Washington: The Senate Armed Services Committee version of the $150 billion defence reconciliation bill roughly mirrors the House version, but makes spending adjustments to key areas like shipbuilding, nuclear modernisation and munitions.
The SASC text released will be incorporated in the Senate version of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” aimed at facilitating a laundry list of Trump administration priorities, and will ultimately need to be reconciled with the House bill, which passed last month.
“The House and Senate are very, very close in the provisions,” said SASC Chairman Roger Wicker, during a Defence Writers Group event.
Shipbuilding projects — the largest single bucket in both bills — lost about $5 billion in funds in the SASC version, going from about $34 billion to $29 billion. In the biggest change, the SASC bill zeroes out about $4.8 billion in funding for a San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock and America-class amphibious assault ship. It adds $300 million for medium unmanned surface vessels, bringing the total spend to $2.1 billion.
Funds for munitions grew from $21 billion to about $23 billion. While most of the major expenditures for items like long-range cruise missiles remains the same across both bills, the Senate version makes various changes among smaller programs. One larger shift is the addition of $500 million to improve US-based production of critical munitions, raising the total for those activities to $3 billion.
The SASC version also adds funds for priorities not included in the House bill, such as $167 million for procurement of launchers for Army medium-range air and missile defence interceptors, $200 million for Army medium-range air and missile defense interceptors, and $500 million for the expansion of defence advanced manufacturing techniques.
SASC spends $2 billion more on low-cost enablers such as drones, counter-drone tech, cheap munitions and AI, for a total of $16 billion. It boosts funding for the small drone industrial base from $1.1 billion to $1.4 billion, and increases funding to expand and accelerate qualification activities meant to increase unmanned competition in the defence industrial base from $500 million to $1 billion. It also adds $250 million for the development and procurement of Air Force low-cost counter-air technologies, among other changes.
Funding for nuclear modernisation grew from $13 billion to $15 billion. The single biggest beneficiary was the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program, which received an additional $1 billion, bringing the total up to $2.5 billion. Funding for classified programs increased from $22 million to $96 million.
In another key change, the SASC version also tweaks the language associated with the $4.5 billion for the B-21 bomber program, stipulating that the funds be used for “expansion of the production capacity” of the bomber, “including tooling and expansion of the supplier base, and the purchase of aircraft only available through the expansion of production capacity”— language seemingly meant to induce the Air Force to increase B-21 production rate, rather than accelerating the buy.
The SASC bill added $2 billion for air superiority, raising that total to $9 billion. The Navy was a major beneficiary in those plus-ups, getting an additional $250 million for its next-generation F/A-XX fighter program, putting the total for that effort at $750 million.
