As senior members of the House Armed Services Committee, we are concerned that unless we recalibrate our approach to defense technology acquisition, we will continue on the slow, costly and unsustainable path that threatens our national defense and the rules-based international order.

Over the last 10 years, through numerous National Defense Authorization Acts, Congress has passed a variety of authorities to help streamline research and development and acquisition. These include more flexible other transaction authorities, mid-tier acquisition authorities, the Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies program and protections for commercial technology to help better attract nontraditional companies to the defense sector.

Similarly, DOD has taken some steps of its own. The efforts of the late Defense Secretary Ash Carter, continued and expanded by leaders in subsequent administrations on a bipartisan basis, led to the creation of the Defense Innovation Unit, the Strategic Capabilities Office and the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office. Current efforts — such as Replicator and the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve — show promise in accelerating acquisition and development for certain capabilities.

These legislative and policy efforts intended to streamline, enhance and wring efficiencies from the acquisition system have left a dizzying array of authorities available to program managers and procurement officials. However, rather than fully utilizing these authorities, DOD still largely follows a slow and costly acquisition process hamstrung by a focus on the process and rigid requirements rather than fielding a capability and achieving results.

Furthermore, officials are more reliably punished for failures than rewarded for creativity and adaptability. Worse yet, they are incentivized to make decisions that may look good during their tenure but create unacceptable risks, cost growth or program management problems for successors. Cultural risk aversion drives a dangerous and costly tendency — one that too often results in cutting-edge technology becoming stale and outdated by the time it is put into play, if not earlier.

We also need to change how DOD interacts with Congress. Bold ideas require early collaboration which does not fit into the model where nothing can be disclosed or discussed with Congress until the president’s budget is released. Surprising Congress with new ideas historically has not benefited any part of the government. No one should be surprised when those ideas go unsupported.

Even when empowered offices overcome these structural disincentives, the efforts tend to be narrowly scoped. Large programs of record for complex systems or large services contracts are built around onerous requirements or meaningless metrics rather than problem-solving ideas or desired outcomes. Narrow technical requirements need to change to broad capability requirements.

The fiscal 2024 NDAA tasks DOD with modernizing the requirements process by avoiding prescriptive language, focusing on mission outcomes and assessed threats, enabling a more iterative and collaborative approach with the services and maximizing the use of commercial products. We expect to be briefed on an interim implementation report in the coming weeks. Getting this right is an absolute imperative.

We are likewise concerned that our research and development proving grounds are dangerously overtaxed. Years of chronic underinvestment have created unacceptable delays in test schedules. Rigorous exercise and experimentation, vital to transitioning technologies into capabilities, are hamstrung by the lack of facilities needed to develop disruptive technologies.

Finally, Congress itself is part of the problem. Parochialism, overly restrictive and inflexible appropriations, risk aversion and an unfortunate habit of killing messengers — to say nothing of the corrosive and wasteful use of continuing resolutions — create dangerous barriers to agility and innovation. The final report of the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform Commission lays out many of these issues in more detail.

We cannot legislate cultural change, nor can the Defense Department implement it by policy. But we can adjust the incentives, behaviors and signals that drive cultural change over time and our ability to do so is unparalleled.

We have the most innovative economy in the world. We have the best universities, capital markets and entrepreneurial spirit. It is our duty to make sure the government can access that unmatched advantage in an effective way to give our military what it needs to meet our national security needs.

U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, D-Ala., is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee; Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., is ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee; Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., is chairman of the Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies and Innovation; and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., is ranking member of the Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies and Innovation.

The service last year ditched underperforming or unpromising programs, including a future aircraft and a long-range cannon, as budgets remain tight and global conflicts spiral. Additional decisions are expected as the service scrambles to balance its books.

Defense News sat down with Caral Spangler, the Army’s comptroller, and Lt. Gen. Paul Chamberlain, the military deputy in the service’s budget office, to talk about the challenges of crafting budgets that square the eternal circle of paying today’s bills while anticipating the warfare needs of tomorrow.

What challenges exist in this cycle that you are working through now?

Spangler: As we built the five-year plan, we had a lot of discussions about what the soldiers needs were, including installations and housing requirements. Our perpetual thing that we talk about in the Army is balancing modernization and readiness. We have to align that with our military personnel accounts because that really is our biggest, single program.

Then, what are the economic factors? We don’t have the new economic assumptions yet from the Office of the Secretary of Defense. It’s always a concern for us, including what is the pay raise going to be? Do we pay for that ourselves, or will we get a top line increase? That affects the Army significantly.

The Army has about $40 billion in discretionary spending in its roughly $186 billion budget. In your view, is this discretionary spending pool getting more shallow?

Chamberlain: We can assume that the Army’s probably going to be in that $185.5 billion to $186 billion range. For the last two years, we only had a $200 million — $300 million top line increase. It’s tiny, around 0.2% of our discretionary spending pot, not factoring in inflation.

That is squeezing all of our ability to go after some of the modernization accounts or support the modernization that the Army wants to do.

Our senior leaders historically have said that we probably need between 3% and 5% real growth. Not the negative purchasing power that we’ve experienced the last couple of years, but real growth to affect the modernization that we need to do. Forty billion is a big number, but it continues to get squeezed. We’ll continue to try to find ways to give ourselves an advantage, whether that’s flexible funding.

We’ll continue to look for efficiencies. And we’ll continue to do what the chief has got us doing now, which is how do we transform in contact? How do we take some of the new kit or using some of the old kit in different ways in order to enhance our ability to conduct operations and provide that overmatch to our forces?

Spangler: Harken back, last February or thereabouts, to the Army making hard choices when it needs to make hard choices. We canceled the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft program to invest in things that we need. So we are demonstrating that we are mindful of some of those challenges and doing what’s appropriate.

What efficiencies are you finding that could help during this budget cycle?

Chamberlain: A lot of that will be down at the command as we’re working with them, to continue to do some consolidation of efforts that we’re seeing there. How do we make certain decisions as we’re doing either some of our construction or sustainment that will ensure that we have better and perhaps cheaper maintenance sustainment costs in the future? Those are sort of the things that we’re looking at.

Last year you felt positive about certain aspects of the Army’s ability to pass an audit. So how are you feeling one year later about the possibility of the Army passing a full audit by the deadline of FY28?

Spangler: The auditors are not finished with their work yet for this year, either. It’s a little bit of an unknown where we are today, but we have good confidence that we are going to see some more material weaknesses get retired this year, which is a measure of progress. And we have also made some great progress in getting more whole Army participation and awareness and knowledge of the audit, and so I think that’s very helpful.

We’ve had some conversations with some of the senior leaders throughout the Army, at the different commands and stuff. So they are now turning focus.

Having the different elements of the Army, the logistics community, the sustainment community, the manpower guys, being under that audit scrutiny gives them an opportunity to streamline things and figure out what improvements can be made. We are seeing that happening as well.

The Pentagon is living under its annual three-month continuing resolution. What are some of the effects for the Army?

Spangler: Before we started with getting this relatively clean CR, there was a lot of discussion about it being a six-month CR instead. So we had done quite a bit of work to think about what government programs and what things were going to be impacted by a six-month CR. The really interesting dynamic for the Army, in particular, is the fact that under a CR you’re cash-flowing so many significant bills with last year’s resources.

And since we haven’t had much growth in our budget, regular things like the pay raises and the cost of living adjustments and housing and subsistence and all those things, if the CR continues we have to pay those at the higher rates. So that puts pressure there.

You have things going on in the real world that we’re having to cash-flow, some of the Ukraine operations, things that we’re doing to support the theater in Central Command, all those things. We’re having to bear the cost of the operations on the Southwest border until we get money in for those things. And sometimes people don’t give us those reimbursements until kind of late in the fiscal year.

Chamberlain: In fact the reimbursement for some of the support that we provided really didn’t come until the middle of September. So 11-and-a-half months. We’re doing all the base requirements, plus the additional operations or missions that come in. And we’re doing that within the funding that we have.

That does create a lot of rework for the commands, as well as our analysts here in the Pentagon, in the Army budget office. The level of work that we have to do to move money around and then get the money back into the right account when we do get the reimbursement – the team is great, they do it, they’re awesome at it because they’re practiced at it – but it does create a lot of rework for everyone across the Army.

In a letter sent to the White House on Tuesday, first reported by Defense News, the two Republican lawmakers argued that the “excluded technologies list” governing what the U.S. can export to either country is still too long. The restrictions, they said, will hinder America’s ability to develop key capabilities to compete with its main rival, China.

“We urge you and your senior leaders to continue to review items included on the ETL and remove as many as possible that do not warrant inclusion in order to unleash AUKUS’ full potential,” wrote Armed Services Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and Foreign Affairs Chairman Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas.

