The Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense panel provided $516.4 billion in base funding and $77.8 billion for overseas contingency operations in Tuesday’s mark-up of the Pentagon’s Fiscal 2014 budget request. “With increasingly limited funds, this bill cuts waste, prioritizes department spending, and puts a premium on readiness,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), panel chairman, in the SAC’s July 30 release. The mark-up provides “substantial increases for readiness, depot maintenance, and facilities sustainment, restoration, and modernization,” states the release. This includes adding $2.9 billion to restore shortfalls in areas like aircraft flying hours, and $1.5 billion to address issues like shortfalls in depot maintenance. The mark-up fully funds next fiscal year’s F-35 strike fighter procurement and development of the Air Force’s future Long Range Strike Bomber and KC-46A tanker. The senators approved a one percent pay raise for uniformed military personnel and Defense Department civilians. The mark-up also provides a $297 million increase in Tricare “to ensure service members aren’t paying more out-of-pocket costs for their health care,” states the release. The House last week passed its version of the spending bill, appropriating $512.5 billion in base funding and $85.8 billion for OCO.
The Pentagon’s new counter-drone task force will play a direct role in arming Airmen with new weapons to defend Air Force agile combat employment, or ACE, air bases in austere locations against enemy drone attacks, the director of Joint Interagency Task Force 401 said Oct. 14.
