In what Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif. said was just the beginning of an upward trend in funding, the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Procurement on Tuesday approved $62.4 billion to buy new weapons for the Pentagon for the coming fiscal year.
"This is a holding action," Hunter said of the subcommittee's $2.1 billion increase over President Clinton's procurement request. The panel approved its part of the fiscal 2001 defense authorization bill (H.R. 4205) by voice vote without dissent.
Hunter vowed to keep ramping up the procurement account in future years because the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps are "vastly short" of the weapons they need.
Backers of building more nuclear-powered attack submarines and keeping the Air Force Joint Strike Fighter fully funded got their way in the subcommittee language inserted into the authorization bill. The full committee is expected to approve the language in its markup of the whole bill Wednesday.
The subcommittee not only authorized the Navy to buy five new Virginia class attack submarines at once-a so-called block-buy-but also gave the next President "the option" to convert Trident submarines to carry cruise missiles.
Under the SALT II arms control agreement recently ratified by Russia, several Tridents, which carry nuclear-tipped strategic missiles through the depths, will have to be retired from that role. Hunter said that the next president, under language in the bill, could convert those Tridents to carry conventional cruise missiles.
The subcommittee language also would prevent existing 688-class attack submarines from being retired as planned if they had enough cruising life left in them to justify putting in new nuclear power plants. Hunter complained that the number of attack subs "is now 56 and dropping" even though the Joint Chiefs of Staff said earlier this year that they could use "as many as 68."
On the JSF, the subcommittee rejected such ideas as fencing off money for the multiservice aircraft until it proved itself technically or delaying the whole $200 billion program by six months. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, if the subcommittee language becomes law, would merely have to certify to Congress that the JSF was ready to advance from research and development into the manufacturing stage.
The subcommittee also came through for the Army by authorizing that service to buy five years' worth of UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters at once and a three-year buy of M-2A3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles.
Rep. James A. Gibbons, R-Nev., offered the only substantive amendment during the meeting, but then withdrew it, declaring that he came from a gambling state "where you got to know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em."
His amendment would extend federal aid to workers who contracted cancer, silicosis and other diseases by working in nuclear weapons plants. Adding the benefits package to the defense bill would require it to pass muster with four different congressional committees, he said. Rather than try to run that gauntlet, Gibbons said he would offer an amendment on the House floor to provide that assistance.
Rep. John M. Spratt, D-S.C., was among the subcommittee members who pledged to back the Gibbons amendment to help the workers, who were not covered by federal health plans because they had worked for private contractors. "They took risks for us," Spratt said. "Now it's time for us to help them."
The only sour note during the markup was sounded by Rep. Norman Sisisky of Virginia, the subcommittee's ranking Democrat, who said he regretted that three Navy F/A-18 E and F fighter-bombers, the latest in carrier-based aviation, were deleted from Clinton's budget request to provide money for older Air Force F-15s.
Hunter said the main objectives of his subcommittee, as it structured its part of the defense bill, were to arm B-52, B-1 and B-2 bombers with precision weapons, overcome the shortages of ammunition in the military and accelerate the development and production of bunker-busting bombs with pinpoint accuracy.
Counting money in the defense authorization bill for the Energy Department to maintain the nuclear stockpile and support part of the Pentagon's research budget, the total in the subcommittee mark that now heads to the full committee came to $84.6 billion.