AUKUS countries update rules on sharing defense kit

Under AUKUS, the United States is helping Australia build nuclear-powered submarines, a system so sensitive America had previously only shared it with the U.K. Under the second part of the deal, the three countries are also developing advanced technology, from hypersonic missiles to quantum computing.

One of the main barriers to this effort is the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR, a strict set of rules on what weaponry the U.S. exports. The administration loosened these rules for the U.K. and Australia in August, freeing up either country to access 80% of American defense exports without first applying for a license.

What the two lawmakers are now concerned about is the remaining 20%, given how long it can take to get one of those licenses. The U.S. State Department can take more than a month to vet requests, and the application often requires longer prep work beforehand.

“We should move to allow as much sharing of technology as possible,” Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said in testimony before Congress in September. “We have more work to be done on this.”

The U.S. State Department’s updated rule is still under review, allowing public comment until mid-November. Before the hearing, Campbell gave McCaul a “personal commitment” to shepherd this process through its deadline, said a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Republican staff.

The staffer said that the size of the excluded technologies list also depends on how it’s measured: It may be 20% by dollar amount, but it’s 30% by the number of total U.S. licenses.

This list includes weapons and technology restricted by law — such as biological weapons or cluster bombs. But it also includes others only restricted by U.S. policy, such as precision missiles. British and Australian officials often chafe at these delays, since the State Department almost always approves their requests in the end.

Even more, the staff member argued, some of the technology that would be most important to AUKUS is still on that list — adding delays when the U.S. and its allies should be moving faster.

“The Australians have done a full-court press to the Hill, but they’ve also been very vocal to the administration” about loosening the rules, the aide said. Of particular concern to Canberra, the aide continued, are precision weapons, undersea drones and maritime acoustic technology.

The Australian embassy wouldn’t confirm whether those capabilities are of special interest. In a statement, a spokesperson for the embassy said that the government “welcome[ed] continued bipartisan congressional interest in removing barriers to create a seamless trilateral defense industrial base.”

The U.S. State Department could not immediately provide comment.

“We need to make sure we achieve the full potential of the exemption and reap the opportunities it provides for faster, more efficient collaboration between AUKUS partners. Ensuring the scope of the Excluded Technologies list is minimized, where appropriate, and that the regulation itself fully supports our collaboration, will be key to achieving this,” a British official wrote in a statement.

The top U.S., U.K. and Australian defense officials met in London last week to mark AUKUS’ third anniversary and announced the winners of a challenge meant to jumpstart the agreement’s work on advanced technology.

“When the final AUKUS rule is announced in November, we expect to see significant changes,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter.

The service’s acquisition arm, Space Systems Command, chose L3Harris, Astranis, Axient and Sierra Space to create design concepts for the program. From that pool, it will select a subset to finalize their designs and build prototypes and then will pick one or more firms to build the first eight satellites. Command officials wants those spacecraft to be ready to launch by 2028.

The Pentagon has become increasingly concerned about GPS signals — used to guide weapons and help units navigate — being jammed or spoofed by adversaries. Russia has taken advantage of this vulnerability in Ukraine, using electronic warfare to jam signals on a regular basis.

The Resilient GPS program, or R-GPS, is meant to augment the Space Force’s current constellation of GPS satellites with a fleet of smaller spacecraft that will transmit a set of signals widely used by the military and civilian agencies.

The service used an accounting tactic provided by Congress to shift funding from elsewhere in its budget to award initial contracts. Known as a quick-start, the transfer authority came in the Fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, allowing the Defense Department to reprogram up to $100 million in funding to start high-priority programs before they are approved as part of a formal budget cycle.

“Thanks to the Quick-Start authority that was approved by Congress, we were able to field and award contracts for these low-cost satellites in less than six months,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in a statement. “This authority allows us to move faster and start new Space Force and Air Force programs.”

The early funding has allowed Space Systems Command to conduct market research, host an industry day, release a solicitation and award the first round of contracts in less than six months.

The Space Force did not disclose the value of those awards. However, it has told Congress it expects the program to cost $1 billion over the next five years. To date, it has shifted $40 million in FY23 funding to support he effort and has asked lawmakers to realign another $77 million in FY25 toward R-GPS.

The House Appropriations defense subcommittee has cast doubt on whether the effort will be as resilient as the Space Force hopes. In its version of FY25 defense spending legislation, the panel proposed denying the service’s request to realign FY25 money and questioned whether quick-start authorities should be used for the effort.

“While proliferation may provide some advantages, it is not clear how these additional satellites increase the resilience against the primary jamming threat to GPS, compared to alternative concepts for position, navigation, and timing systems being pursued elsewhere in the Department of Defense,” lawmakers said in a report accompanying the bill, released in June.

They also took issue with the program’s focus on resilient satellites versus improving the GPS ground systems and user equipment. The Space Force has said the goal is for the satellites to use existing devices.

Once the first R-GPS satellites are fielded, Space Systems Command officials envision updating the constellation with new technology on a regular cadence, similar to the Space Development Agency’s approach to fielding missile warning and data transport satellites as part of its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture.

The service said each new batch of R-GPS capability will include up to eight satellites, but didn’t disclose how regularly it plans to field those spacecraft.

The legislation comes from Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Mitt Romney, R-Ut., who is retiring in January. It’s modeled after an amendment Romney proposed to Congress’ annual defense policy bill — the National Defense Authorization Act — which still hasn’t passed with lawmakers caught in an election-year morass.

The bill would give any administration the authority to put financial penalties on outside backers of the maritime militia, ostensibly a fleet of commercial fishing vessels but one that is trained by, and often operates alongside, China’s military.

A decade ago, the group helped China take control over Scarborough Shoal, a disputed feature in the South China Sea. It’s also harassed American naval ships before.

A 2021 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that the maritime militia includes around 300 vessels operating around the Spratly Islands, which also sit in the South China Sea, every day. Their goal is mainly to enforce China’s expansive claims over the area, denying access to other countries that also assert sovereignty there.

Such behavior from the Chinese Coast Guard, another part of Beijing’s fleet, has flared up this year around Second Thomas Shoal and other features in the sea, where Chinese ships have intercepted, rammed or seized resupply missions from the Philippines to sailors stationed in the area.

This summer, president of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said that the death of a Filipino sailor in such a clash would approach an “act of war” from China, which could potentially drag the U.S. into the conflict, given its defense treaty with Manila.

A Republican congressional aide likened the new bill to preventative care. After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. rushed to tighten sanctions on Moscow in an effort to punish and eventually degrade the war effort. Those sanctions have since expanded to other supportive countries, a network that has broadened as Iran, North Korea and China increasingly back Russia’s military or defense industry.

Were a conflict in the western Pacific to break out, the Senators don’t want the administration to lack authority to punish such behavior.

“By providing the necessary authority to sanction the entities that provide support to this militia fleet, Congress can equip the administration with a tool to send a message that the United States will not allow China’s increased aggression in the region to go unchecked,” Romney said in a statement.

The aide said that the administration did not specifically request the authority, and noted that its use is entirely up to the discretion of the administration.

China’s gray zone activity has been a consistent challenge for the U.S. and its partners in the region, who either don’t have a large enough coast guard or navy to respond or don’t know how to do so without appearing to overreact.

“Ensuring freedom of navigation is critical to our national security, the security of our allies and the global economy. But over the past decade, the People’s Republic of China has sought to extend its control in the South China Sea by expanding its maritime militia,” Kaine said in a statement, explaining his rationale for the bill.

U.S. officials said the Biden administration has asked Congress to include the funding authority in any continuing resolution lawmakers may manage to pass before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30 in order to fund the federal government and prevent a shutdown. Officials said they hope to have the authority extended for another year.

They also said the Defense Department is looking into other options if that effort fails.

US to send $125 million in new military aid to Ukraine, officials say

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the funding talks, did not provide details on the options. But they said about $5.8 billion in presidential drawdown authority, or PDA, will expire. Another $100 million in PDA does not expire at the end of the month, the officials said. The PDA allows the Pentagon to take weapons off the shelves and send them quickly to Ukraine.

They said there is a little more than $4 billion available in longer-term funding through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative that will not expire at the end of the month. That money, which expires Sept. 30, 2025, is used to pay for weapons contracts that would not be delivered for a year or more.

Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that as the Defense Department comptroller provides options to senior defense and military service leaders, they will look at ways they can tap the PDA and USAI funding.

He said it could be important to Ukraine as it prepares for the winter fight.

“One of the areas that we could do work with them on … is air defense capabilities and the ability to defend their critical infrastructure,” Brown told reporters traveling with him to meetings in Europe. “It’s very important to Ukraine on how they defend their national infrastructure, but also set their defenses for the winter so they can slow down any type of Russian advance during the winter months.”

