Article Breaking Defense, avec le titre : HASC NDAA Cuts F-35, Adds Sub, Sets Up Senate Clash
https://breakingdefense.com/2020/06/has ... ate-clash/
The House and Senate Armed Services Committees are an impressive $2 billion apart on the F-35, with the HASC hoping to cut upgrades, depots and other support for the controversial Joint Strike Fighter while the SASC seeks to buy more jets.
UPDATE “The F-35 program is troubled enough as it is,” a House Armed Services Committee aide told reporters this afternoon. It’s premature to pile on more funding for more aircraft, they said, “until the vendor demonstrates they are able to produce F-35s on time.”
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longstanding tradition of bipartisan and bicameral consensus on defense makes it all the more remarkable when the House and Senate committees disagree as sharply as they do on F-35. The Joint Strike Fighter has largely overcome its decades of schedule delays and cost overruns to become the mainstay of US airpower modernization. But considerable controversy still dogs the program.
So while SASC adds $1.36 billion to buy more Air Force F-35As, Marine F-35Bs, and Navy F-35Cs, plus spare parts, HASC keeps the total number of aircraft being bought the same and then docks at least a score of supporting line items by a total of $561 million.
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Now, HASC isn’t cutting the same line items that the SASC is increasing. But it’s hard to increase the number of aircraft you’re buying, as SASC wants, at the same time you’re cutting the support infrastructure for those aircraft, as HASC wants.
If history is any guide, Senate Armed Services will likely win in the end. It has a powerful ally in the House: the House Appropriations Committee, whose senior Republican, Rep. Kay Granger, represents the Fort Worth district where the F-35 is built. Whatever the two Armed Services committees decide, the final funding figure is actually up to the appropriators.