WEEKLY UPDATE

Congress is back in session this week after a two-week recess and the House will be pushing forward with an aggressive reconciliation timeline. The House Armed Services Committee will be marking up its portion of the bill on Tuesday (more on that below). The House committees on Homeland Security, Education and Workforce, Judiciary, Oversight and Government Reform, Financial Services, and Transportation and Infrastructure will mark up their portions of the bill this week as well. The House Committee on Agriculture, Ways and Means, and the Energy and Commerce Committee will mark up their portions of the bill later in May. The E&C markup is expected to be the most controversial, as Republicans will need to find $880 billion in cuts to satisfy the budget resolution framework passed two weeks ago. This level of spending cuts will likely require changes to Medicaid, which many House and Senate Republicans have refused to do. Ways and Means has instructions to spend up to $4.5 trillion on tax cuts and must navigate the President’s tax priorities and reach a deal on SALT levels. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has said he hopes to pass the bill by Memorial Day, an ambitious goal that would put the House way ahead of the Senate. However, any changes to Medicaid could doom the bill on the House floor. Even if House Republicans, do manage to pass a package with cuts to Medicaid, it could be dead on arrival in the Senate.

The Treasury Department will give Congress an estimate of when the federal government will reach its borrowing limit this week. Congress must pass a debt limit increase before the “X date” or the U.S. will default on its debt. The debt limit increase is currently tied to the GOP reconciliation bill, meaning that the X date will force a deadline for Congress to pass a reconciliation bill. If Republicans are unable to negotiate a bill before this deadline, they will be forced to pass a separate debt limit increase bill.

Separate from the reconciliation process, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have set internal deadlines for members to deliver their priorities to the committees. Congress is hoping to have a “skinny” version of President Donald Trump’s budget request for FY 2026 by May 16. The full budget is not expected until late May at the earliest, but the skinny budget would at least give appropriators top-line spending numbers for each department, so it can begin to build each of its 12 annual appropriations bills.

The Department of Defense owes its FY25 spending plan to Congress this week. Under the FY25 Continuing Resolution, the Department of Defense has maximum flexibility to prioritize spending for this fiscal year. The CR allows new starts on programs appropriated in the House and Senate drafts of the FY25 Defense Appropriations Bill and allows DoD to reprogram up to $8 billion without Congressional approval. While the House and Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittees did send the Pentagon proposed spending plan at the programmatic level, the spending plan only reflects Congressional intent and does not carry the weight of law. The CR does require the Pentagon to submit a spending plan to the Defense Appropriations Subcommittees by April 30, but it does not require Congressional approval. However, some appropriators are skeptical that the DoD will hit this deadline due to recent staff cuts as well as the normal turnover associated with a new administration that may cause delays.

Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) and House Armed Services Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) have reached an agreement on a $150 billion spending package for the Department of Defense. The bill will provide investments across twelve areas, with the largest shares going to shipbuilding, munitions, and Trump’s Golden Dome initiative. While the details of the funding have yet to be finalized, this framework will guide the House Armed Services Committee’s markup on Tuesday. These funds will be appropriated for Fiscal Year 2025 but will remain available through Fiscal Year 2029. While these funds must be obligated before Fiscal Year 2030, they can be spent through Fiscal Year 2034.

The funding is split between the buckets below:

1. Shipbuilding: $34B to purchase warships and submarines, support the maritime industrial base, and modernize drydocks. This includes funding for workforce initiatives, supply chains, and unmanned ships.
2. Golden Dome: $25B for integrated air and missile defense, including interceptors, space-based assets, radar, and hypersonic technology.
3. Munitions: $21B to build stockpiles of munitions needed in a potential war with China. This includes funding for critical mineral and solid rocket motor supply chains.
4. Scaling Low-Cost Weapons: $14B to scale innovative military technologies into production.
5. Resources for Nuclear Forces: $13B for nuclear modernization and National Nuclear Security Administration infrastructure.
6. Readiness: $12B for depot maintenance for the Air Force and Navy, spares for aircraft and ships, and development of vehicles for logistic support.
7. Quality of Life for Military Personnel: $9B for barrack modernization.
8. Pacific: $11B for military exercises and infrastructure in the Pacific.
9. Air Superiority: $7B to purchase aircraft and support aircraft production.
10. Border and Counter Drug: $5B for border operations and counter-narcotics operations.
11. Military Intelligence: $2B for military intelligence programs.
12. Fiscal Responsibility and Audit: $380M for the audit, business system modernization, and cybersecurity.

