The chamber’s draft NDAA, which members of the Senate Armed Services Committee unveiled Friday, represents the latest of three different approaches lawmakers are taking to F-35 purchases for next year, which must be reconciled at some point.

The Air Force’s FY25 budget proposal requested money to buy 42 F-35As, and the Navy and Marine Corps budgets would buy 13 F-35Bs and 13 F-35Cs.

The House’s version of the NDAA would drastically slash F-35 purchases, cutting the initial order down to 58. That bill, which the House narrowly approved Friday, would then bar the Pentagon from accepting delivery of 10 of those remaining jets until it shows problems with the F-35 are fixed.

But the House’s proposed defense appropriations bill, a separate piece of legislation, would add eight more F-35s — two F-35A and six F-35C jets — for a total of 76 new fighters in FY25.

House Armed Services Committee staffers said members of the panel “have grown frustrated with the F-35 program,” most recently with the delayed Technology Refresh 3 upgrades. The TR-3 hardware and software upgrades, which will give the F-35 better displays, computer memory and processing power, are now about a year overdue, and the military has refused to accept delivery of the newest jets since July 2023.

This led the committee to propose cutting F-35 purchases in the House NDAA and reinvesting the roughly $1 billion that would save to ensure the jets work properly.

The Senate NDAA would also grant the Air Force’s request to retire 56 A-10 Warthog attack planes, 65 older F-15C and F-15D Eagle fighters, and 11 F-16 Fighting Falcons. But it would block the service’s effort to retire 26 F-15Es and 32 F-22 Raptors.

The House NDAA likewise would allow the A-10, F-15C, F-15D and F-16 requirements, while blocking the retirement of the F-22s and temporarily pausing the F-15E retirements.

The Air Force said those older Block 20 F-22s are not combat-capable and would cost too much to prepare for a fight. The service therefore wants to retire them to free up money for other priorities.

And the Senate NDAA would require the Air Force to hold onto 16 E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system aircraft until they can be replaced by the Boeing-made E-7, or until the service can retire the E-3s without causing a capability gap.

The Senate NDAA would also add money for the Air Force to buy five more HH-60W combat rescue helicopters, while reducing funding for the Survivable Airborne Operations Center “doomsday plane” and the VC-25B Air Force One due to contract delays. A program to expand the C-40 VIP transportation aircraft fleet would also have its funding cut.

The Senate draft also calls on the Air Force to submit an annual report on its tactical fighter force structure, and for the Air Force and Navy to jointly conduct a study on the military’s future air superiority mission in the 2030s and 2040s. The two services are working on their own future fighter aircraft they each call Next Generation Air Dominance, which could start to come online beginning in the 2030s.

Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee unveiled their draft of the massive defense authorization bill Friday morning, just as House lawmakers narrowly adopted their version of the measure, mostly along party lines in a 217-199 vote.

After the full Senate amends its committee’s draft over the next few weeks, the two chambers will begin negotiations over a compromise bill to send to the president’s desk later this year.

The legislation, which has passed Congress annually for more than 60 years, includes a host of pay authorizations, program changes and policy updates that impact almost every corner of the Defense Department. As such, the bill is closely watched by Pentagon planners and military advocates all year long, and it commands significant attention from lawmakers both on and off the military oversight committees.

Here’s a look at the major differences in the House and Senate bills, and the debates ahead.

Total defense spending

While the authorization bill doesn’t provide direct funding for military operations (the annual appropriations bill does that), the overall spending levels prescribed in the measure typically set the tone for debate over how much money the Defense Department will get next year.

In the House, that total is about $884 billion, in line with a debt ceiling agreement between the White House and Congress last summer to cap spending increases for fiscal 2025 at 1%.

The Senate authorization bill comes in at $923 billion, a 5% boost in overall defense spending, including $12.5 billion in emergency funding for military disaster recovery construction in Guam following Typhoon Mawar last year.

The roughly $25 billion extra in non-Guam funding provided in the Senate bill would allow the Defense Department to pursue several additional shipbuilding, procurement and military construction priorities.

“If you look at this bill overall, you would definitely see that the pivot to the Indo-Pacific is also a pivot to sea power, and more and more focus is going to be on the sea power investments,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who chairs the committee’s sea power panel, told reporters after the markup.

For instance, the extra spending in the bill partially helps fund a second Virginia-class attack submarine against the Navy’s wishes; the service requested a single attack submarine for FY25 due to production delays in the industrial base. The Senate bill authorizes $1.1 billion in partial funding for the second submarine, slightly more than the House version.

The Senate bill also allows for an extra $4 billion in munitions procurement across the services, including to expand capacity for production lines for items like the Precision Strike Missile as well as the Standard Missile-2 and -6 weapons.

Another $3.1 billion would go toward military construction projects for the unfunded priorities lists submitted by various services and combatant commands.

Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the committee, successfully offered the amendment to increase defense spending beyond the FY25 debt ceiling caps, arguing that the U.S. needs to spend more on the military to compete with China and Russia. However, the increase was less than the extra $55 billion he initially sought for FY25.

The committee’s chairman, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., voted against his panel’s authorization plan because of the high spending total. But a majority of Republicans and Democrats on the committee backed the increase in a 22-3 vote. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., also voted against it.

Negotiating a final defense spending total will likely involve input from the White House and chamber fights over nondefense program funding, potentially complicating and lengthening the compromise process.

Junior enlisted pay raises

House lawmakers made quality of life for younger service members a major focus of their authorization bill, highlighted by a 15% average pay raise for troops E-4 and below. Supporters say the move will raise basic pay for all troops above $30,000, an adjustment meant to ensure military families aren’t facing financial strain while serving.

But the White House has strongly opposed the targeted pay boost, which could cost about $3 billion next year and more than $24 billion over the next five years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Administration officials back a 4.5% pay raise across the board for all troops (both the House and Senate also support that) but advised waiting on extra money for enlisted troops until next year, after a Pentagon study on military compensation is complete.

