Defense Budget Alert

Lawmakers have cut $329 million from the Navy's fiscal year 2019 budget for programs the service has deemed "accelerated acquisitions," and are concerned the designation is causing "imprudent program management decisions."

The defense spending bill agreed to by conference negotiators limits how the Pentagon can spend its funding for cloud efforts, including the high-profile Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure initiative. 

The Pentagon is considering a plan to potentially spend $450 million to enhance existing fencing and construct additional barriers along 31 miles of an Arizona bombing range that borders Mexico.

The House Armed Services Committee's top Democrat, in line to become the next chairman should his party win a majority in November, said today the defense budget is too big and that the United States should not “cling” to notions of post-World War II dominance given today's fiscal and geopolitical realities.

The Senate is seeking to rescind more than $2 billion previously appropriated to Pentagon investment accounts, with Air Force research and development as well as procurement accounts slated to absorb more than half of the proposed cuts.

The Pentagon's fiscal years 2020 and 2021 base budget allocations will total $550 billion and $563 billion respectively -- dramatically below Trump administration plans -- if discretionary spending caps required by the 2011 Budget Control Act for those two years are not adjusted, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office.

Army senior leaders in developing its six-year spending plan required program managers to "justify" the purpose of any effort that does not directly support one of the service's six modernization priorities, according to the vice chief of staff.

Senate and House authorizers now jointly endorse the Air Force's plan to pursue an Advanced Battle Management System instead of recapitalizing the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, according to congressional staffers who briefed reporters on the conference version of the fiscal year 2019 defense policy bill Monday.

House and Senate lawmakers have included an authorization for $250 million to boost the submarine industrial base and allow the Navy to negotiate up to 12 Virginia-class submarines in upcoming Block V contract talks, according to a senior House Armed Services committee aide who briefed reporters on the fiscal year 2019 defense policy conference bill.