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.

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.

With an eye on Russia and China, the Pentagon in fiscal 2024 would spend $30.6 billion for missiles and munitions ― 12% more than last year and 50% more than five years ago, when the U.S. was still fighting the Islamic State and Taliban.

The Pentagon budget would also break new ground by using multiyear procurement authorities generally reserved for ships and aircraft to buy munitions and expand production capacity over several years.

At Monday’s budget rollout, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks and Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Adm. Christopher Grady did not answer directly whether the Pentagon, like the NATO alliance, is raising stockpile targets due to the war in Ukraine. The move was aimed at deterring China and ensuring the health of the U.S. defense industrial base, they said.

“This latest budget expands production capacity even more, and procures the maximum amount of munitions that are most relevant for deterring and, if necessary, prevailing over aggression in the Indo-Pacific,” said Hicks, adding that one-third of the munitions budget request is for long-range fires.

Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord said the munitions request was “Ukraine informed, even if not Ukraine specific.” To replenish U.S. stockpiles depleted by the war in Ukraine, Pentagon officials said they will rely on supplemental appropriations from Congress, which granted the Pentagon $35.7 billion for FY23.

“These are not the kind of missiles that are key to the Ukraine fight, they are key to Indo-Pacific deterrence,” McCord said. “What [Hicks] has been pushing us to do is to think about lessons we’re learning today and apply them to future scenarios, think about what would I have done four years ago if I had a crystal ball, to think about things that might be coming.”

The Pentagon’s $170 billion procurement budget request ― touted as the largest ever ― would use a new “large lot procurement pilot” strategy to maximize production capacity for several munitions used across the services: Lockheed Martin’s Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile Extended Range (JASSM-ER) and Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) ― and the Raytheon Technologies-made RIM-174 Standard Missile (SM-6), AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AAMRAM).

Though not in the pilot program, the Pentagon is also using multiyear contracting to buy roughly 103 Naval Strike Missiles at $250 million. The Marine Corps’ new, low-signature Marine Littoral Regiments and their Navy/Marine Corps Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System are slated for 90 of the ground-based missiles, which Raytheon manufactures.

Of the $30.6 billion for munitions, more than half ― $17.1 billion ― is for tactical missiles, while $7.3 billion is for strategic missiles, $5.6 billion for conventional ammunition and $600 million for technology development. The plans separately call for $15.1 billion more spread across the next five years to cover upfront costs for long-lead item procurements.

Another $1 billion would allow industry to procure long-lead items for the weapons, and otherwise “put that money up front to send the demand signal to our industry partners,” according to Maj. Gen. Michael Greiner, the Air Force’s deputy assistant secretary for budget.

To further spur defense firms to expand production capacity, defense officials said they will seek congressional approval for future multiyear buys of the Raytheon-made Patriot surface-to-air guided missile system and the Lockheed-made Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, a surface-to-surface medium-range rocket fired from the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System. The U.S. has given all three systems to Ukraine.

U.S. Army officials have said their 2024 budget will request authority to buy more munitions in bulk over multiple years as the U.S. and its allies work to refill their inventories and help Ukraine’s forces defend themselves.

“In these ramp-ups, the reason we’re taking a really maximalist foot on the floor all the way down approach is that we don’t know how long the conflict will last, we don’t know how low our stocks will be, we don’t know the full amount we will have to help replenish,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Doug Bush said earlier this month.

The Air Force budget proposal would double missile spending, from $2.3 billion in 2032 to $4.7 billion in 2024. “The munitions buys are focused on … the targets that we would have to be concerned about in a China scenario of some kind,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told reporters in a March 10 briefing at the Pentagon.

The Air Force would include $161 million to buy 48 Joint Strike Missiles, made by Norwegian firm Kongsberg Defence Aerospace and Raytheon, for the first time. A top Air Force budget official, Maj. Gen. Michael Greiner, said those long-range missiles, which can be fired from the F-35 against land and ship targets, will help bridge the gap as LRASM continues to come online.

A Center for Strategic and International Studies report last month found the U.S. defense-industrial base is unprepared for a notional battle with China over Taiwan, as it would run out of key long-range, precision-guided munitions in less than a week. The report spotlighted U.S. military aid to Ukraine and criticized bureaucratic hurdles for defense contracting and U.S. arms sales overseas.