Despite including more overall defense funding in their bill, Senate lawmakers only offered an extra 1% boost for troops E-3 and below on top of the across-the-board pay raise.

That would give most junior enlisted troops a few hundred dollars extra next year, as opposed to the several thousand dollars in salary increases in the House plan. However, Senate officials also added an extra $1 billion to potentially boost junior enlisted pay even further. The committee still needs to work out the details of those pay table changes.

Sorting out which plan survives congressional negotiations could have a major impact on young military families’ finances.

And that’s not the only pocketbook issue to be discussed by negotiators. House lawmakers also backed increases to service members’ housing stipends that were omitted by Senate bill authors. And the House draft includes an expansion of the military Basic Needs Allowance, money designed to provide additional support to families struggling to cover food and household costs.

Social issues

Most of the social issues expected to cause controversy in bill negotiations this summer come from the House draft of the authorization bill.

In floor work this week, Republican lawmakers added riders ending the Pentagon’s abortion access policy for troops stationed in states where the procedure is outlawed. They also included provisions to freeze hiring for diversity jobs in the military, limit care for transgender troops, and bar discussion of “radical gender ideology” or ”critical race theory” in training sessions.

Those moves drew the ire of Democratic lawmakers in the House, many of whom backed the bill when it came out of committee but opposed it because of what they called tangential social issue fights.

Republicans did not need Democratic support to advance the bill out of the House, but will need to reach a compromise on those issues in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Similar provisions included in last year’s House drafts were ultimately stripped out by negotiators.

The Senate draft again includes a push to require women to register for the Selective Service System, currently only mandated for men aged 18 through 25. House members have opposed that idea in recent years.

The plan, unveiled Wednesday by Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., would ultimately raise U.S. defense spending from 3% to 5% of gross domestic product in the years ahead, a massive surge likely to come in well above $1 trillion per year.

Much of the proposed long-term spending in Wicker’s plan would go toward revitalizing the struggling defense-industrial base, which the senator argues is necessary to successfully counter an “axis of aggressors” comprised of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

He hopes additional industrial base funding will enable the U.S. to drastically bolster the size of its Navy and Air Force fleets as well as munitions production and the nuclear arsenal.

“This will enable the United States to fix our failing defense infrastructure, field a new generation of equipment and maintain American technological leadership,” Wicker wrote in the proposal. “This [3%] of GDP spent on defense is nearing historic lows not seen since the peace dividend of the 1990s.”

The document lays out many of Wicker’s short- and long-term priorities as the Senate Armed Services Committee prepares to mark up its FY25 defense policy bill next month. The House Armed Services Committee advanced its defense policy legislation last week, an $883.7 billion bill in line with the FY25 defense spending caps lawmakers agreed to last year.

Some of the additional $55 billion Wicker seeks to add above the FY25 spending caps mirrors the unfunded priorities lists each military service and combatant command submitted to Congress earlier this year.

For instance, Wicker wants an additional $2 billion to “disperse and harden [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command] infrastructure,” another $2.25 billion for “Guam disaster recovery and resilient rebuild,” and $500 million for a Guam defense system.

Additionally, Wicker is seeking $500 million to create “regional contingency stockpiles” to help Indo-Pacific Command overcome logistical challenges in the event of a conflict in the area.

“Prepositioned stocks generally must be expanded in the western Pacific,” the document notes. “In particular, the Army Prepositioned Stocks program has been perennially underfunded — by almost $1 billion this year.”

Wicker’s proposal also calls on the Pentagon to create a weapons stockpile in Taiwan, which Congress authorized in the FY23 defense bill, mirroring the U.S. war reserve stockpile in Israel.

It also seeks to allocate $1.5 billion in replenishment funds to allow the Defense Department to send Taiwan weapons from U.S. stockpiles. The foreign aid bill Congress passed in April included $1.9 billion in FY24 funding for the department to do this, but the House defense policy bill did not include an additional $500 million in FY25 Taiwan aid that the Pentagon asked for as part of its proposed Indo-Pacific Security Initiative.

Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, lead the defense appropriations panel and have also said they want to increase FY25 defense spending above the debt ceiling deal’s FY25 spending caps.

But Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said earlier this month that if defense spending rises, she will insist that nondefense spending also grow, which Republicans have historically opposed.

Total defense spending for FY24 came in at $953 billion following passage of the foreign aid bill, well above the $886 billion national security caps Congress laid out in the base budget for that fiscal year.

The 5% target

Over the longer term, Wicker’s proposal to increase defense spending to 5% of GDP places particular emphasis on growing the defense-industrial base.

“The defense industrial base itself is a weapon,” the proposal states. “The Department of Defense needs a much larger and more capable workforce for defense industrial base issues.”

“For surface ships, the Navy needs to embark immediately upon a comprehensive industrial base investment strategy, just as it has done for the submarine industrial base,” it continues. “As with the submarine industrial base, this investment strategy will require around $20 billion over a period of five years.”

These funds would go toward “extensive funding for workforce development, supply chain resiliency, long-lead item production, development and insertion of additive manufacturing techniques, supplier base diversification and shipyard modernization and expansion.”

Wicker also calls on the Navy to “begin work on a fifth nuclear shipyard, which will likely cost over $20 billion.”

The document faults the Navy for failing “to provide a consistent demand signal to industry” but argues that with the right funding it can meet and even exceed the 355-ship goal by 2035.

Similarly, it notes “the Air Force plans to retire almost 1,000 aircraft over the next five years, including nearly 400 fighters.”

“It has not replaced its aircraft fast enough to keep the fleet from shrinking precipitously, even as the mission demands remain steady or increase,” it reads.

Accordingly, Wicker’s proposal calls on the Air Force to purchase “at least 340″ aircraft above its current plan over the next five years while accelerating production of B-21 bombers and doubling its planned quantity from 100 to 200.

“The Air Force should aim to arrest its shrinking fighter force structure by reversing its plans to retire capable F-15E and F-22 fighters over the next five years and by purchasing at least 340 aircraft above its current plans over the next five years,” the proposal notes.

