistance budget, according to the seven-page letter from Naz Durakoğlu and Jodi Herman, the respective legislative affairs chiefs for the department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. It’s a category that includes foreign military financing for partner nations to buy American-made weaponry.

“Such assistance is critical to enhancing military-to-military interoperability, training, and cooperation, as well as fighting corruption, and money-laundering,” the March 17 letter read, adding that such a cut would also be like “opening the door for our competitors.”

To the Pentagon, a rollback to FY22 levels would mean a $100 billion — or nearly 12% — budget cut, compared to Biden’s FY24 budget request of $842 billion, McCord said in his three-page letter to DeLauro.

“The Department of Defense is concerned about both the magnitude and potential method of implementing such reductions, which would have harmful and potentially devastating effects on our people, our mission and our national interests,” McCord wrote.

Such cuts, he said, would upend congressionally supported efforts to stabilize the defense-industrial base and also stymie modernization efforts. Beyond that, they would mean less money for the Indo-Pacific Deterrence Initiative and proposed munitions plus-ups at the center of the FY24 request ― both aimed at deterring China in the region.

The U.S. Navy would hypothetically take a $10 billion cut, likely eliminating a Virginia-class submarine and DDG-51 destroyer, and also endanger cost-saving multiyear procurement contracts, the letter read.

A notional 40% cut to the nuclear triad modernization would hurt B-21 bomber production plans and the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program.

For planned missile defense upgrades, a rollback means 50% less for space-based missile warning and ground-based midcourse missile defense “at a time when our adversaries are modernizing their offensive capabilities,” the letter read.

“Such ill-advised politics would also have global ramifications,” McCord wrote. “At a time when our allies in NATO and the Indo-Pacific region are increasing their security spending to the levels we have been advocating, a move backward on our part would send the wrong message both to allies and adversaries.”

Furthermore, the Coast Guard would have to cease efforts to buy the offshore patrol cutter and the polar security cutter, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s letter.

That in turn would “create an operational gap and further delay of the U.S. presence in the polar regions and reduce the ability detect, deter, prevent, and disrupt terrorist attacks and other criminal acts in the U.S. maritime domain as well as our National Defense Strategy,” the letter read.

The U.S. State Department approved NATO ally Greece to buy up to 76 Assault Amphibious Vehicles worth $268 million, according to an announcement on Friday. The Marine Corps, which maintains the vehicles are safe, intends to supply the vehicles from its inventory.

Greece, which has sought the deal since at least 2022, has asked to buy 63 of the personnel variant of the so-called AAV, nine of the command variant and four of the recovery variant, with 63 50-caliber machine guns, as well as MK-19 grenade launchers and M36E T1 thermal sights among the related equipment.

After the July 30, 2020 sinking, which killed nine troops, the Marine Corps in December of 2021 restricted its fleet of decades-old AAVs to the land and barred it from deployments or water training except in emergencies. A Marine Corps probe reportedly found that inadequate training, shabby maintenance and poor judgment by leaders led to the sinking of the AAV in one of the deadliest Marine training accidents in decades.

In a statement to Defense News on Friday, a Marine Corps spokesman said that while fleet’s average age is 40 years, the vehicles have undergone “a Service Life Extension Program (SLEP), a Reliability Availability Maintainability/ Rebuilt to Standard Program (RAM/RS), and scheduled cycles through depot-level maintenance” throughout their lives.

“The AAV is a safe vehicle and a viable platform for amphibious operations. As with all combat systems and equipment, strict compliance with maintenance standards is an essential prerequisite to safe and effective operation,” said the spokesman, Maj. Jim Stenger.

According to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency announcement, the sale to Greece will provide “an effective capability to protect maritime interests and infrastructure in support of its strategic location on NATO’s southern flank.”

“Promises must be kept,” Heger said in a tweet on Friday, adding that Slovakia’s military aid was designed to help Ukraine defend itself and “entire Europe against Russia.”