Earlier Thursday at the Pentagon, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the press secretary, noted that the PDA gives the Pentagon the ability to spend money from its budget to send military aid to Ukraine. Funding in the $61 billion supplemental bill for Ukraine passed in April can reimburse the department for the weapons it sends.

“Right now, we’re continuing to work with Congress to see about getting those authorities extended to enable us to continue to do drawdown packages,” said Ryder. “In the meantime, you’re going to continue to see drawdown packages. But we’ll have much more to provide on that in the near future."

The U.S. has routinely announced new drawdown packages — often two to three a month.

Failure by lawmakers to act on the PDA funding could once again deliver a serious setback in Ukraine’s battle against Russia, just five months after a bitterly divided Congress finally overcame a long and devastating gridlock and approved new Ukraine funding.

Delays in passing that $61 billion for Ukraine earlier this year triggered dire battlefield conditions as Ukrainian forces ran low on munitions and Russian forces were able to make gains. Officials have blamed the monthslong deadlocked Congress for Russia's ability to take more territory.

Since funding began again, U.S. weapons have flowed into Ukraine, bolstering the forces and aiding Kyiv’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. Ukraine’s forces stormed across the border five weeks ago and put Russian territory under foreign occupation for the first time since World War II.

“I think some of the areas that [Gen. Randy George], the chief [of staff of the Army] and I feel very strongly that we need to invest more in, both from the perspective of the Army... but also the needs of the joint force, is in the areas of unmanned aerial systems, counter-unmanned aerial systems and electronic warfare,” she said Wednesday at the Defense News Conference.

For instance, a Ukraine battalion commander told Wormuth earlier this year during training in Germany, that Russian electronic warfare capabilities were increasing “in ways that were concerning,” Wormuth detailed.

“I think you’ll see that in the budget that goes up to Congress next spring,” Wormuth said. “That’s an area where I think we also need to have more agility in our funding mechanisms because of the technology in those capability areas is changing so rapidly that we can’t afford to get locked into something and then be only allowed to use that something for the next 10 years.”

Both Wormuth and George have discussed the possibility of budgeting differently in order to get some capability into the hands of soldiers much more quickly. One of those possibilities is asking Congress to fund pots of money dedicated for a specific capability rather than budget across a number of specific line items that tend to be a specific product or program.

But both have also acknowledged that getting congressional appropriators on board might not be so easy. “Historically, they’re generally… very skeptical of what they see as kind of slush funds. They have a lot of scar tissue around [overseas contingency operations], and how the department has used that over the years,” Wormuth said.

Even so, “there is such a deep realization that we have got to change more quickly and that technology is changing rapidly right now that we do need to have more agile mechanisms,” she added.

Overseas contingency operations, or OCO, funding, used during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to pay for operations abroad, was a separate account with billions outside of the Pentagon’s base budget. It was often used to get extra funding for a variety of things rather than commit to paying for it within regular funding. Congress eliminated OCO funding beginning in FY22. Now the Defense Department must budget for any overseas operations within its base budget.

The Army plans to present a budget in these areas, according to Wormuth, that, for example, used to have 10 to 12 individual line items and now may have two or three.

“If we keep it relatively narrow and focused and we demonstrate that we can use that agility in those areas effectively, we may be able to sort of have a proof of concept,” she said. “I’m cautiously optimistic.”

But the Virginia Republican congressman acknowledged that the details of how lawmakers will get there is still a mystery.

Wittman’s comments at the Defense News Conference on Wednesday came just 26 days before a potential partial government shutdown if House and Senate leaders cannot pass a budget extension by Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year.

“I think we know we’re not going to get the seven remaining appropriations bills done between now and the end of the fiscal year,” he said. “In light of that, it looks like there’s going to be another continuing resolution that will come up next week, probably the middle of next week. The debate has been how long should that last.”

More Defense News Conference coverage

With the presidential and congressional elections in 64 days, lawmakers have begun debating whether to extend the budget into mid-November or early 2025, after the new Congress is seated.

Either way, defense planners likely won’t have their allotment of the federal budget until multiple months into the new fiscal year.

Wittman called the short-term budget extensions necessary, but “the worst way for us to be able to manage the defense enterprise,” given the uncertainty surrounding when new programs and initiatives will be fully funded and can start.

But he believes that Pentagon officials can count on the House-passed $833 billion target for total defense spending next fiscal year, whenever the federal budget is finally finalized.

“With the Fiscal Responsibility Act, it actually appropriates to that, and I think that’s the number you’re actually going to have to live with,” he said. “And I think that the Pentagon should be able to do most of the things that it needs to do with that number.”

White House officials have signaled they expect to request supplemental funding to deal with some outstanding defense fiscal needs. During a separate panel at the conference, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said her service will need extra money to cover the rising cost of installations services.

“Not only are our barracks and housing in need of investment, our power projection infrastructure is in need of investment as well,” she said. “It’s really hard to do that all inside the existing Army top line.”

Both the House and Senate return to Capitol Hill work next week.

Biden announced plans to use the temporary pier in his State of the Union address in March to hasten the delivery of aid to the Palestinian territory besieged by war between Israel and Hamas.

What did the US military’s Gaza aid pier actually accomplish?

But the $230 million military-run project known as the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore system, or JLOTS, would only operate for about 20 days. Aid groups pulled out of the project by July, ending a mission plagued by repeated weather and security problems that limited how much food and other emergency supplies could get to starving Palestinians.

“Multiple USAID staff expressed concerns that the focus on using JLOTS would detract from the Agency’s advocacy for opening land crossings, which were seen as more efficient and proven methods of transporting aid into Gaza,” the inspector general said in a report published Tuesday. “However, once the President issued the directive, the Agency’s focus was to use JLOTS as effectively as possible.”

At the time Biden announced plans for the floating pier, the United Nations was reporting that virtually all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people were struggling to find food and more than a half-million were facing starvation.

The Biden administration set a goal of the U.S. sea route and pier providing food to feed 1.5 million of Gaza's people for 90 days. It fell short, bringing in enough to feed about 450,000 people for a month before shutting down.

High waves and bad weather repeatedly damaged the pier, and the U.N. World Food Program ended cooperation with the project after an Israeli rescue operation used an area nearby to whisk away hostages, raising concerns about whether its workers would be seen as neutral and independent in the conflict.

Pentagon watchdog to review JLOTS system used for Gaza aid pier

National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said the project “had a real impact” of getting food to hungry Palestinian civilians despite the obstacles.

“The bottom line is that given how dire the humanitarian situation in Gaza is, the United States has left no stone unturned in our efforts to get more aid in, and the pier played a key role at a critical time in advancing that goal,” Savett said in a statement Tuesday.

The Defense Department said the pier "achieved its goal of providing an additive means of delivering high volumes of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza to help address the acute humanitarian crisis.”

The U.S. military knew from the outset “there would be challenges as part of this in this complex emergency,” the department's statement added. Its inspector general also is conducting an evaluation.

The USAID watchdog's report alleged that the United States had failed to honor commitments it had made with the World Food Program to get the U.N. agency to agree to take part in distributing supplies from the pier into Palestinian hands.

The U.S. agreed to conditions set by the program, including that the pier would be placed in north Gaza, where the need for aid was greatest, and that a U.N. member nation would provide security for the pier. That step was meant to safeguard the program's neutrality among Gaza's warring parties, the watchdog report said.

Instead, however, the Pentagon placed the pier in central Gaza. Food program staffers told the USAID watchdog that it was their understanding the U.S. military chose that location because it allowed better security for the pier and the military itself.

Israel's military ultimately provided the security after the U.S. military was unable to find a neutral country willing to do the job, the watchdog report said.

A U.S. official said the USAID staffer concerns about the project undercutting overall aid efforts were raised early in the process. USAID responded by adding enough staffing for the agency to address both the pier and the land routes simultaneously, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.

USAID said in a statement that U.S. agencies worked together in planning the project and in consultation with the United Nations and humanitarian groups to “mitigate risks to all personnel, including humanitarian staff.”

Inspectors general are meant to be watchdogs for the government and individual agencies, providing accountability and transparency on their operations.

Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani and Tara Copp contributed to this report.

Among those sanctioned by the Treasury Department were 60 Russian-based technology and defense companies, including three Russian financial tech companies. Also sanctioned were firms in Turkey, France and Hong Kong that act as suppliers to Russia-based Promtekh, a wholesale distributor of transportation equipment, and an ammunition procurement network connected to Italian and Turkish nationals, who also face sanctions.

Friday's action is the latest in a series of thousands of U.S. sanctions that have been imposed on Russian firms and their suppliers in other nations since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The effectiveness of the sanctions has been questioned, especially as Russia has continued to support its economy by selling oil and gas on international markets.