The bill text can be found HERE.

The HASC/SASC Press release can be viewed HERE.

The HASC/SASC funding overview can be viewed HERE.

The section by section of the bill can be viewed HERE.

$150B defense boost in reconciliation bill to ‘immediately’ go towards Golden Dome, shipbuilding (Breaking Defense 4/25)

“The heads of the Senate and House armed services committees have agreed on a $150 billion boost for defense funding in the reconciliation bill, which will be spread across 12 focus areas including shipbuilding, munitions, and the president’s Golden Dome missile shield. The text of the bill — which will later be incorporated with other legislation meant to advance the priorities of President Donald Trump through a process known as ‘budget reconciliation’ — is expected to be released later today, said three senior congressional officials who previewed the bill in a call with reporters.”

DOD kicks off review of major defense acquisition programs as Hegseth touts reforms (DefenseScoop 4/23)

“Pentagon officials launched a review of ‘all 72 active major defense acquisitions programs’ this week to determine changes or cancellations that could be made based on President Donald Trump’s recent executive order that aims to transform how the government buys equipment and services for military and civilian personnel, according to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. ‘We must have high-performing, mission-aligned programs at every level,’ Hegseth told students and staff at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania Wednesday. During his address, he spotlighted ongoing reform efforts Defense Department leadership is pursuing in the early months of the second Trump administration, and other near-term plans to invest in next-generation warfighting capabilities.”

Defense Innovation Unit to expand US outposts with three new hubs (Defense News 4/24)

“The Defense Innovation Unit is launching three more outposts across the U.S. to help the Pentagon connect with a broader swath of technology companies. DIU is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and has offices in Boston, Austin, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. Last year, it opened five onramp hubs in Kansas, Ohio, Arizona, Hawaii and Washington state. The three new hubs will be based in Kentucky, Minnesota and Montana, according to Liz Young McNally, DIU’s deputy director of commercial operations. ‘We’re really humbled and excited by the opportunity at DIU to be that on ramp for commercial and dual use technology into the department,’ Young McNally said Wednesday at the Apex Conference in Oxon Hill, Maryland. ‘And one of the ways that we do that is by having people out in the regions, out where innovation is happening.’”

White House defends Hegseth amid new Signal accusation, staff overhaul (Defense News 4/21)

“White House officials defended Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth amid another round of controversies over the weekend, blaming the media and Pentagon establishment for resisting needed reforms throughout the military. During an interview on Fox News on Monday morning, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Donald Trump ‘stands strongly behind Secretary Hegseth’ and insisted senior leaders believe the embattled Cabinet official is ‘doing a tremendous job’ so far. ‘Secretary Hegseth was nominated for this position because he is standing up for the men and women in uniform who are putting their lives on the line to protect our country and our homeland,’ Leavitt said. ‘Unfortunately, there have been people at the [Pentagon] who don’t like the change, so they are leaking and they are lying to the mainstream media.’”

How a Lloyd Austin aide became Pete Hegseth’s ‘only guy standing’ (Defense News 4/22)

“As pressure rises on the U.S. Navy to boost its shipbuilding capacity, the Pentagon has released a call for a new type of undersea vessel called the Combat Autonomous Maritime Platform, or CAMP, an unmanned system built ‘to maximize operational effectiveness in contested environments,’ according to the solicitation released by the Defense Innovation Unit. This new class of remotely operated vessel aims to take the Navy’s capacity for undersea warfare to the next level — maneuvering in GPS-denied environments at a range greater than 1,000 nautical miles and diving to more than 200 meters underwater during missions, one of which would include dropping ‘various payloads to the sea floor.’”