The latest move comes one day after Polish President Andrzej Duda declared his country will supply the first four MiG-29 jets to Ukraine in the coming days, with more aircraft to be delivered in the future.

Slovakia secured 24 single-seater and twin-seater Soviet-made fighters following Czechoslovakia’s dissolution, according to data from the Slovak Ministry of Defence. Of these, the 11 remaining operational aircraft were withdrawn from service last August.

Commenting on the Slovak prime minister’s announcement, the country’s Defence Minister Jaroslav Naď said in a Facebook post on Friday: “Slovakia is donating retired, unused and unusable MiG-29s.” He added that “Ukraine has a plant where they can service them, it has trained pilots” who know how to fly such jets.

In addition to the fighters, Slovakia will also supply elements of its Soviet-built 2K12 KUB air defense systems to Ukraine, local news agency TASR reported. In return for the donated gear, Naď said earlier this week the country hopes to receive about €200 million ($213 million) from the European Union’s European Peace Facility, and some $700 million worth of weapons and military equipment from the United States.

The Polish president said his country’s air force will replace the donated Soviet-made fighters with some of the 48 FA-50 light attack aircraft Poland’s Ministry of National Defence ordered from South Korea in September 2022. The first 12 FA-50s are to be supplied this year, and the remaining 36 jets in the years 2025 to 2028.

In the meantime, Slovakia is awaiting the procurement of 14 F-16 Block 70/72 fighters bought from the U.S. to protect the country’s skies. Deliveries are expected to begin in 2024.

The two eastern European countries’ warplane pledges have not swayed Washington to follow suit by donating F-16s, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Friday.

“We knew that this was something that the Slovakian government was considering doing so it’s not a surprise that they moved in this direction,” Kirby said. “No, it doesn’t have any impact or effect on our own sovereign decision making when it comes to the F-16.”

The U.S. argument is that Ukraine’s military uses Russian-made MiGs and can absorb them quickly but not the Lockheed Martin-made F-16′s.

“They’re comfortable with those fighter aircraft. They know how to fly them and they know how to maintain them; they know how to operate them and use them in a battlefield situation,” Kirby said, calling the MiGs “additive to the fighter aircraft capabilities that the Ukrainian Air Force has at their disposal.”

Kirby called Slovakia “a terrific supporter” of efforts to aid Ukraine, to which the U.S. has pledged more than $30 billion in military aid since the invasion.

It’s the latest in a surge of demand for the Raytheon Technologies-made Tomahawk, after U.S. Navy officials said this week their proposed budget, with foreign military sales, would max out the production line. Japan’s new budget would reportedly bulk-buy 400 Tomahawks for as much as $1.6 billion, among other counterstrike capabilities.

The State Department approved a U.S.-Australia deal for up to 200 Block V and 20 Block IV rounds, plus related support, according to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency announcement.

Canberra has said the missiles would be fielded on its Hobart-class destroyers, enabling them to strike land targets at greater distances, with better precision. Variants of the Block V can change targets in flight and strike moving targets at sea.

Tomahawk’s range of more than 1,000 miles is especially important in the Asia-Pacific region, where China’s rocket force has extraordinary reach as its DF-26 and DF-21 missiles have ranges of 2,490 and 1,335 miles respectively, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The U.S. Navy in 2021 began fielding the Block V Tomahawk for the vertical launching systems on surface ships, but also on attack submarines that can more easily operate within range of China’s rocket force.

The U.S.-Australia deal comes days after the two countries and Britain announced Australia would acquire nuclear-powered submarines by 2040 ― first hosting and later buying U.S. Virginia-class attack subs during the interim.

Canberra in 2021 announced its intent to purchase Tomahawks, along with Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles-Extended Range for its fighter jets and Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles, which are both made by Lockheed Martin. It is also participating in the U.S.-led Precision Strike Missile program, or PrSM.

“The proposed sale will improve Australia’s capability to interoperate with U.S. maritime forces and other allied forces as well as its ability to contribute to missions of mutual interest,” the State Department announcement reads.