Additionally, the State Department designated people and firms involved in Russia’s energy, metals and mining exports; drone production; subsidiaries of Russian state-owned nuclear energy corporation Rosatom; and people the U.S. says were involved in kidnapping Ukrainian children and making them identify as Russian.

The announcement comes one day before Ukraine’s independence day and as Ukrainian forces push into Russia’s Kursk region.

Friday's action is intended to make good on commitments that President Joe Biden made with his Group of Seven counterparts in Italy this summer to disrupt Russia's military supply chains and drive up costs for its war machine.

“Russia has turned its economy into a tool in service of the Kremlin’s military industrial complex," Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in a statement announcing the sanctions. “Companies, financial institutions, and governments around the world need to ensure they are not supporting Russia’s military-industrial supply chains.”

Earlier this year, the U.S. passed an aid package for Ukraine that allows the administration to seize Russian state assets located in the U.S. and use them for the benefit of Kyiv.

Shortly thereafter, the leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies agreed to engineer a $50 billion loan to help Ukraine in its fight for survival. Interest earned on profits from Russia’s $300 billion in frozen central bank assets mostly in Europe would be used as collateral.

The Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee said in a report submitted with its bill that the program in question, the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve, or RDER, isn’t transitioning technology fast enough and lacks buy-in from the services.

Heidi Shyu, the Defense Department’s chief technology officer, told reporters Wednesday she thinks the subcommittee is missing the point. The military services aren’t RDER’s primary customers — rather, the combatant commands are.

And, she added, if the program is moving too slowly for some lawmakers, that’s largely due to funding delays and cuts that originated in Congress.

“With the money that we have, we had to stretch out things,” she said on the sidelines of the National Defense Industrial Association’s (NDIA) Emerging Technologies for Defense Conference and Exhibition. “I asked for a full cup of water, you gave me less than half. I have to sip it.”

The Pentagon established the program in 2021 when then-Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten was concerned that the services overlooked COCOM needs. In response, the department created RDER to identify capability gaps that span multiple combatant commands and military services, find mature technologies it thinks can meet those gaps and then prove that they can through experimentation.

The program resides within the office of the under secretary of defense for research and engineering to ensure individual service priorities don’t override joint, COCOM requirements, Shyu noted.

“We created RDER to involve the joint staff and the COCOMs,” she said. “That’s the critical crux of RDER: To fulfill joint warfighting needs.”

The emphasis on jointness continues through the approval process. Once a capability demonstrates its viability, a panel of top military officials known as the Deputy’s Management Action Group — which includes combatant commanders, the joint chiefs and the undersecretaries of each military service — reviews the system and determines whether it should be funded and transitioned into production. The process is designed to take about two years.

Proving RDER’s value

Since RDER’s inception, Shyu and her team have been in an uphill battle to convince all four defense subcommittees that the program is meeting a unique need.

The department started the project selection process for the first round of RDER in 2022, garnering more than 200 ideas from the COCOMS, the services and defense industry. From that pool, it chose 32 capabilities. In its FY23 budget, the Pentagon requested $358 million for the selected proposals, but Congress cut funding to $272 million, requiring the department to whittle that list of projects to 23.

Due to extended budget deliberations, Shyu and her team didn’t have RDER funding in hand until March 2023, about five months into the fiscal year.

The Senate panel’s key complaint is that of those first 23 projects, about one-third have transitioned and most of those do not yet have a funding line in the services’ budgets.

“RDER to date has not resulted in accelerated fielding outcomes,” the subcommittee said in its report. “While the committee is supportive of data-driven joint experimentation, it is unaware of significant operational improvements derived from the RDER funding construct to date.”

Because of their concerns about RDER’s execution, the lawmakers recommend “slowing the rate of growth” the department has requested for the effort and shifting funding toward other DOD projects. The bill proposes creating a Rapid Defense Innovation Reserve that could be used for programs like Replicator — a Pentagon initiative to field thousands of attritable, uncrewed systems by August 2025.

The panel also calls for the department to review RDER’s progress and make a decision on whether funding should be diverted to other innovation efforts.

According to a spokesman for Shyu, the initial RDER numbers don’t tell the full story of the program’s momentum. It’s true that nine of the 23 first-round projects have transitioned and only five of those have dedicated funding, but the two-year process doesn’t conclude until next year, the spokesman told Defense News. In that time, another 11 projects from the first phase will be presented to senior leaders for approval.

The department has selected another 51 projects for the second phase of RDER, 25 of which were funded for experimentation.

Shyu acknowledged some of the first-round projects weren’t ready after the initial demonstrations and needed to go back through the cycle, but said that possibility is built into the two-year process.

Most of the nine projects that have transitioned are classified, but Shyu said several are already proving to have military utility. One effort, the Family of Integrated Targeting Cells, is being procured by the U.S. Marine Corps to integrate multiple sensors into a common operating sensor. By pushing the capability through RDER, the service was able to shave five years from its acquisition schedule.

In a speech at the NDIA conference Wednesday, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said RDER plays a key role in helping the department determine which capabilities are ready to be produced and fielded and which aren’t.

Communicating the importance of efforts like RDER and Replicator to Congress has been a challenge, Hicks said. To get lawmakers on board with Replicator, for example, the Pentagon has held nearly 40 meetings with lawmakers and their staffs since last October.

That level of engagement isn’t possible for all of the Pentagon’s innovation efforts, she said.

“We need just as much help from Congress in ensuring joint experimentation can enable delivery of effective capabilities to the warfighter,” Hicks said. “From Replicator’s success to combatant command priorities like the Joint Fires Network, we need efforts like RDER that bring rigor to our discernment of what is and isn’t ready to scale.”

The House and Senate armed services committees included the recommendation in their respective defense policy bills for fiscal 2025. The bombers in question had previously been equipped with the ability to carry nuclear weapons but were converted to conventional aircraft about 10 years ago to comply with a key U.S.-Russia arms control treaty known as New START.

That agreement, which sets limits on both countries’ nuclear arms capabilities, is set to expire in 2026. Proponents of the recommendation say that serious negotiations with Russia aren’t likely and the U.S. needs to prepare for a future without the same restrictions.

Brian Knight, deputy senior materiel leader in the Air Force’s B-52 bomber program office, said Tuesday the service is prepared to meet the timelines proposed in the bill, which calls for the conversions to begin within a month after the treaty limits lift in 2026. The process is estimated to be completed by 2029.

“The work itself, I’m not going to get into the details other than to say, we know how to do it and it’s relatively easy,” he told reporters during an Air Force Life Cycle Industry Day conference in Dayton, Ohio.

The Air Force operates a fleet of 76 B-52s, which have been in operation since 1976. The bomber was designed to carry nuclear and conventional weapons, but in 2015, the service modified 30 aircraft to a conventional-only status under New START.

Opponents of the policy proposal — including the House Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat Rep. Adam Smith of Washington — worry that making plans now to increase the U.S. nuclear stockpile could complicate future treaty negotiations.

Smith said in June, when the House’s bill passed, that the conversion process could interrupt ongoing efforts to modernize the aging B-52 fleet, which is on track to get a slate of upgrades in the coming years to keep it flying into the 2050s – and potentially until 2060.

“The Department of Defense is not interested in doing this,” Smith said. “They’re currently trying to extend the life of the B-52s out to 2050, which they think they can do. This would be another expense to that.”

Knight said the service could likely perform the conversions during planned depot maintenance. Brig. Gen. Erik Quigley, the service’s program executive for bombers, said in the same briefing this week that while the workload would be manageable, it would require some adjustments to the program’s depot schedule, which is usually set two years in advance.

“It would just take some planning to make sure that we got that into the flow,” Quigley said.

American presidents from both parties have long criticized a lack of burden sharing within NATO, pointing to many countries not matching the 2% of GDP defense spending commitment. With the upcoming U.S. presidential election and Trump and Vance’s criticisms of the alliance, NATO’s future is effectively on the ballot, some foreign policy experts say.

Trump has frequently criticized NATO countries for placing a financial burden on the U.S., warning that if they do not increase their contributions, he might consider reducing America’s involvement in the alliance or withdrawing completely.

“NATO has to treat the U.S. fairly, because if it’s not for the United States, NATO literally doesn’t even exist,” Trump said in a March interview.

The U.S. spent 3.49% of its GDP on defense in 2023, while 19 of 32 NATO countries failed to reach the 2% commitment. This year, 23 out of 32 countries are expected to meet or exceed the defense-spending target, according to NATO.

NATO holds its biggest exercises in decades, involving 90K personnel

Embracing Trump’s “America First” foreign policy platform, Trump and Vance favor isolationism. This raises the question: What does this mean for NATO member countries in need of American assistance, especially Ukraine and neighboring countries around Russia?