Additionally, the document cites “a well-known shortage of munitions that will require both additional funding and additional creativity to remedy.” It calls for an additional $7 billion to $10 billion annually for the munitions-industrial base over the next decade.

The document also details a series of industrial base recommendations to grow the U.S. nuclear arsenal. These include extended production of the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine; setting up NATO-style nuclear burden-sharing agreements with Australia, Japan and South Korea; and restoring nuclear capability on B-52 bombers.

Wicker has also co-sponsored a bill to expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The legislation’s other sponsor, Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., hopes to include it in the Senate’s FY25 defense policy bill.

It’s clear that buying military equipment in bulk is a win for the customer (those in uniform), a win for industry and its workers, and a win for Congress and the taxpayer to maximize return on public investment.

What is remarkable is that given these kinds of welcome results, why aren’t block buy and multiyear purchases used much more often by the Defense Department?

According to the Congressional Research Service, annual defense appropriations acts “since [fiscal] 1990 typically have approved the use of [multiyear procurement] for zero to a few” programs each year. Indeed until recently, this privilege was mostly reserved for ships and select aircraft.

Just last year, the Pentagon asked for multiyear purchasing authority for eight munitions, of which Congress granted six. This year’s budget has still more requests — along with reform of this particular authority to establish now a purchasing contract with a company for many years to come.

Specifically, the Pentagon is requesting Congress increase the dollar and cancellation thresholds for multiyear contracts from $500 million to $1 billion, and from $100,000 to $250,000 respectively. The argument is that it will allow for quicker contract awards given the current environment takes about three years from “ask” to “contract” — far too long, as the U.S. military is increasingly falling behind.

While the language talks of raising the ceiling for cancellation as necessary for alignment with bigger allowable contracts, the Pentagon notes simply that “no multiyear contract in history has ever been cancelled.”

The proposal asks Congress to broaden the multiyear authority to include any subcontractor, vendor or supplier, as well as to lower the 30-day waiting period to 10 days between multiyear certification and contract award to “reduce risk to production and delivery schedules while still providing time for appropriate congressional notification.”

As if on cue, the Defense Department goes on to seek approval for the Navy to enter into a two-year block buy contract for 37 CH-53K King Stallion heavy-lift helicopters and to enter into a multiyear contract for its T408 engines over five years.

In its request to Congress for these Marine Corps capabilities, the proposal notes that these purchasing strategies will provide:

• “industrial base stability”
• “incentivize prime [contractor] and supplier investment”
• “improve production efficiency”
• “reduce administrative burden of annual contracts”
• “take advantage of procurement volume, resulting in significant cost savings when compared to annual procurement cost estimates.”

Calling the King Stallion “one of the critical aviation programs of the United States Marine Corps,” the draft reminds Capitol Hill that “the health and stability of the rotary wing industrial base is of strategic importance … to facilitate on-schedule, quality production and sustainment.” By allowing a block buy, Congress would therefore “provide the stability necessary to encourage long-term investment in requisite skilled labor, capital equipment, and efficiency improvements that will not only improve near-term performance but reduce overall risk.”

As if any more salesmanship were needed, the Pentagon suggests bulk buys will result in a cost savings of 4% to 10% for the two programs — compared to single-year pricing primarily from the “reduction of labor, material, and overhead rates that result from a stable long-term procurement, as well as favorable inflation and fee impacts.”

The use of multiyear contracts create “enhanced workforce stability” that cuts labor costs, the document states. This stability is based on “assumed lower employee turnover from having a guaranteed minimum production base to forecast labor needs and avoiding hiring spikes and sudden layoffs.” The spinoff from stability in labor means less learning loss in the program, which will contribute to keeping it on schedule and therefore on cost.

Adding another perk, the “ability to distribute fixed labor costs across a wider time period will result in lower unit acquisition cost as compared to single year pricing where uncertainty of future lots would require the contractor to bid full time equivalent personnel in each lot versus spread across” a two- or five-year period.

One can almost hear the contractors shout: “Amen!”

Further benefits include lower overhead rates as a “result of avoidance of any production break, as well as use of economic ordering quantity acquisition of material for the engines.” By reducing total purchase orders and increasing “production base stability and confidence,” the prospect of bulk buys will “enable the prime contractors to secure long term agreements with sub-vendors, increase use of [economic order quantity] buys of materials for engines, and utilize the workforce more efficiently.”

Simply having the authority means the prime contractor will “be more aggressive in the pursuit of long-term agreements with major sub-vendors.”

There is much to appreciate about the Pentagon’s pitch. Policymakers may only ask why these special contracting mechanisms are used so infrequently. Congress should carefully consider the Pentagon’s proposals to reform the authority, as well as grant it for more munitions in fiscal 2025 along with the CH-53K and its engines.

In short, where does Congress sign on the dotted line?

Mackenzie Eaglen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. She also serves on the U.S. Army Science Board.

This is a mistake. Given the rising threat from missiles and drones — coupled with the effectiveness of missile defenses — the United States should be expanding its missile defense capabilities, not cutting them.

Indeed, autocrats increasingly are relying on a combination of missiles and drones to attack their enemies. From Russia’s unrelenting air campaign against Ukraine, to the strikes on Israel from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, to the Houthi missile strikes on civilian shipping, missiles are becoming an increasingly central component to fighting forces around the world.

In all of the above instances, however, integrated air and missile defenses have proved capable of intercepting a high percentage of missile salvos, saving countless lives in the process and denying the autocrats’ battlefield success.

Should the United States need to defend Taiwan or another ally from a Chinese attack, missile defenses will almost certainly be of paramount importance, given that China has one of the largest missile arsenals on the planet.

Why, then, did the Department of Defense propose cutting the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s budget by over $400 million in FY25, when it was supposed to increase its budget by $560 million according to the FY24 defense budget? Why is the Biden administration seeking to cut missile defenses by $2.6 billion over the next five years, as Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., recently pointed out?