“By deploying the Tomahawk Weapon System, Australia will contribute to global readiness and enhance the capability of U.S. Forces operating alongside them globally. Australia will use the enhanced capability as a deterrent to regional threats and to strengthen its homeland defense.”

The Joint Production Accelerator Cell would serve as a new organization for the team of defense officials who helped ramp up production of aid sent to Ukraine ― including Javelins, Stingers and 155mm artillery rounds ― and broaden it to other weapons.

“We are institutionalizing that effort into a permanent production accelerator, instead of it be reactive and standing up in a crisis,” Pentagon acquisition chief Bill LaPlante said at the McAleese & Associates conference Wednesday. “The question we are now posing to this new team is how do we ramp production up and down more flexibly and cheaply in the future.”

The organization, to be led by Pentagon industrial-base policy adviser Erin Simpson, stems from the Munitions Industrial Deep Dive team, which helped channel more than $2 billion in Ukraine-related appropriations and mitigate workforce and supply chain issues. One focus, LaPlante said, will be the potential use of advanced manufacturing techniques.

The move comes as the Pentagon aims to restock billions of dollars in munitions and other equipment sent to Ukraine ― and as its budget proposal offers $30.6 billion for missiles and munitions and an initiative to max out several munitions production lines.

According to a March 10 memo from LaPlante, the organization will develop actionable recommendations to build production capacity for specific systems. The systems “may evolve with the threat environment” and would be selected by the acquisition office “based on periodic deliberate processes with senior Department leaders,” the memo reads.

On Wednesday, LaPlante linked long lead times for weapons to a post-Cold War efficiency drive that shut down many excess production lines in the defense industry. At the same time, he said, the industry cannot easily stop and start complex production lines and is justifiably reluctant to invest in expanding capacity “until they have a clear, consistent demand signal or business case from the DoD.”

“While I’m confident we will manage our way out of this current crisis, we cannot stop managing this once fighting in Ukraine ends, we need to change,” he said. “To ensure we pace the threat posed by China throughout the Indo-Pacific, we cannot return to the feast or famine behavior which is typically employed as the crisis comes and goes.”

On Monday, the U.S., Australia and the United Kingdom unveiled new details about their partnership to produce for Australia its own nuclear-powered submarine by 2040, known as the SSN AUKUS. The U.S. is offering an interim capability of three to five Virginia-class submarines, either newly built or used, in the 2030s.

To meet the U.S. Navy’s undersea warfare needs under a 2021 force structure assessment, the submarine industrial base must sustain a minimum construction rate of two Virginia-class attack submarines and one Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine per year throughout this decade and into the next — without counting any additional submarines for Australia. So far, builders have not been able to keep up with that workload and are years behind schedule on some Virginia submarines.

This week, senior defense officials, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, told Defense News a series of investments from Congress and Australia, with the AUKUS pact in mind, are meant to help industry “get to that 2.0 delivery cadence that we’re expecting” on the Virginia program and even achieve rates “north of 2.0″ while working on the Australian boat or boats.

However, one of those officials said the Navy was not expecting to see “sustained 3.0 production” of these attack submarines in the long run.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday on Wednesday said the investment would help the shipbuilders and their suppliers “sustain that 2.0 cadence, which by the way needs to go above 2.0 attack boats a year if we’re going to be in a position to sell any to the Australians.”

And Naval Sea Systems Command commander Vice Adm. Bill Galinis confirmed industry is still delivering about 1.2 submarines a year — reflecting that the Navy is buying two a year and industry is delivering them late.

At a Pentagon press conference Tuesday, the assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities, Mara Karlin, said the pact would “lift all three nations’ submarine industrial bases and undersea capability, enhancing deterrence and promoting stability in the region.”

“Australia’s acquisition of SSNs will bolster the capabilities of one of our strongest allies by increasing the Royal Australian Navy’s range, survivability and striking power, thus strengthening deterrence in the Indo-Pacific,” Karlin said.