Even if Vice President Kamala Harris — the anticipated Democratic presidential nominee — wins the election in November, NATO may still face challenges.

A Trump and Vance ticket

Klaus Larres, a history professor at the University of North Carolina and a fellow at the Wilson Center, noted that not all campaign rhetoric translates into actions once in office.

Trump is more skeptical of NATO than President Joe Biden’s administration, but since more countries are meeting the defense spending commitment, that grievance may diminish, Larres said.

“He probably will not repeat again that he wants to leave NATO, but he probably will make the United States less active in NATO and less prominent and less being the clear leader of NATO,” he said.

Larres said Vance’s inexperience in foreign policy will require a steep learning curve, which could prompt him to reconsider his instinctive isolationism.

“He is an isolationist, and he wants to withdraw from Ukraine,” Larres said. “He doesn’t seem to see how detrimental that also would be for the United States and not just for the Europeans or for Ukraine, that it would have really devastating effects on America’s role in the world. He doesn’t seem to understand that.”

With 40% of global trade involving the U.S. and Europe, a serious strain in relations would harm America not only in security but also in trade and economic policy, Larres said.

A Harris ticket

Harris is expected to be the Democratic presidential nominee, following Biden’s announcement that he won’t seek reelection. Harris, who as of this writing has not announced a vice presidential candidate, will face a formal nomination at the Democratic National Convention in August.

During his presidency, Biden expanded and defended NATO while bringing the Atlantic allies closer together, Larres said. Foreign policy experts expect Harris to continue support for NATO and Ukraine.

In contrast to the Republican ticket, Harris has indicated she would not stray from NATO.

“I firmly believe our commitment to build and sustain alliances has helped America become the most powerful and prosperous country in the world — alliances that have prevented wars, defended freedom and maintained stability from Europe to the Indo-Pacific,” Harris said at the Munich Security Conference in February.

“To put all of that at risk would be foolish,” Harris said.

In a February rally, Trump said he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO country that doesn’t meet the defense spending commitment.

In response, Harris criticized Trump’s remarks and reaffirmed her opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine.

“No previous U.S. president, regardless of party, has bowed down to a Russian dictator before,” Harris said in an interview.

In the days leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Harris urged NATO countries to unite and prepare sanctions.

During her Munich speech, Harris warned against American isolationism, stating abandoning Ukraine or NATO allies would repeat historical mistakes.

“If we stand by while an aggressor invades its neighbor with impunity, they will keep going,” she said, noting Putin’s actions could threaten all of Europe.

“If we fail to impose severe consequences on Russia, other authoritarians across the globe would be emboldened, because you see, they will be watching — they are watching and drawing lessons.”

The ‘bedrock’ of NATO

Foreign policy experts warned diminishing America’s involvement in NATO could signal to adversaries abroad they can take advantage of U.S. allies, as America’s military strength is a key deterrent.

Elizabeth Saunders, a professor of political science at Columbia University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the U.S. military is the “bedrock” of NATO, and the U.S. nuclear program is still a key part of how NATO deters adversaries, like Russia.

“It’s very clear that this dance that NATO countries and Russia are doing on the sort of outer edges of this conflict are designed to prevent direct hostilities between any NATO country and Russia, and that’s why Ukraine rightly believes that its security is tied to whether or not because it can get into NATO,” Saunders said.

On his campaign website, Trump argued “we have to finish the process we began under my Administration of fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission,” claiming Russia is not the greatest threat to the U.S.

“You don’t have to believe that Russia is the greatest threat to the U.S. to think that it is a threat to U.S. interests,” Saunders said.

Hans Binnendijk, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and an adjunct political scientist at the RAND Corporation, said the most acute risk to the U.S. is Russia because the war in Ukraine has the potential for escalation.

“So, if the alliance is significantly weakened, [Putin] may feel that he can take advantage of that and he goes into the Baltic states, for example, which would be very dangerous,” Binnendijk said.

Because NATO relies heavily on the U.S. for nuclear deterrence, undermining the alliance would weaken its effectiveness, Binnendijk said. As he sees it, the most immediate risk of a Trump and Vance win is Congress failing to agree on future aid for Ukraine. He noted delays in past aid bills have led to shortages of air defense and artillery munitions for Ukraine.

“If the U.S. just decides to stop aid to Ukraine, Europe can pick up some of it, but certainly not all of it, and it would probably force Ukraine into a very unfavorable situation where they might have to cut a really bad deal with Putin that would in turn do a lot of damage internally to the alliance,” he said.

Even if Trump doesn’t formally withdraw the U.S. from NATO, he could still reduce America’s involvement in ways that undermine the alliance and leave other member countries more vulnerable, Saunders said.

For example, Trump could refuse to appoint an ambassador to NATO or withdraw U.S. troops from allied countries, Saunders said.

“But if the fundamentals, if the material and the personnel and the capabilities that you need come from the U.S., then if you don’t have access to those, then you don’t really have NATO in its current form,” Saunders said. “You have something else that might still be called NATO.”

“In addition to normal start of production headwinds, the transition from an incumbent vendor has presented unique challenges for AM General related to sourcing directed parts, intellectual property, tooling and part qualification,” the spokesperson from Program Executive Office Combat Support and Combat Systems Support told Defense News in an interview.

“AM General is proactively addressing these issues, however, a six-month schedule adjustment to the initial delivery orders will be required to safeguard quality and manufacturing readiness requirements.”

AM General upset JLTV-maker Oshkosh in the Army’s new competition to build more of the vehicles in February 2023, winning a contract valued at $8.66 billion. Oshkosh won the original 2015 competition to build JLTV, beating out AM General and Lockheed Martin.

Oshkosh protested the decision with the Government Accountability Office in March 2023, but the GAO denied the incumbent’s protest in June 2023.

According to a redacted copy of the protest obtained by Defense News, Oshkosh contended the Army took “glaring risks” by selecting AM General, noting the company had “zero experience manufacturing the JLTV” and “by its own admission, must build out its own facilities before it can start production.”

Additionally, the protest states that AM General “lacks the existing supplier relations needed to manufacture the JLTV.”

AM General was given 18 months to begin building new JLTVs – equating to a rough start time of August 2024 – but that has slipped by half a year.

The Army noted the “schedule adjustment also provides an opportunity for the vehicle baseline to ‘catch-up’ due to its configuration freezing in 2022 to support the contract recompete effort.”

AM General is incorporating all required configuration changes, to include hardware and software, into the initial production of its JLTV variant that will “minimize” retrofitting activities and add capability to the vehicle, the Army spokesperson said.

The new variant will be quieter, have greater fuel efficiency, a higher degree of corrosion resistance, and “a more robust” electrical architecture, the spokesperson said, and numerous lessons learned are also being incorporated into AM General’s version, known as the A2, that will improve operational tempo rates and realize sustainment savings over the vehicle’s planned 30-year life.

The House Appropriations defense subcommittee’s version of the defense spending bill would reduce the Army’s fiscal 2025 budget of $653 million by $119 million due to the JLTV production schedule delays.

“The JLTV program is fully prepared to execute the FY25 budget position and will continue to meet all its program, fielding, and integration requirements while delivering an estimated $1 billion in savings over the life of the contract,” the spokesperson said.

The first keynote speaker at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Fourteenth Annual South China Sea Conference said forces in the region need to operate legally within international law, which the People’s Republic of China has not been doing.

Issa, a senior member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, said the transition of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China was peaceful, with a gradual change promise including two economic systems under one government. That promise was broken, he said.

“That promise will be broken again if Taiwan were to be merged officially back into China,” Issa said. “So, for the time being, the United States has to put a pause on closer relations with China, on turning over more power to China.”

Two protesters disrupted the representative’s keynote speech a couple minutes apart chanting “U.S. bases out now,” saying U.S. involvement and militarization in the Philippines should cease. Later, six more protesters with signs interrupted the keynote. All were escorted out of the event as their voices rang through the building.

“Every day I try to remind myself that the disruption of other people’s opportunity to express their free views is sometimes thwarted by people who silence them,” Issa said after the first two protesters left.

“So, every day, I close my windows and doors and try not to hear too much of that amplified speech, but at the same time, we are having a lively discussion about the best way not to put the Philippines in harm’s way and to keep them out of harm’s way,” Issa said.

Issa said there is “aggressive” activity in the region where rights to free travel on the open seas and territorial rights of Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines are being squashed by government backed Chinese vessels every day.

“So, we don’t have the luxury of saying, do nothing,” Issa said. “If we do nothing, we will see a swallowing up, directly and indirectly, of these countries and these territories.”