When asked about these reductions in congressional testimony, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for space and missile defense, John Hill, noted that the Defense Department “must pay bills,” to include payroll increases, health care and child care. In other words, the Biden administration is cutting combat-proven missile defenses to pay for noncombat operations.

Given the deteriorating security environment, it would seem that cutting missile defenses is the exact wrong thing to do at this point.

One could argue (correctly) that budget caps are in place, which forces the department to make hard choices. This is certainly true: The 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act does cap discretionary spending, but given the temperature in Congress on the need to increase military lethality, it is entirely possible that both parties could either amend the act or seek cuts in other places.

In addition, while the FY25 defense budget proposal continues to support the integration of partner missile defenses with U.S. missile defenses, while it sustains research and development funding for joint air and missile defenses, it actually slows the fielding of a glide-phase intercept capability for hypersonic missile threats from a 2030 prototype development to a 2034 delivery.

In real terms, President Joe Biden’s new budget only funds building 12 SM-3 IIA missile interceptors and cuts production on the SM-3 IB missile interceptor — the preeminent ballistic missile defense interceptors built today.

Such a small purchase of interceptors is wildly insufficient for the emerging missile threat environment in which Russia, the Houthis and Iran are increasingly reliant upon missiles and drones in their attacks.

Indeed, only a few weeks have passed since Israel, along with American, European and Arab partners, intercepted a salvo of over 300 Iranian ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and long-range drones. American warplanes and surface vessels — likely firing Standard Missile-3 missile interceptors — contributed significantly and even achieved the first exo-atmospheric ballistic missile intercept during combat conditions. In total, reports suggest that the coalition intercepted upward of 99% of the threats.

Twelve more missile defense interceptors are not nearly enough to present a credible missile defense architecture in the Western Pacific, given that China is building thousands of missiles with a variety of ranges and capabilities. Such missile salvos from China have the potential to overwhelm current defenses on U.S. and allied bases as well as carrier strike groups across the region.

That’s why the United States should be expanding — not shrinking — theater missile defenses regionally and missile stockpiles across priority theaters of operation.

Indeed, should the United States or one of its allies ever be on the receiving end of a Chinese missile salvo akin to what Israel received, such SM-3 interceptors may be the difference between life and death for many Americans — literally.

With that in mind, Congress should pass a defense budget that includes funding for a credible missile defense architecture capable of replicating the recent successes seen in Israel in other theaters of operation, especially in the Western Pacific. While child care and payroll increases are no doubt important, they shouldn’t come at the expense of weakening our defenses from the kind of missile barrage that are becoming increasingly commonplace on the modern battlefield.

Robert Peters is a research fellow for nuclear deterrence and missile defense at the Heritage Foundation think tank. He previously served as the lead strategist at the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

For the long-range plan to be carried out, the first step is executing the FYDP plan through fiscal 2029, per the president’s budget request, which provides plenty of insight into the expectation for ship construction timelines and statuses.

These ship-by-ship details provide insight into recent performance, the changing of expectations and the difficult road ahead for the long-range plan.

The plan outlines an ambitious increase in the number of active battle force ships to meet the goal of an eventual 381 ships (plus 134 unmanned vessels). It shows increasing deliveries effectively across all ship categories through the late 2030s in a baseline plan, and provides an alternative with fewer procurements, but both begin with the assumption that FY25-FY29 FYDP expectations will be met.

Navy leaders recently executed a 45-day review of shipbuilding performance, which highlighted several delays to big-ticket programs. Our analysis of some of these major programs, including the outcome of the 45-day review, shows that the steadily increasing construction spans, paired with an outlook of increasing demand on shipbuilders, will not aid improvement.

Submarines

The Columbia-class submarine is the highest-priority shipbuilding program, and building it according to plan is required for the Navy to stay at the threshold of 10 ballistic missile submarines. Columbia construction has been historically prioritized to the detriment of the Virginia class so that Columbia can use more attention and resources from the shared shipbuilder (ideally to shield Columbia from delays).

According to the recent shipbuilding review, the first boat, SSBN-826, is now 12 to 14 months behind schedule.

While the second boat is not yet officially delayed, it is hard to imagine the construction spans dropping from what is now nearly 100 months for the first boat down into the 70s for SSBN-827 and all subsequent units. Given the second boat is only scheduled to begin construction in FY24, it is too early to see the extent to which SSBN-826 issues will impact SSBN-827 and beyond. One would expect delays for SSBN-827 and onward, especially considering the two boats being built in FY24 are planned to grow to six by FY28.

The Virginia-class program has experienced large delays over recent years as production has ramped up. But for what it’s worth, the Navy has begun incorporating more realistic expectations in its plans.

Since 2019, the number of months required to build each ship has risen from 68 months per boat to 85 months for the four most recently delivered boats, and is planned to be 95 months on average for all boats currently under construction.

This increase in construction months has been in line with a ramp-up in production as the number of ships being built has risen from 12 in 2019 to 15 in 2024, and is expected to climb to 18 by the end of the decade. Per the FYDP, planned boats are expected to remain around 95 months on average, which appears to be reasonable given recent history.

With the higher-priority Columbia program now officially experiencing delays — which may become more severe — and with Virginia construction ramping up to 18 boats at a time, maintaining the same level of efficiency will be a victory in itself.

Destroyers

Procurement of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer is planned to continue until FY32, when procurement for the next-generation destroyer DDG(X) should begin.

Between those boats recently delivered and those that have already begun construction, the average actual or planned construction is roughly 70 months per boat and has been trending upward.

The nuance is that the performance is largely unique to the shipyards. DDG-51s are split between General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works and HII. Those ships under construction or completed by HII average 62 months per boat, while those by General Dynamics average over 75 months per boat.

This disparity in performance is also reflected in the Navy’s forecast, where HII is expected to drive improvement to the program with construction spans eventually dipping below 50 months, while General Dynamics boats are never expected to break 70.

Whether the issues at Bath Iron Works are due to the beleaguered DDG-1000 program still being wrapped up there or other causes, naval planning is clearly not expecting much to change in terms of DDG-51 construction, besides allocating fewer boats to build going forward.