Before Australia acquires its own Virginia-class subs, a new collaborative entity known as Submarine Rotational Forces-West will establish a rotational presence of one UK Astute class submarine and up to four U.S. Virginia-class SSNs at Australia’s Stirling military base near Perth.

Amid the concerns of U.S. lawmakers that AUKUS will make it more difficult to meet U.S. submarine needs, defense officials say the industrial base investments will also cut maintenance timelines, making the submarines the U.S. Navy has more operationally available.

A history of industrial base challenges

The Navy was already ramping up its financial support of the submarine industrial base well before AUKUS was decided. The sea service spent more than $1 billion between fiscal 2018 and 2022 on bolstering the two nuclear shipbuilding yards and their thousands of suppliers, and kicked off another five-year, $2.4 billion investment in FY23 — on top of the annual cost of procuring submarines.

The Navy this year is also launching a separate $2.2 billion investment in Virginia-class maintenance and readiness, which will also benefit many of the same parts suppliers.

The industrial base is facing a range of challenges after shrinking by about 70% when the Navy took a break from buying submarines following the end of the Cold War. A smaller industrial base began Virginia-class construction in 1998 at a rate of one boat a year, but in FY11, the Navy moved to a two-a-year rate, and by 2019, it was clear industry had fallen behind.

Attack sub construction fell even further behind as the Navy asked industry to prioritize the growing Columbia-class workload. And the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent labor market disruption left the Virginia production line in a dire situation, with industry delivering no submarines to the Navy between April 2020 and February 2022.

The attack submarine fleet has shrunk to 49, compared to a 2021 assessment’s requirement for 66 to 72. For the fleet to reach that required size, industry would need to get back on track and then increase its production rate to something closer to three a year.

There was a time when Navy officials thought a couple-billion-dollar infusion into the submarine industrial base could help expand production from two Virginias a year to three. In June 2021, then-acting Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition Jay Stefany told senators it would take “a major investment of effort, capital and workforce” and cited an internal study that called for $1.5 billion to $2 billion – plus industry’s own investments – to get to that higher rate.

The Navy will ultimately spend more than that just to secure on-time production of two Virginias a year.

But AUKUS could change that.

A senior administration official told Defense News last week the Navy investments so far “are down payments on what needs to be done for the U.S. submarine industrial base,” adding the administration would “work with Congress to get very substantial lifts in the U.S. submarine industrial base, lifts that go significantly beyond the $4.6 billion we will have submitted with the president’s budget submission,” referring to the $2.4 billion effort that began last year and the $2.2 billion effort kicked off with this week’s FY24 request.

“In an unprecedented move, Australia has agreed to make a proportional contribution to the U.S. submarine industrial base to help lift our production and maintenance capabilities to offset the loss of those submarines,” the official added, noting this undisclosed sum would come on top of paying the “full and fair price” for the used and the new submarines.

The official called the American and Australian investments “generational” and said they would have “a huge impact on our overall defense posture.”

Though the senior administration official would not say the amount of Australia’s contribution to the industrial base, Reuters reported Australia would invest $3 billion in the U.S. and U.K. submarine industrial bases over the next four years. That includes funds for U.S. workers to help Australia set up its own nascent submarine industrial base in Adelaide and for their Australian counterparts to work in U.S. shipyards across the country.

Here’s a closer look at what’s been invested so far:

Submarine industrial base and workforce development

The Navy last year made the first payments of a five-year, $2.4 billion investment in industrial base and workforce development support, including nearly $750 million in FY23 for the submarine industrial base.

Rep. Joe Courtney, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee’s seapower panel, noted the newly released FY24 budget proposal seeks $647 million more to expand the submarine industrial base.

Courtney’s Connecticut district includes the General Dynamics Electric Boat submarine construction yard, one of only two shipyards in the nation that build nuclear-powered submarines. (The other is HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia.)

“I’ve been in Congress now 17 years, we’ve never seen a number like that in terms of workforce, supply chain and facility” investments, Courtney told reporters on a Tuesday call, noting previous submarine capacity investments ranged from $100 to $200 million per year prior to FY23.