To stop aggressive activity on the waters, Issa said training and defense capabilities need to increase instead of just supplying boots on the group. He said sometimes countries in the region need to have their own form of a Coast Guard,

“We are looking at defense capability, and hopefully, if my aspirations and Senator Hagerty and others realize, we will be increasing the ability for the Philippines and throughout the region, people simply to say the rules of international law need to be obeyed, and to get them obeyed, sometimes you need to have your own, and I’ll call it Coast Guard, because I believe that’s really what a big part of it will be,” Issa said.

Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner, the conference’s afternoon keynote, said the U.S.’ alliance and commitments with the Philippines are “ironclad,” as the U.S. continues to support rights to fly, sail and operate where international law allows.

“Looking back, 2023 was a transformative year for making U.S. force posture in the Indo-Pacific more mobile, distributed, resilient and lethal,” Ratner said.

U.S. Force Posture Initiatives are included in the alliance with the Philippines to show military strength and readiness. Ratner said this year’s budget is an opportunity to deliver on the new agreements on force posture with the Philippines.

It marks a rapid turnaround in a short period dominated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and comes a decade after NATO allies agreed to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense with 20% of that going to major equipment purchases.

Still, some allies on Europe’s eastern flank and Republicans in the U.S. say that’s not enough. They’re pushing to increase the alliance’s defense spending targets beyond 2%, given the war in Ukraine and the risk of an American conflict with China.

None of that stopped President Joe Biden from lauding Washington’s progress in getting its NATO allies to shoulder a greater share of the defense burden, a longstanding gripe of U.S. presidents from both parties.

“In the year 2020, the year I was elected president, only nine NATO allies were spending 2% of their GDP on defense,” Biden said in his opening remarks to kick off the summit on Tuesday. “This year, 23 will spend at least 2 percent. And some will spend more than that.”

Still, some in the alliance consider that an almost hollow victory. The Wales Summit was 10 years ago, well before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“We reaffirm that, in many cases, expenditure beyond 2% of GDP will be needed in order to remedy existing shortfalls and meet the requirements across all domains arising from a more contested security order,” the allies wrote in a joint communique on Wednesday.

The Baltic states in particular are pushing their allies to go beyond the mandatory 2% floor for defense spending as Russia shows no signs of backing down after more than two years of war in Ukraine.

“We’ll start to talk at least about 2.5% as a floor,” Lithuanian Defense Minister Laurynas Kasčiūnas told Defense News, pointing to NATO’s “capability gaps.”

“When we analyze what the countries need to develop in the near-future, for a decade maybe, it’s not even 2.5%. It’s not even 3%. It should be more if you want more air defense systems, if you want more long-range strike capabilities.”

Tuuli Duneton, Estonia’s Undersecretary for Defense Policy, praised the 23 countries who now meet the 2% spending target but added “we should start already the discussions on putting the target for defense spending even higher.”

“We would support to have the discussion to set in the new target for the next NATO summit in the Hague to either 2.5% or 3% of GDP,” Duneton told reporters.

The U.S. spends roughly 3% of GDP on defense, but the Congressional Budget Office projects that will fall to 2.5% by 2034.

Republicans in the U.S. are also starting to join the Baltic countries’ call to move the defense spending floor beyond 2% of GDP.

“Given these dangerous times, the alliance must do more,” Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said in a Tuesday statement. “We must start working toward a greater defense spending commitment than the current 2% of GDP defense spending benchmark that better reflects this new era of authoritarian aggression we find ourselves in.”

Trump said this year that should he return to the White House, he would allow Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies who do not meet the minimum defense spending benchmark.

The former president’s allies are calling on NATO allies to replace the U.S. as Ukraine’s primary security guarantor – a task made all the more complicated by years of Europe’s chronic underinvestment in weapons production lines.

“The things that Europeans most need are not necessarily guys with guns, as important as they are, but lift, logistics, C4ISR, long-range munitions, air defense, but those are exactly the things that are most needed in the Pacific and are most difficult to reconstitute,” Bridge Colby, Trump’s former assistant secretary of defense for strategy, said Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation.

“The best way to manage the situation is to be practical and candid with our European allies and say ‘here’s what we can provide.’ And this is what I’ve said to the Europeans is ‘we’re going to have to withhold some of these key capabilities.”

Collin Meisel, the associate director of geopolitical analysis at the University of Denver’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures, cautioned “it’s going to take years for the European countries to make up that shortfall and be able to provide adequate support for Ukraine.”

“If the U.S. pulls back its materiel support of Ukraine, then Ukraine is going to be in pretty rough shape.”

He also noted that when Ukraine military aid is framed as a percentage of GDP, the U.S. ranks far below multiple European countries, including countries like the Netherlands that have not met NATO’s 2% of GDP benchmark for overall defense spending.

And the spending targets themselves don’t guarantee a ready military.

“Greece is the poster child for this,” said John Deni, a former political adviser to U.S. military leaders in Europe.

Athens has long spent more than 2% on defense, he noted, but much of it goes to areas that don’t create a strong force, such as personnel and pensions.

“It’s a jobs program,” Deni said.

The 2% and 20% thresholds are the only public thresholds — affirmed as a floor, rather than a ceiling in the 2022 communique in Vilnius, Lithuania.

NATO has 11 private metrics to measure burden sharing, which help assess the readiness of each force, Deni said. It’s also working to finalize regional defense and deterrence plans that will in part guide procurement decisions for member states. Proponents of increasing the 2% benchmark hope these regional plans will also grow military spending.

“It’s not only the percentage itself that matters, but taking into account that NATO military authorities have been assessing based on the regional plans: all military requirements for defense forces and capabilities” said Estonia’s Duneton. “The increased defense spending is most of all necessary for us to be able to deliver on those critical capabilities.”

This story was updated on Wednesday at 4:48 PM to include a statement from the NATO summit communique.

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s fiscal 2025 defense policy bill, released July 8, includes a provision that would require DIU to craft a roadmap for how it plans to expand into more regions of the U.S.

“The committee recognizes the importance of DIU’s mission to strengthen national security by accelerating the adoption of commercial technology,” the panel said in a report accompanying the measure, “The committee believes DIU should find ways to expand its geographic footprint to achieve nationwide coverage for DIU activities, particularly to geographic areas that are not major technology and innovation hubs.”

The bill directs DIU to deepen its relationships with Defense Department laboratories, university affiliated research centers and other entities across the country that are tapped into local innovation ecosystem.

The Pentagon established DIU in 2015 to help the department take advantage of technology being developed by Silicon Valley firms. Since then, the organization has grown significantly in influence and resources and has partnered with a range of non-traditional companies — from West Coast startups to smaller defense firms located around the country.

Companies based in California have received the most contracts since DIU’s inception — 159 awards worth $635 million according to its most recent annual report released in May. However, the organization has made a concerted effort to increase its outreach throughout the U.S. As of fiscal 2023, it had awarded contracts to firms in 35 states.

DIU is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., and has offices in Boston, Austin, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. This year, through its National Security Innovation Network, the organization opened five new onramp hubs in Kansas, Ohio, Arizona, Hawaii and Washington.

The hubs provide a chance for local universities and businesses to learn how to work with DOD and get access government funding. They also serve as an entry point for the into innovation networks it may not otherwise be aware of.

“American ingenuity is critical to building our nation’s enduring advantage,” DIU Director Doug Beck said of the hubs when they were announced in 2023. “These spaces will serve startups, academia, industry and other local talent and technology in order to leverage the innovation capability across the entire country, connecting them directly to DOD needs and strengthening the defense industrial base.”

Under an agreement reached last year by President Joe Biden and then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, spending was set to increase 1% for defense and nondefense programs in fiscal 2025, bringing the tallies to about $895.2 billion for defense and $780.4 billion for nondefense.

Some senators said the increase would not keep up with inflation and would be tantamount to a cut for many programs.

The bipartisan Senate agreement unveiled this week will provide $13.5 billion more in emergency funding for nondefense programs and $21 billion more for defense programs than the Biden-McCarthy agreement provided.

Meanwhile, House Republicans are pursuing a more austere course, allowing for a 1% increase for defense, but significant cuts for nondefense, coming to a roughly 6% cut on average, though some programs would be cut much more and some GOP priorities not at all.

While some Republican senators were clamoring for more defense spending, Democrats insisted on similar treatment for nondefense programs.

“I have made clear that we cannot fail to address the insufficient funding levels facing us and that I absolutely will not leave pressing nondefense needs behind,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Murray has been negotiating with Sen. Susan Collins, the ranking Republican on the committee, on discretionary spending for next year. Such spending does not include mandatory spending on major entitlement programs, namely Social Security and Medicare, which represent about two-thirds of annual federal spending and does not require an annual vote by Congress.

Collins said the U.S. is facing one of the most perilous security environments in the last 50 years and that threats from Iran, Russia and China “must be met with the resolve to invest in a stronger national defense.”