Other highlights from the budget proposal include:

– $1.8 billion for 550 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile Extended Range, more than twice the $902 million Congress enacted for FY23.

– $1.2 billion for 830 AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles, up from $740 million in FY23.

– $1 billion for 118 Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles, up from $550 in FY23.

– $386 million for 1,165 Joint Air-to-Ground Muntions, up from $297 million in FY23.

– $447 million for 1,170 of the Raytheon-made Small Diameter Bomb II, down $555 million for FY23.

– $1.6 billion for 125 of the Navy’s RIM-174 Standard Missile, up from $799 million for FY23.

– $1 billion for 5,064 Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, down from $1.3 billion in FY23.

– $934 million for 34 Raytheon-made Tactical Tomahawk Cruise missiles, down from $905 million.

– $206 million for 3,236 Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions, down from $328 million.

– $30 million for 40 Lockheed-made Hellfire missiles, down from $116 million.

Jen Judson and Megan Eckstein contributed to this report.

The administration issued only limited details, but spotlighted $9.1 billion in proposed investments for the Pentagon’s Pacific Deterrence Initiative, meant to bolster U.S. force posture in the region amid increasing tensions with China. The spending plan also includes $37.7 billion for the Defense Department to continue modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

“This budget cements our commitment to confronting global challenges and keeping America safe,” President Joe Biden wrote in an accompanying message to Congress. “It outlines crucial investments to out-compete China globally and to continue support for Ukraine in the face of unprovoked Russian aggression.”

The budget proposal pledges $6 billion to support Ukraine, though it’s unclear whether that money is for military or economic aid. That figure falls far short of the $113 billion Congress allocated for Kyiv via emergency supplemental spending last year.

Pentagon officials are scheduled to discuss the details of the department’s budget on Monday. The White House proposal also vowed to optimize and modernize U.S. naval shipbuilding, but did not detail any specific dollar amounts.

The document stated that the budget “continues the recapitalization of the Nation’s strategic ballistic missile submarine fleet while investing in the submarine industrial base” and makes “meaningful investments in improving the lethality and survivability of the fleet, particularly improving undersea superiority.” That includes “the recapitalization and optimization of the four public Naval Shipyards to meet future submarine and carrier maintenance requirements.”

According to the administration, the budget also “invests in key technologies and sectors of the U.S. industrial base such as microelectronics, submarine construction, munitions production, and biomanufacturing.”

Funds allocated to the Energy Department will support “the strong technical and engineering foundation” for the trilateral AUKUS agreement between the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, which the leaders of the three countries are expected to unveil in more detail in San Diego on Monday.

Congressional headwinds

The defense spending proposal is expected to face harsh criticism from Republicans lawmakers, both for being too small to meet global threats and too large to meet deficit reduction goals.

The release of the White House budget draft kicks off the public debate over spending for the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, and negotiating a full-year budget plan is expected to take months. Already, House Republican leaders have simultaneously promised to trim federal spending while boosting funding for national security needs, including the military.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., for his part, has vowed to cut at least $130 billion in non-discretionary spending, raising questions as to how the Republican-controlled House can accommodate a defense budget increase.

Some defense hawks, like House Defense Appropriations subcommittee Chairman Ken Calvert, R-Calif., have started looking at ways to squeeze savings out of the Pentagon. Calvert, for instance, has proposed trimming the Defense Department’s civilian workforce.

However, the Biden administration said its budget will “strengthen” the Pentagon’s “civilian workforce as a critical contributor to the nation’s security.”

The Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin, of Illinois, on Wednesday, before the White House released the proposal, vented that House Republicans have not offered their own budget plan.

Republicans “want to cut spending, but they want to increase defense spending, and many of us have asked for more money for Ukraine, and we certainly are sensitive to the fact that we have to replenish our own supplies in the process,” Durbin said.

“They keep talking in generalities,” he added. “It’s time to establish what they can pass in the House of Representatives.”

Speaking Wednesday before the budget release, the Senate Armed Services Committee’s top Republican, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, said any openness to cut defense spending among Republicans is out of step with the majority of the party and suggested McCarthy would buck those views.

“He’s going to make the right decision for the future of our country, and it goes without saying you can’t accommodate two differing positions at one time,” Wicker said. “We are ready to defend our national security interests, and I am getting every signal that this budget will be inadequate and will need to be plussed up.”