Meanwhile, HII will be expected to improve construction time by a double-digit percentage while taking on the lion’s share of the work, going from six ships under construction in 2024 to at least nine by the end of the decade.

Aircraft carriers

CVN-79 and CVN-80 are each delayed by more than two years compared to original delivery plans, while CVN-81 is still on schedule. This is largely attributed to CVN-81 being procured in a two-carrier contract, which allowed for procurement efforts to be spread over a much longer period since contract signing.

This gives CVN-81 a longer planned construction span and means less work has been completed, even though construction has technically been ongoing for a few years.

It is still yet to be known if CVN-81 will really be built to schedule, given the keel laying is still a few years away.

Frigates

It’s early days for the Constellation-class guided-missile frigates, but the program is already looking at delivery delays.

Coming out of the recent shipbuilding review, it has been reported that the lead ship, FFG-62, is now expected to be delivered 36 months late. This puts the total construction time for the boat at more than seven years, nearing double the original estimate of four years.

Issues have been attributed to shipbuilder Marinette Marine now managing three programs, including the Littoral Combat Ship program and the Saudi Multi-Mission Surface Combatant. The Navy has stated that it’s taking steps to improve the process.

Given the second ship was only slated to begin the construction process in December 2023, it’s too soon to identify the extent to which these issues will continue — not only for the lead ship, but spread to the next ships beginning construction.

According to the latest plans, the shipbuilder is expected to go from potentially three ships underway in 2024 to more than 10 of the class under construction by 2028, while simultaneously bringing construction spans back down to planned levels. Assuming some level of delay continues for even just the first few hulls, the profile of small surface combatant deliveries and fleet size outlined in the 30-year plan has the potential to shift.

The problems plaguing U.S. shipbuilding have been attributed to multiple factors, from the cutting down of the industrial base in the 1990s to the impacts of COVID-19 on the supply chain in recent years.

Whichever issues can be argued for recent performance on these specific programs, construction performance has not been trending in the right direction, and much of the plan for the upcoming years looks ambitious given where things stand.

For industry to execute the plans in the FYDP, and therefore follow the path that provides the Navy with the capability it needs, major improvements will have to be made.

The shipbuilding community has its work cut out for it.

Theo Egan is a co-founder of Tamarack Defense, a data analytics and advisory firm.

It also requires submission of the often-misunderstood unfunded priorities lists, or UPL.

As detailed in our newly published analysis, the 12 unfunded priorities lists that have been made public to date this year total $28.7 billion in funding shortfalls and represent the best professional military judgement of our nation’s most senior uniformed leaders.

These unfunded priorities equate to about 3.4% of the $850 billion budget request. Given that inflation remains at about 3.2% and the pay raise for military members is 4.5%, the 1% topline increase in the budget request, when combined with the 3.4% in additional funding within the UPLs, would keep the Pentagon at a roughly zero real growth rate.

As there are two major wars ongoing, several shadow wars and the potential for a major conflict with China, we can expect the Pentagon may also have a fiscal 2025 emergency supplemental in the works. Even with this context, the UPLs contained several interesting surprises.

The first surprise is that, though China is the stated strategic pacing threat, the UPLs are filled with shortfalls in capabilities related to this challenge. In fact, the commander of Indo-Pacific Command monopolizes the list in asking for $11 billion, which is 38% of the entire UPL requests, and tops its own previous-year needs by more than $7.5 billion.

Research and development UPLs related to the Pacific and space make up 83% of shortfalls. Similarly, military construction gaps are up $4 billion over last year, an increase that is almost entirely for INDOPACOM needs. High-dollar requirements listed include facilities in Guam; harbor improvements in Palau; runways, wharfs and harbor projects in Micronesia; and water treatment and hangar projects in Hawaii.

Large shortfalls to counter China signal what we already know: The defense budget is too small. But it also may indicate priority disagreements during program and budget decisions, or that INDOPACOM has a more unrestrained view of the process than the service chiefs, or that Congress tends to support INDOPACOM UPLs in how it rescues the Pentagon budget. It likely means all of these things.

The second surprise is that within the investment accounts, there is a very notable shift in the UPLs away from procurement and into military construction as well as research and development. In FY23, procurement made up 53% of the UPLs. In FY25, that is down to 30%, with well over half (54%) not even submitted by the military departments but instead coming from INDOPACOM and the National Guard Bureau.

With procurement the known bill-payer for this year’s stated budget focus on readiness and the near-term fight, the UPLs were expected to make up for the lack of funding to actually buy the ships, planes, ground vehicles and space systems we know we need to remain competitive and to sustain our industrial base and supply chains struggling under uncertain and insufficient budgets.

The third surprise is in the readiness category, which includes appropriations for operations and maintenance as well as military personnel, along with targeted partner efforts funded through the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. Despite the FY25 budget request’s stated focus on readiness, the Air Force puts forth a single $1.5 billion request for spares, noting a one-time need for aircraft readiness that it could not fully fund in the budget due to fiscal constraints.

In addition, INDOPACOM lists a $581 million gap, which essentially means that the day-to-day operating forces and contracted logistics support functions of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps components in the Pacific are underfunded, at least in the view of the INDOPACOM commander.

In conclusion, three key points stand out. The FY25 defense budget request is too low to meet even those readiness requirements it says it prioritizes, and it loses ground on crucial strategic innovation, posture and procurement efforts necessary for U.S. national security and military competitiveness.

UPLs are important tools in determining where to apply missing resources, but they also signal consequences to budget uncertainty and the resulting disjointed approach to supporting strategic priorities.

And third, as Congress examines the unfunded priorities and the capability gaps they represent to increase the defense budget to minimally required levels, it should also prioritize on-time enactment of annual appropriations as equally important to promoting our national security.

Elaine McCusker is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. She previously served as the Pentagon’s acting undersecretary of defense (comptroller). Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John G. Ferrari is a senior nonresident fellow at AEI. Ferrari previously served as a director of program analysis and evaluation for the service.