The FY23 funding included $541 million for supplier development, workforce development, shipyard infrastructure and strategic outsourcing to other shipyards – which Courtney noted benefitted not just the Connecticut and Virginia shipyards, but suppliers around the country.

For instance, Austal USA’s Alabama shipyard recently started to build Command and Control Systems Modules and Electronic Deck Modules for Virginia- and Columbia-class submarines.

“The strategic outsourcing like what’s happening down in Alabama can be replicated in other parts of the country to take some of the pressure off of man hours” at the construction yards that don’t have the workforce or the facilities to accept more work, said Courtney.

During the Tuesday interview, the senior administration official said some of these investments are aimed at vendors deep in the supply chain, for hard-to-get metals, machine tooling or, say, an air conditioning unit unique to nuclear-powered ships.

“The supplier base investment goes all the way down [the supply chain] to better access to the right types of alloys, the right types of metals for material procurement,” one senior administration official said.

Congress designated the remaining $207 million in FY23 submarine industrial base funding for workforce development initiatives to help the shipyards cope with labor shortages that have hindered production.

“The pursuit of people and investments is almost like The Hunger Games out there right now,” said Courtney, referencing the dystopian novels and movies. He noted Electric Boat made almost 4,000 new hires last year and has set an ambitious target to hire an additional 5,700 workers this year alone.

The Department of Labor has also funds a manufacturing pipeline program that trains the welders, mechanists and electricians that shipyards rely on in as little as eight to 10 weeks.

Virginia-class readiness spending

Another challenge stemming from the industry output is the lack of spare parts for in-service Virginia submarines, leading the Navy to have to cannibalize parts from one submarine to finish up another boat’s repairs.

In fact, a 2021 Congressional Budget Office report showed the number of parts taken from one Virginia submarine to complete maintenance on another skyrocketed in 2019 and remained high since.

That’s where the new $2.2 billion investment in Virginia-class spares and maintenance will come into play.

The Navy is asking for $541 million in FY24 for spare parts, according to Rear Adm. John Gumbleton, the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget and director of fiscal management.

“This is a dramatic increase that we’ve never done before,” he said, noting the remainder of the investment will come across the next five years.

Gumbleton said the Navy did not want to wait to start fixing the problem. Even as Congress works through the FY24 budget process, the service will use its Navy Working Capital Fund to purchase $200 million to $350 million in spare parts so that they’re waiting on the shelves in FY24 and the Navy can use its appropriated funds to buy those parts for immediate use.

This funding is meant to give parts suppliers an increased but stable demand while also helping address widespread maintenance delays. These delays have led to 18 submarines in or awaiting maintenance, instead of what should be 10 under operations and maintenance planning assumptions.

This means the Navy has 31 attack subs available to conduct training, global operations and tactics development work, compared to 39 if today’s fleet saw on-time maintenance, or 53 to 58 if the submarine fleet was the required size.

Speaking to reporters, Mike McCord said the Pentagon, which proposed an $842 billion budget on Thursday, is drafting a letter to explain several examples of how the department would absorb a potential defense cut. Though only a handful of Republicans lawmakers publicly favor the idea of a defense cut, the letter would likely become ammunition in the Capitol Hill budget battles to come.

“I don’t rule out the possibility the House will produce a budget resolution that implements that policy and tells the appropriators to go figure it out ― [whether to] exempt defense, don’t exempt defense [from cuts],” McCord said on the sidelines of the McAleese and Associates conference. “We do take it seriously. I wouldn’t say it’s a super likely outcome, but that’s not the same as not-worried about it.”

The House Appropriations Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, sent a letter in January to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the leaders of all other federal agencies seeking more details on the impact of fiscal cuts by House Republicans.

The letter to Austin is identical to the ones DeLauro sent to all other agency heads, which include the same queries, one of which asks: “How will these cuts affect our national security and global interests around the world?”

McCord said he hopes to issue a response this week after it was delayed amid the budget rollout and after White House input.