“Under this agreement, additional funding for our military would be accompanied by efforts to halt the flow of fentanyl at our borders, invest in biomedical research, and maintain affordable housing programs," Collins said.

The Republican-led House has been acting more quickly on spending than the Senate. It has passed four of the 12 annual spending bills so far; the Senate has not passed any. However, all four House bills have generated veto threats from the White House as well as drew widespread Democratic opposition.

That means a protracted, monthslong battle that will likely require one or more stopgap spending bills to keep the federal government fully open when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

With the elections and lawmakers spending so much time away from Washington, Congress is not expected to get the final spending bills over the finish line until November at the earliest. Final passage could also be pushed off to next year if one party manages to win the White House and both chambers of Congress, as that would give them more leverage in negotiations.

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said the spending increase senators are seeking for nondefense programs will prove problematic in the House.

“Look, we have a $1.9 trillion deficit. At least House Republicans are trying to do something about it,” Cole said.

The agreement that leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee reached on spending comes as the committee was set to take up its first three spending measures on Thursday.

Countries in NATO are supposed to be committed to spending at least 2% of their GDP on defense to fund the organization. But not all member nations are meeting the target, they said. This lack of burden sharing placed NATO on the ballot of the upcoming U.S. presidential election as former President Donald Trump has stated he may reduce the U.S.’ involvement in NATO if European countries don’t step up their game.

Lithuania’s Minister of National Defense Laurynas Kasčiūnas, Latvia’s Minister of Defense Andris Sprūds and Estonia’s Minister of Defense Hanno Pevkur attended the roundtable discussion July 9, moderated by POLITICO’s Global Editor-in-Chief John Harris and Welt TV’s Editor-in-Chief Jan Philipp Burgard, on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington.

Kasčiūnas said the upcoming U.S. presidential election is of importance to Europeans because to feel safe and secure in Europe, they need a U.S. presence. He said the country must be prepared to work with whoever is elected and whichever political party is in power.

“So it’s a dogma, I would say, for Baltic states, we know our geopolitical history, we know who played a key role in our independence,” Kasčiūnas said. “So, it’s a crucial one, and we hear debates. But I think we should be prepared to work with America.”

Sprūds said he believes Trump was right in advocating for fair burden sharing among NATO countries and in raising the 2% of GDP defense requirement.

Nineteen of 31 NATO countries failed to meet the requirement in 2023, including France at 1.9% and Canada at 1.38%. NATO now has 32 members with the addition of Sweden in 2024. NATO member Iceland has no armed forces and is omitted from the defense spending goal.

NATO countries are aware they do not meet the requirement, but are striving to improve their spending. Compared to 2014, when only three countries met the 2% target, 18 countries are predicted to spend at least 2% in 2024.

Some NATO countries are even breaking personal records. Germany spent 1.57% last year, but now are spending more than they ever have on defense since the 1990s, announcing in February they were able to meet the 2% mark.

“That is urgently needed,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in February after Trump remarked the U.S. would not protect countries who don’t meet the spending requirement. “Because as harsh as this reality is, we do not live in times of peace.”

Pevkur said NATO countries are aware that the 2% defense requirement is not enough because of shortages in defense capabilities, but production capabilities must rise alongside the increase in defense investment.

Estonia is spending 3.4% this year of their GDP on defense, making the country the second-highest spender in NATO.

“We pay more by share of our economy,” Pevkur said. “We are paying more than U.S. is paying at the moment.”

The U.S. is paying 3.38% on defense, according to Pevkur, making the U.S. the third-largest contributor to NATO this year with respect to their GDP.

Tensions have always been high between Russia and its neighboring Baltic states, where Russia often blames them for the severed relationship.

The defense ministers said the Russian expansionist mindset is nothing new and may continue even when Vladimir Putin is no longer Russia’s president, as their countries have delt with Russian attacks for years against cyber or critical infrastructure.

“This is exactly what Russia wants to have, that all the European countries will deal with internal problems and not with Ukraine,” Pevkur said. “In reality, we see that hundreds of people are dying in Ukraine, and this should be our main focus.”

Kasčiūnas said countries should have credible defense and deterrence measures in place to discourage Russia from attacking them.

Inhofe, a powerful fixture in Oklahoma politics for over six decades, died Tuesday morning after he had a stroke over the July Fourth holiday, his family said in a statement.

Inhofe, who was elected to a fifth Senate term in 2020, stepped down in early 2023.

Inhofe frequently criticized the mainstream science that human activity contributed to changes in the Earth’s climate, once calling it “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

In February 2015, with temperatures in the nation’s capital below freezing, Inhofe brought a snowball on to the Senate floor. He tossed it before claiming that environmentalists focus attention on global warming as it kept getting cold. “It’s very, very cold out. Very unseasonable,” Inhofe said.

As Oklahoma’s senior U.S. senator, Inhofe was a staunch supporter of the state’s five military installations and a vocal fan of congressional earmarks. The Army veteran and licensed pilot, who would fly himself to and from Washington, secured the federal money to fund local road and bridge projects, and criticized House Republicans who wanted a one-year moratorium on such pet projects in 2010.

“Defeating an earmark doesn’t save a nickel,” Inhofe told the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce that August. “It merely means that within the budget process, it goes right back to the bureaucracy.”

He was a strong backer of President Donald Trump, who praised him for his “incredible support of our #MAGA agenda” while endorsing the senator’s 2020 reelection bid. During the Trump administration, Inhofe served as chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee following the death of Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

Inhofe caught national attention in March 2009 by introducing legislation that would have prevented detainees from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay from being relocated “anywhere on American soil.”

Closer to home, Inhofe helped secure millions of dollars to clean up a former mining hub in northeast Oklahoma that spent decades on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund list. In a massive buyout program, the federal government purchased homes and businesses within the 40-square-mile region of Tar Creek, where children consistently tested for dangerous levels of lead in their blood.

“This is an example of a government program created for a specific purpose and then dissolves after the job is completed. This is how government should work,” Inhofe said in December 2010, when the project was nearly complete.

In 2021, Inhofe defied some in his party by voting to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election, saying that to do otherwise would be a violation of his oath of office to support and defend the Constitution. He voted against convicting Trump at both of his impeachment trials.

Born James Mountain Inhofe on Nov. 17, 1934, in Des Moines, Iowa, Inhofe grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Tulsa in 1959. He served in the Army between 1956 and 1958, and was a businessman for three decades, serving as president of Quaker Life Insurance Co.

His political career began in 1966, when he was elected to the state House. Two years later he won an Oklahoma Senate seat that he held during unsuccessful runs for governor in 1974 and for the U.S. House in 1976. He then won three terms at Tulsa mayor starting in 1978.

Inhofe went on to win two terms in the U.S. House in the 1980s, before throwing his hat into a bitter U.S. Senate race when longtime Sen. David Boren resigned in 1994 to become president of the University of Oklahoma. Inhofe beat then-U.S. Rep. Dave McCurdy in a special election that year to serve the final two years of Boren’s term and was reelected five times.

Inhofe lived up to his reputation as a tough campaigner in his 2008 reelection bid against Democrat Andrew Rice, a 35-year-old state senator and former missionary. Inhofe claimed Rice was “too liberal” for Oklahoma and ran television ads that critics said contained anti-gay overtones, including one that showed a wedding cake topped by two plastic grooms and a photo of Rice as a young man wearing a leather jacket.

Rice, who has two children with his wife and earned his master’s degree from Harvard University Divinity School, accused Inhofe of distorting his record and attacking his character.

Inhofe’s bullish personality also was apparent outside politics. He was a commercial-rated pilot and flight instructor with more than 50 years of flying experience.

He made an emergency landing in Claremore in 1999, after his plane lost a propeller, an incident later blamed on an installation error. In 2006, his plane spun out of control upon landing in Tulsa; he and an aide escaped injury, though the plane was severely damaged.

In 2010, Inhofe landed his small plane on a closed runway at a rural South Texas airport while flying himself and others to a home he owned in South Padre Island. Runway workers scrambled, and Inhofe agreed to complete a remedial training program rather than face possible legal action.

“I’m 75 years old, but I still fly airplanes upside down,” Inhofe said in August 2010. “I don’t know why it is, but I don’t hurt anywhere, and I don’t feel any differently than I felt five years ago.”

Inhofe is survived by his wife, Kay, three children and several grandchildren. A son, Dr. Perry Dyson Inhofe II, died in November 2013, at the age of 51, when the twin-engine aircraft he was flying crashed a few miles north of Tulsa International Airport.

The $833 billion legislation would buy additional F-35s beyond the Pentagon’s budget request while only procuring one Virginia-class attack submarine for FY25 instead of the usual two vessels the bill usually provides.