These were difficult, even for the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee. And he wasn’t the only one asking. Thornberry often traveled to Asia, where U.S. allies had the same questions. Thornberry didn’t know what to tell them.

“What do we have to offer?” he said.

For two years, Congress had asked the Pentagon for a report on how much extra money it needed for the Pacific region, but never received one. So Congress demanded one.

“The attitude was, tell us what you need and we’ll try to help,” Thornberry said during a recent interview. “Well, if they’re not going to tell us, then we’re going to tell them.”

The defense policy bill for fiscal 2021 — named for Thornberry, who was retiring — created the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, a new section of the defense budget. PDI had two goals: to push the Pentagon to spend more on the region and to make that money easier to track.

Four years later, PDI has done only one of those two things, according to experts. It has certainly made China-focused defense spending more transparent, but it hasn’t driven much new spending on the Pacific. In fact, the part of America’s defense budget created to help deter a war with China has no actual money.

“Your priorities are always better reflected in your budget rather than in your rhetoric,” Thornberry said.

Whether those two areas match up may be the most important question in American defense policy right now. The last three administrations have decided China is America’s top threat, and a rising one at that. But it’s less clear how much money it will cost to address it and who gets to decide — Congress, the Pentagon or military leaders in the Pacific?

“I don’t think that we are somehow dangerously short of funding for the Indo-Pacific, whether it’s PDI or not,” Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel, told Defense News in February.

“We’re going in the right direction, but the question is: Are we going there fast enough?”

A second opinion

This was the question that led to PDI.

In 2021, the head of Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Phil Davidson, was in Washington ahead of his planned retirement to testify before Congress. Davidson hadn’t appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee in two years due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Early on, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., presented a set of charts during a short call and response. Wicker read a list projecting the number of Chinese and American weapons in the region by 2025, asking Davidson to check his numbers.

Three Chinese aircraft carriers to America’s one. Six Chinese amphibious assault ships to America’s two. Fifty-four Chinese combat ships to America’s six.

The admiral confirmed each one.

“Our conventional deterrent is actually eroding in the region,” Davidson said.

What concerned him most was not that Beijing had a more powerful military overall; it was a problem of speed and distance. Taiwan — which the Chinese government considers a rogue province and has threatened to take back by force — is about 100 miles from the mainland. It’s more than 5,000 miles from Hawaii, the headquarters of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

It would take three weeks for the U.S. to rush ships to the area from the West Coast, and around 17 days to do so from Alaska, Davidson estimated. If China launched a rapid invasion, it might overwhelm Taiwan before the U.S. had a chance to arrive.

“The important factor here is time,” he said.

Davidson’s answer, and that of many committee members, was to push America’s forces closer to Taiwan — the military version of a full-court press. But the U.S. didn’t yet have the necessary infrastructure in place. It would need to construct bases, airfields, radars and other buildings along the Pacific islands that arc around Taiwan.

And this would cost money — lots of money.

PDI was, at first, meant to be the source of that money. To understand why, it’s important to understand how the Pentagon writes its budget.

The process depends mostly on the military services — in particular the Army, Navy and Air Force. These services hold about four-fifths of defense spending each year and direct where that money goes.

Their incentives are different from those of the seven geographic combatant commands, who carry out America’s military goals around the world. Given their roles, the commands often focus on shorter-term needs. Hence, the services often don’t fund everything the combatant commands want.

To lawmakers, the gap seemed especially wide in the Pacific, where China has spent the last two decades upgrading its military.

Noticing this problem, lawmakers as far back as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in 2017 wanted to fund Indo-Pacific Command’s goals with a separate account — something Thornberry also later supported.

It didn’t come together until three years later. In May 2020, the chair and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee announced plans for a Pacific Deterrence Initiative that would reassure U.S. allies and improve its forces.

It had five goals: to improve presence, logistics, exercises, infrastructure and the strength of partners in the Pacific. The bill also added a voice to the budgeting process. Indo-Pacific Command would now give Congress an annual second opinion on America’s military needs in the region.

There was, however, a structural problem. The lawmakers that created PDI didn’t actually get any money for it. The policy bill named for Thornberry gave the Pentagon about $2 billion in authority for the effort but not permission to spend it. That would’ve required a signoff from the defense appropriations committees, who control the nation’s purse.

Those committees balk at initiatives like PDI, according to multiple congressional aides, because passing them makes it harder to write a defense budget — the same reason it’s harder to write a recipe when someone else decides your shopping list.

“The hope was for the following year that the appropriations and the budget would match,” said Kimberly Lehn, a former aide on the House Armed Services Committee who helped write the PDI legislation.

That didn’t happen, and by the time Davidson testified before Congress a year later, the initiative had become an accounting drill.

Think about it like a home improvement fund. If you want an upgrade — say, a nicer kitchen — then you have two options: Earn more money or spend less money elsewhere. Instead, PDI was, and still is, implemented in reverse. Each year, the Pentagon builds its budget and then reviews it to see what contributes to deterrence in the Pacific. It then labels that as PDI and highlights the total number in its budget request.

“It reflects their decisions, it doesn’t drive their decisions,” said Dustin Walker, a former Senate Armed Services Committee aide who helped write the PDI legislation and now works at the drone-maker Anduril.

‘Free chicken’

This was not the model PDI’s authors had in mind.

“It started basically as a straight copycat of [the] European Deterrence Initiative,” Walker said, referring to an effort that stemmed from Russia’s 2014 seizure and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

The Obama administration wanted to show commitment to NATO allies rattled by war on the continent. The government did so within months using what it originally dubbed the European Reassurance Initiative.

U.S. forces in Europe had declined for decades after the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s — down to about 62,000 personnel by 2016. The smaller size made sense in Europe given there were fewer needs for America’s military muscle. But Russia’s invasion showed how far readiness had fallen, said Tod Wolters, the former head of U.S. European Command.

With the European Deterrence Initiative, the administration wanted to bulk up.