“We are going to respond to Congresswoman DeLauro’s letter with some illustrative examples and make clear our opposition to the idea,” McCord said, adding that it would not be a comprehensive report.

However, Republican leaders and the vast majority of the caucus have insisted they will slash discretionary spending without cutting the defense budget — though it’s unclear how they intend to follow through on that pledge. In fact, several lead Republicans in Congress blasted the Biden administration’s proposed 3.3% defense budget increase as “inadequate” last week.

Although lead Republicans have been saying defense cuts should be taken off the table, the idea of lowering nondefense accounts alone is “totally unrealistic,” McCord said.

He added that President Joe Biden’s proposed defense budget increase helps the Pentagon absorb a mandatory annual pay raise for troops, which accounts for roughly $10 billion of proposed new spending.

Because shrinking the military quickly is logistically difficult, readiness accounts ― proposed at $146 billion ― would be the likely target for such a cut, he said.

“If you have to eat ten, fifteen or twenty billion dollars of compensation costs, with a flat top line, where does that come out of, right?” McCord said.

The MQ-9 Reaper drone was flying a routine surveillance mission in international airspace when it crossed paths with two Su-27 fighters around 7 a.m. local time, according to U.S. Air Forces in Europe.

The Russian jets began antagonizing the unmanned aircraft, repeatedly dumping fuel on and buzzing in front of the much smaller Reaper, the Air Force said. One Su-27 drew close enough to hit the drone’s tail propeller, causing its remote operators to lose control of the plane.

“Because of the damage, we were in a position to have to essentially crash it into the Black Sea,” Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters at a briefing Tuesday afternoon. “It was unflyable and uncontrollable, and we took it down.”

He declined to answer whether the drone was armed at the time.

The incident resulted in a “complete loss” of the MQ-9 and nearly caused the Su-27 to crash as well, USAFE Commander Gen. James Hecker said in a release. The command declined to answer further questions on Tuesday.

Ryder said the Russians have not recovered the MQ-9, referring questions about American efforts to find the aircraft to the U.S. Navy. The Navy referred questions to U.S. European Command, which said it had no further details to offer.

Ryder confirmed that the Russian pilot landed after the collision, but did not say where. The Defense Department is working to declassify imagery of the incident.

It’s the first time an unsafe interaction with Russian aircraft has downed a U.S. drone, according to John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council.

“U.S. and allied aircraft will continue to operate in international airspace and we call on the Russians to conduct themselves professionally and safely,” he said.

American and European air forces routinely intercept Russian aircraft that encroach on NATO airspace and push the limits of risky maneuvers. MQ-9 drones — known for their “eye in the sky” role in counterterrorism operations — have been a key part of U.S. efforts to surveil Russia’s war in Ukraine for more than a year. The U.S. has flown Reapers from Poland, Romania, Greece and Estonia.

“These aggressive actions by Russian aircrew are dangerous and could lead to miscalculation and unintended escalation,” USAFE said.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has not talked to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, about the collision, Ryder told reporters. The State Department said it would personally complain to Anatoly Antanov, Russia’s ambassador to the United States.

President Joe Biden was briefed on the incident by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan earlier in the day, Kirby told reporters.

“This MQ-9 was operating in international airspace over international waters and posed a threat to nobody,” Kirby said.

While Kirby acknowledged that intercepts between American and Russian aircraft over the Black Sea are common, especially in recent weeks, he said Tuesday’s run-in was “unique” and “noteworthy” for its disregard for safety and professionalism.

The U.S. has been consistently flying over the Black Sea’s international airspace and will continue to do so, Kirby said.

In 2019, Iran shot down a U.S. Navy Broad Area Maritime Surveillance—Demonstrator drone, a version of the Air Force’s RQ-4 Global Hawk, in the Strait of Hormuz, prompting then-U.S. President Donald Trump to consider a retaliatory strike. He later backtracked, citing potential civilian casualties. The two countries made contradictory claims, and U.S. military officials ultimately downplayed the incident.