China’s rare-earth mineral squeeze will hit the Pentagon hard (Defense One 4/23)

“China is beginning to restrict exports of rare-earth minerals crucial to U.S. military might—a long-warned-of vulnerability that is becoming an urgent reality. From tungsten in armor-piercing rounds to gallium in radars, the U.S. Defense Department has built a warfighting enterprise with a supply chain that runs straight through China. But recent developments threaten the Pentagon’s ability to maintain that enterprise. In early April, Beijing imposed sweeping export controls on seven rare earth elements used in everything from laser-guided weapons to MRI machines. The newly restricted elements—samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium—require a government-issued license for export, with Chinese officials citing ‘national security’ justifications for the change.”

State of the Air Force 2025 (Defense One 4/18)

The Air Force is prepping for a potential showdown with China, seeking cutting-edge technology like stealthy jets and AI-powered drone wingmen. Just two months into the new presidential administration, it learned it will have a new weapon in its arsenal: the first sixth-generation fighter jet. President Donald Trump, flanked by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and a rendering of the F-47 peeking through a shadowy background, called the jet ‘virtually unseeable’ with ‘unprecedented power.’ ‘America’s enemies will never see it coming,’ Trump said during the Oval Office ceremony. ‘Hopefully we won’t have to use it for that purpose, but you have to have it. And if it ever happens, they won’t know what the hell hit them.’”

Pentagon sets November timeline for largest-ever spectrum sharing demo (Breaking Defense 4/24)

“The Defense Department is planning to host the largest-ever spectrum sharing demonstration with industry in November, an official from the Pentagon’s FutureG office revealed Wednesday, in hopes of answering key questions amid a contentious debate. ‘The real gap that we’ve had in these past spectrum sharing projects has been scale. They’ve been frankly under-resourced concepts on a table, maybe in a lab, maybe one or two outdoor experiments here and there. But nothing at this scale, which is a large-scale, multi-domain spectrum-sharing demonstration,’ Tom Rondeau said during a panel at the Apex Defense Conference. ‘So that’s the really exciting part.’”

America’s nuclear arsenal to cost $946B over next decade, government report reveals (Breaking Defense 4/25)

“America’s nuclear arsenal will cost $946 billion over the next decade, an estimated total that rose by 25 percent over the last two years, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The total, covering operations, sustainment and modernization for the years 2025-2034, comes out to an average of $95 billion per year, according to the CBO’s biannual report, which was released Thursday. The 25 percent cost increase from the previous edition, released in 2023, amounts to $190 billion. That change stems largely from CBO estimating an increased cost on projects, including from the Sentinel ICBM effort, which Pentagon officials have said is 81 percent above its baseline cost estimate; however, some increase costs are the result of a shift of two years in the time period covered, as the previous report covered 2023-2032.”

Polygraph Threats, Leaks and Infighting: The Chaos Inside Hegseth’s Pentagon (The Wall Street Journal 4/24)

“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was rattled. Word had leaked that he was planning a classified briefing for Elon Musk on China, a revelation that infuriated President Trump and raised alarms inside the Pentagon given Musk’s business ties to Beijing. ‘I’ll hook you up to a f—ing polygraph!’ Hegseth shouted at Adm. Christopher Grady, the then-acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to two people familiar with the exchange. Hegseth demanded proof that Grady hadn’t leaked news of the March 21 briefing. Grady was never subjected to a polygraph, and Hegseth would go on to accuse a number of other people for the leak, including Lt. Gen. Doug Sims, the Joint Staff director, whom Hegseth also threatened with a polygraph test.”

Elon Musk sat in on job interview for Air Force’s top civilian (Breaking Defense 4/25)

“SpaceX founder Elon Musk was present at President Donald Trump’s interview of his Air Force Secretary nominee Troy Meink, confirmed Meink in written responses to Sen. Elizabeth Warren obtained by Breaking Defense. Musk was ‘one of many’ people present at the meeting and only Trump directed questions toward the nominee, Meink stated. However, the disclosure could raise further concerns about Meink’s ties to SpaceX and Musk after Reuters reported in February — citing seven people familiar with the matter — that Musk had recommended Meink for the job after Meink helped push a multi-billion dollar satellite contract toward SpaceX.”