“We knew that we could not go back to Cold War status, with the number of forces that were going to be in the theater. So the question became: How do we make sure that we can rapidly deploy combat power?” said Al Viana, who works in European Command’s force structure and requirements office.

This became the focus of EDI, whose name changed in 2018 when it became clear Russia’s military activities in the region weren’t coming to an end. From 2015 to 2023, the U.S. spent $35 billion on the effort to empower allies and ensure its own forces were more agile. The second goal required funding to run more exercises, rotate more troops, improve infrastructure and store important equipment on the continent.

By the end of fiscal 2014, European Command had dissolved two heavy combat brigades. However, EDI helped rebuild those forces — deferring cuts to Air Force personnel, supporting a combat aviation brigade and making sure the Army had an armored brigade combat team rotating through the theater. In FY16, the Army’s forces in Europe conducted 26 total exercises per year. By 2023, that number was around 50.

In 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. surged 20,000 extra personnel to Europe. That included an armored brigade combat team — including about 4,000 personnel, 90 tanks and more than 200 other vehicles — which arrived within a week from notification. Without those stocks already stored in the theater, it would’ve taken between four and six weeks, according to U.S. Army Europe and Africa.

“EDI is the place to go and see exactly what we’re doing,” Viana said.

The two initiatives’ different fates come almost entirely down to money. EDI was paid for through an account called overseas contingency operations, more commonly referred to as OCO (pronounced like “cocoa”). That fund started for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, supplementing the annual Pentagon budget.

“EDI was easy because you weren’t fighting with a service,” a senior defense official told Defense News, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the individual was not permitted to talk to the press. “It was free chicken.”

By the start of this decade, Congress had soured on OCO, partly because the Pentagon used it to dodge some budget cuts it faced in the 2010s. Lawmakers called it a slush fund.

This meant the Pacific Deterrence Initiative didn’t get any extra funding. The European counterpart transitioned away from supplemental money in fiscal 2022, and its funding amounts since then have steadily dropped.

The result is that many items Indo-Pacific Command lists in its annual report to Congress — the things the command says it needs to maintain its strength in the region — aren’t funded. So the command just resubmits those unfunded priorities on top of additional needs in the next year’s report. Hence, each year’s dollar amount snowballs.

When Davidson testified before Congress in 2021, his report listed $4.7 billion in requirements. This year, the number was $26.5 billion — $11 billion of which is unfunded. The bulk of that $11 billion would go to construction costs — much higher in the Pacific than on the U.S. homeland — and munitions.

“Our demand signal has been consistent,” George Ka’iliwai, the director of requirements and resources at the command, said in a March interview. “It is what it is because they are our requirements.”

The Pentagon has questioned some of Indo-Pacific Command’s priorities and whether they’re possible to carry out, even with funding. Infrastructure projects, for example, sometimes require negotiations with the host government as well as expensive labor and material costs. Only about a fifth of Indo-Pacific Command’s desired construction projects appear in the FY25 budget request, Ka’iliwai said.

Since its first report, the command has said the missile defense architecture of Guam — a U.S. territory crucial to the military’s Pacific posture — is its top goal. Others, such as infrastructure on Pacific islands or a secure network to communicate with allies, have also appeared each year.

PDI “doesn’t come close to scratching the itch,” the defense source said.

‘Trade-offs’

There are a few paths forward. One of them would see Congress give Indo-Pacific Command new money each year, like the account McCain sought in 2017.

There are lawmakers, such as Hawaii’s Case, who support that. But the appropriations committees don’t, and it’s unlikely that will change in the short term, according to multiple congressional aides.

Another option is in the Pentagon’s control. At the start of the budgeting process, department leaders could reserve money for the command’s priorities and build everything else around it. That would resemble how the deputy defense secretary is funding two signature initiatives: the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve, which helps accelerate prototyping; and Replicator, an effort to buy drones faster.

But these programs are loose change compared to what the command says it needs — hundreds of millions of dollars compared to more than $11 billion in unfunded priorities.

The way PDI works now is important, according to another senior defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic. The official argued that a different model for the initiative would make it more difficult for the Defense Department to plan and budget.

“The department has the best ability to find the right trade-offs,” the official said.

Points of view

Three years after Davidson testified, his successor stepped into a House hearing room this March.

“The risk is still high, and it is trending in the wrong direction,” Adm. John Aquilino noted in his opening statement, later adding that the Pacific is the most dangerous he’s ever seen it.

Sitting next to him, Ely Ratner, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, was more hopeful, citing higher spending and the administration’s “historic momentum” with allies in the region.

The higher spending is easier to see with PDI, which has charted large increases in funding over the last four years. Whether the initiative is working depends on whether you look at the Pacific through the eyes of Ratner or Aquilino. Both agree war isn’t imminent, but they’re split on whether deterrence is getting better or worse.

If it’s eroding, as Davidson argued in 2021, then PDI’s current model may not be enough. If the region is more stable, then the initiative looks better too.

The biggest misconception about PDI, according to the second defense official, is that the Pentagon doesn’t take it seriously.

“This is not a gradual slope of increase,” the official said of Pacific funding. “This is a significant and dramatic increase in investment, and we are more committed than ever.”

The PDI request for this year is $9.9 billion — more than $800 million over last year’s. But up until soon before the Pentagon released its FY25 budget request, it wasn’t, according to the first defense official and a congressional aide.

To show the Pentagon was focused on the threat from China, defense leaders tagged more items under the initiative at the last minute to raise its dollar figure, the first defense source and a congressional aide told Defense News. Among the late entries was the drone program Replicator.

At the recent March hearing, a member of Congress asked Ratner whether the $9.9 billion includes everything the Pentagon needs “for the PDI to be as effective as possible.”

“Congresswoman,” Ratner responded, “the PDI is simply an accounting mechanism.”

The unfunded priorities list the service submitted to Congress, dated March 21, asks for another $1.5 billion to restock spare parts; $612 million to create nine new deployable units called mission generation force elements; $1.1 billion for construction projects worldwide; and $266 million to fund exercises in the Pacific region.