The same year, the U.S. military alleged Libyan forces using Russian air defenses brought down a drone near Tripoli.

The notable exclusion of politically sensitive Ukraine contingency funding from the budget request suggests the Pentagon may be seeking to insulate its core programs against Capitol Hill cross-currents. House Republicans are divided on Ukraine aid, and some have also made an ambitious promise to slash discretionary spending by at least $130 billion even as they seek to grow the overall defense budget.

But excluding Ukraine aid from the $842 billion in Pentagon spending the Biden administration has requested for fiscal 2024 puts the onus on Congress — if it wants to continue to help Kyiv — to pass billions of dollars more in supplemental appropriations.

Pentagon budget officials attributed the decision to rely on supplementals to the uncertain nature of the war.

“Ukraine support above the pre-conflict levels is not in this budget; the situation remains too fluid,” Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord told reporters at Monday’s budget rollout. “The way we’re handling this is the way we’ve handled every emerging situation in the last few years, and that’s supplementals.”

The Republican divide over whether to continue aid to Kyiv ― and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s vow not to grant Ukraine a “blank check” ― has prompted House GOP leaders to spotlight the extensive oversight on Ukraine aid and that U.S. weapons have not been diverted from their intended use.

But even some Democrats supportive of the aid have have begun to question the Biden administration’s reliance on extra-budgetary means. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., for instance, told Defense News he would rather include Ukraine aid as part of the defense budget.

“My personal preference would be to bake it into the base budget,” Whitehouse said. “That sends a very positive signal to Ukraine. But there are a lot of players in this world who have a voice on that. And I’m very comfortable following the lead of my colleagues on the Armed Services Committee and the Appropriations Committee as to what they think the best way to go would be.”

At a defense appropriations subcommittee hearing last month, Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif., said the Biden administration needs to “do a better job of messaging on this long-term, especially over the next two years,” while Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii, called on the Pentagon at the same hearing to “be totally honest with everybody about what this is all going to cost.”

“People need to know what this will cost and people need to consider how to fund it,” Case said. “We have colleagues that are good representatives of their constituents who want to increase, who want to decrease, who want to borrow more, who want to borrow less and we just need to know what it takes realistically to get through the assumption … that this war is going to continue.”

Emergency spending for the Pentagon is not new, but it grew increasingly controversial in the final years of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Funds were appropriated through Overseas Contingency Operations spending packages outside the base budget, which some lawmakers likened to a “budget gimmick.”

According to the Congressional Budget Office, emergency funds made up 2% of the Pentagon’s budget between 1970 and 2000, but grew after Sept. 11, 2001 and peaked at 28% in 2007 and 2008. Overseas Contingency Operations spending averaged about $119 billion per year before President Joe Biden’s 2022 budget request eliminated it.

Though the Biden administration has doubled down on using emergency Ukraine spending rather than starting to integrate it into the regular budget process, as recently as last month a senior Pentagon official testified that the Biden administration had started work on placing Ukraine assistance within the base budget.

“There is work ongoing to build it into a base budget, and we are not ruling out coming back to you for a supplemental,” Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Celeste Wallander told the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel on Feb. 28.

But on Monday, McCord said the Pentagon would rely on emergency supplementals. Though his office has not put together additional supplemental spending requests for fiscal 2023 or fiscal 2024, he said, the Pentagon was able to quickly draft four supplementals in 12 months.

“The spring offensives are not far along enough for us to draw any conclusions on that,” McCord said. “We can do them quickly, especially if we do them in short windows, but we’re not trying to prognosticate a whole year in advance.”

McCord noted some proposed funds that had gone into the base budget’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative would now go into the European Deterrence Initiative — for which the Biden administration has requested nearly $5 billion in FY24.

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget announced last week it was only seeking $6 billion in Ukraine aid as part of its FY24 base budget, an amount roughly on par with funding for Kyiv before Russia’s invasion last year.

That $6 billion is also a small fraction of the $113 billion in military and economic aid for Ukraine that Congress passed last year via four emergency supplemental packages.