The Air Force did not ask Congress for additional funds to buy more aircraft, as it sometimes has in previous years’ unfunded priorities lists. The service’s $188.1 billion budget request for FY25 trims six F-35A Joint Strike Fighters and six F-15EX Eagle II fighters from what it originally planned, and the wish list does not aim to change that.

In the unfunded priorities list, the Air Force said its additional $1.5 billion request for spare parts — the largest component in the list — is necessary because the tight budget environment prevented it from asking for all the parts it needed.

The spare parts request asks for:

• $167 million for B-52H Stratofortress bombers.
• $564 million for F-16 Fighting Falcon jets.
• Nearly $61 million for F-15E Strike Eagle jets.
• Nearly $62 million for the HC-130J Combat King personnel recovery aircraft.
• $195 million for RC-135 intelligence aircraft.
• $7 million for C-130J Super Hercules cargo planes.
• Almost $450 million for the KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling plane.

The service also said its $612 million request to create new mission generation force elements would allow it to deploy as many as 208 additional combat-coded fighters.

Mission generation force elements are part of the service’s new Air Force Generation deployment concept, which allow it to send fighter aircraft overseas. Those elements include both the equipment, jets and airmen needed to fly and maintain the aircraft. They also include munitions operations, weather-tracking capabilities, and intelligence and cyber capabilities.

This request would cover a one-time purchase of spare parts, aviation support equipment and munitions support equipment. But the elements would be created using personnel and fighters already in the service, and the funds would not pay for more jets or airmen.

The Air Force said its $1.1 billion request for additional construction funds would allow it to whittle down a $46.8 billion backlog on infrastructure and facilities that it needs to prepare for a potential conflict against China.

That includes $158 million for planning and design work on the Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft that will replace the aging E-4B Nightwatch fleet. The E-4B, nicknamed the “doomsday plane,” would allow the president to direct forces in case of a nuclear war or other devastating emergency that destroys command-and-control centers on the ground.

It also asks for another $215 million in construction funds for basic military training classrooms and a dining facility at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas, plus $148 million for a multidomain operations complex at Beale Air Force Base in California.

The Air Force also asked for another $28 million to build infrastructure needed for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the T-7A Red Hawk trainer at Hill Air Force Base in Utah.

And the service wants additional funds to allow Pacific Air Forces to conduct a theaterwide exercise to practice the Agile Combat Employment concept. That approach aims to spread out deployed airmen across more bases to make it harder for an adversary, such as China, to destroyer large portions of the force.

After the first theaterwide Agile Combat Employment exercise in 2025, the Air Force wants to keep holding those drills every other year, and plans to use $5 million to plan and prepare for them.

This unfunded priorities list, which supplements the Navy’s $257.6 billion FY25 budget request, asks for 13 items, ranging from repairs to infrastructure in Guam to buying another KC-130J transport plane for the Navy Reserve to accelerating classified program development.

The No. 1 priority on the list is $403 million to invest in the submarine-industrial base — something the FY25 budget already does, with $3.9 billion included in the budget request released March11.

However, the FY25 request was written assuming Congress would pass both a FY24 defense spending bill and a $105 billion national security supplemental the White House requested in October. Neither of those two had been passed into law when the FY25 budget request was released, leaving Navy officials concerned.

This unfunded priorities list notes that, absent the supplemental and its $3.3 billion to bolster the submarine-industrial base, the Navy needs $403 million in specific additional spending so that it can fully implement its FY25 plans to grow vendor capacity, support workforce development efforts and more.

The list also includes $92.9 million to address how quickly it’s been shooting Standard Missile-2 weapons to knock down Houthi-launched missiles and drones in the Red Sea since October. The militant group is based in Yemen.

This money would procure SM-2 Block III and Block IIIA/B recertification materials to address a backlog of these older missiles that need to be recertified before they can be used in combat. The Navy asked for $157 million in FY24 and $134 million in FY25 for this weapons maintenance work, but the document notes it could need to accelerate this work “based on the duration and nature of conflict in the Red Sea and other areas of responsibility.”

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE NAVY’S FY25 UNFUNDED PRIORITIES LIST

The sea service also wants $50 million to buy four more Mk 48 heavyweight torpedoes, which the document calls a top service priority for long-range maritime fires. The Navy is already working to restart production lines in support of its Mk 48 inventory, and this money would increase spares and buy new fuel tanks and electronics sections to support the fleet inventory.

Service officials cited the weapons-industrial base as another one, in addition to the submarine-industrial base, that the Navy was trying to support and that needed stable funding from FY24 into FY25.

Elsewhere in the request, the Navy asks for $208 million for aviation readiness, including four F-35C engines to support deployed carrier air wings; Super Hornet Block III upgrades; and MQ-25 Stingray carrier-based tanker drone initial deployment activities.

For the surface force, the unfunded priorities list includes $200 million meant to reduce cannibalization of parts on destroyers and in critical surface warfare systems.

The Navy asks for $75.3 million for a subsea and seabed warfare payload for the Navy’s TETRA remotely operated vehicle, which completed its critical design review in November. The FY25 budget requests just $15 million for the effort, and the additional $75 million would accelerate payload development and integration work.

It also asks for $184 million to accelerate the development of a payload for the Orca Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle. It also seeks a combined $90 million to accelerate two classified programs, COPPERFIELD and GRANDSTAND.

It wants $105.5 million to accelerate the development of communications equipment for the strategic deterrence fleet.

And it includes $109.9 million to develop and procure a Long Endurance Electronic Decoy countermeasures system. Its funding was cut from $249 million in FY24 to just $83 million in FY25.

The Navy separately requests nearly $1.5 billion in military construction projects, including upgrades and repairs to hangar facilities in Guam, a dry dock and a water treatment plant in Hawaii, and an aviation training complex in Nevada.

The defense budget is capped in FY25, due to the Fiscal Responsibility Act. If lawmakers chose to add in any items from the unfunded priorities list, they would have to offset them with cuts elsewhere in the defense budget.