The procurement plans put the bill at odds with large swaths of lawmakers on the Armed Services Committee who drafted the FY25 National Defense Authorization Act, which would reduce F-35 purchases below the Pentagon’s requested levels and partially fund a second Virginia-class submarine.

“The only way to prevent Chinese aggression is by fielding and operating capability that demonstrate America’s military advantage,” defense appropriations Chairman Ken Calvert, R-Calif., said on the House floor on Thursday. “To this end, the bill increases investments in fifth and sixth generation aircraft, procures deliverable capability, including several [Indo-Pacific Command] unfunded priorities.”

“This bill procures where we can, trains where we must and invest in capabilities that will make our adversaries wake up every day and say ‘today is not the day to provoke the United States of America.”

The spending bill would procure 76 new F-35s, eight more than the 68 requested by the Defense Department. Conversely, the National Defense Authorization Act – which the House passed 217-199 earlier this month – would cut F-35 procurement down to 58 aircraft.

The House Rules Committee, which oversees amendment votes, opted not to hold a vote on a proposed bipartisan amendment that would have reduced F-35 purchases in the spending bill. This prompted a sharp rebuke from Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, amid mounting frustration on Capitol Hill with manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

“At a projected total lifecycle cost of over $2 trillion dollars, the F-35 is the largest program in DoD history despite routinely not meeting cost, schedule, and performance metrics,” Smith said in a Wednesday statement with Rep. Donald Norcross of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the tactical air and land forces panel.

“This is unacceptable program execution and Congress should not reward this behavior by buying additional aircraft above the President’s budget request.”

The spending bill also overrides the Armed Services Committee on Virginia-class submarine procurement for FY25, in addition to the F-35 purchases. Appropriators have sided with the Navy, which requested just one attack submarine purchase for FY25, due to production delays amid industrial base constraints. In contrast, the National Defense Authorization Act sought incremental funding for a second Virginia-class vessel.

“We have to rebuild the industrial base in order for us to build submarines,” Calvert told Defense News earlier this month. “I want more submarines. But in order for us to get there, we have to rebuild the industrial base to get the necessary workforce to build the submarines. So we’re focusing on fixing the problem in order for us to build more submarines.”

The decision comes despite intense pressure from a large, bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Rep. Joe Courtney of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House’s seapower panel. His Connecticut district includes General Dynamics Electric Boat, which makes the Virginia-class submarines.

Courtney and Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., recently led 131 other House lawmakers in a letter to defense appropriators beseeching them to fund two Virginia-class submarines against the Pentagon’s wishes.

“Preserving a consistent production schedule is essential for shipyard and industrial base stability, and to meet the Navy’s operational requirements,” the lawmakers wrote in a May letter to Calvert and Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., the panel’s top Democrat.

Policy riders: Ukraine and Israel

The spending bill also includes several socially conservative policy riders, such as limits on abortion access for troops and military diversity initiatives, which prompted most Democrats to vote against the bill.

“We need to foster a climate in our military that honors and appreciates all Americans who choose to take the oath to serve,” McCollum said on Thursday. “Unfortunately, at this time, this bill does not reflect that sentiment.”

McCollum also criticized the legislation for omitting $300 million in annual Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funding that the defense spending bill has provided annually since FY16.

“Failure to continue funding that has long been standing bipartisan support for Ukraine, it sends a terrible signal, and it will only embolden [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” said McCollum.

Still, $300 million is a small trickle compared to the $13.7 billion in the initiative’s funding Congress passed in April as part of a massive foreign aid bill, which included a total $60 billion in economic and security assistance for Ukraine.

The House voted down 308-103 an amendment from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to cut off all aid to Ukraine. It also struck down 335-76 another Greene amendment to reduce Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s salary to $1 – a provision Republicans adapted last year before stripping it from the final spending bill after negotiations with the Senate.

The House adopted numerous other amendments that would invest more money in various research and development accounts by taking money away from a variety of operations and maintenance programs.

Lastly, the bill bars the Pentagon from using funds “to withhold, halt, reverse or cancel the delivery of defense articles or defense services” for Israel, and forces the president to transfer withheld weapons to the Israeli military within 15 days.

Both the Defense and State department spending bills would ban funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which delivers humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip.

The defense spending bill also includes a provision that would eliminate the military’s makeshift pier off the coast of the Gaza Strip, which has struggled to deliver an adequate level of humanitarian aid to Palestinians facing famine-like conditions.

The House’s FY25 defense spending bill would procure 76 new F-35s, eight more than the 68 requested by the Defense Department. This puts the spending bill at odds with the House’s FY25 National Defense Authorization Act, passed 217-199 earlier this month, which would cut F-35 procurement down to 58 aircraft.

“At a projected total lifecycle cost of over $2 trillion dollars, the F-35 is the largest program in DoD history despite routinely not meeting cost, schedule, and performance metrics,” Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the committee, said in a Wednesday statement with Rep. Donald Norcross of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the tactical air and land forces panel.

“This is unacceptable program execution and Congress should not reward this behavior by buying additional aircraft above the President’s budget request,” the statement read.

Smith and Norcross highlighted that the Defense Department stopped accepting F-35 deliveries from manufacturer Lockheed Martin last year “until the enterprise could successfully deliver, test, and field the next version of the Operational Flight Program” — a benchmark it has not yet met nearly a year later.

The two Democrats and Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., introduced a bipartisan amendment that would have cut F-35 procurement in the spending bill and bring it in sync with the 58 F-35s authorized in the National Defense Authorization Act.

But the House Rules Committee, which oversees amendment votes, opted not to put Smith’s proposed F-35 reduction on the floor for a vote. The new House Appropriations Committee chairman, Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., previously chaired the Rules Committee.

Smith’s proposed reduction of 18 fighter jets from the spending bill would have amounted to a roughly $2 billion procurement cut for the Air Force and Navy.

The Smith amendment would have shifted funds in the form of $526 million to the Air Force to help address F-35 performance issues with development, production and testing.

“It is the duty of Congress to support the long-term viability of the F-35 program and ensure the vast sums of taxpayer money footing the bill are spent where they can ensure program success,” said Smith and Norcross. “A simple short-term reduction in acquisition rates would enable us to mitigate the known systemic problems, correct course and get the F-35 program and workers up and running at full speed.”

Lockheed Martin has faced intense bipartisan scrutiny from the Armed Services Committee for repeated F-35 delays, most recently with the Technology Refresh 3 upgrades. The TR-3 hardware and software upgrades would provide F-35s with better displays, computer memory and processing power.

Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., attempted to amend the NDAA with a provision that would have authorized the defense secretary to seize intellectual property from Lockheed Martin and open it up to competition, taking aim at the F-35′s software problems.

Moulton sought a vote on the amendment when the Armed Services Committee marked up the legislation in May but had to withdraw it after a Congressional Budget Office cost determination. But multiple committee members, including several Republicans, said they would support Moulton’s efforts to seize intellectual property from Lockheed Martin in the years ahead should F-35 issues persist.

Smith urged caution on Moulton’s efforts, despite his shared frustrations with Lockheed’s execution of the F-35 program.

“In law, we would possibly have to compensate them for that, which would be really, really, really expensive,” Smith said.

Despite efforts from Smith and his fellow Armed Services Committee members to cut F-35 procurement next year, appropriators will have the final word on how many of the aircraft to buy in the defense spending bill.

Further compounding the uncertainty, the Senate version of the FY25 NDAA would procure 68 F-35s — the same number requested by the Pentagon. It remains unclear how many F-35s Senate appropriators seek to procure, as they have yet to release their FY25 defense spending bill.

I strongly argue that the administration and Congress must unite to fund the Air Force to ensure the continuity of this vital program. They also need to explore alternative design and acquisition strategies to significantly reduce the cost of NGAD and expedite the delivery of this critical capability.

By way of background, the family of systems known as NGAD — which includes a manned, penetrating, counter-air platform and unmanned collaborative combat aircraft — is the result of extensive Air Force and Department of Defense research, which began in 2014. This research concluded that America’s current air dominance assets would not remain sufficiently competitive against the systems of potential adversaries (especially China) into the 2030s.

Then-acquisition chief Frank Kendall was instrumental in this analysis and program from the start. He even made it the linchpin of one of his seven operational imperatives after becoming secretary of the Air Force. With China confirming that it is working on a sixth-generation fighter system to be completed by 2035, the importance of the NGAD program for the Air Force has become all the more apparent.

Enter the Fiscal Responsibility Act and its caps on defense spending; deficit concerns; and the bow-wave effect of must-pay bills for programs like the B-21 bomber, the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program and rising personnel costs; the Air Force now finds itself on the horns of a dilemma for FY26 and beyond.

There’s not enough money to pay for all of it.

Moreover, the manned portion of NGAD is predicted to be even more expensive than the F-35 fighter, which, if true, does not bode well for America’s ability to eventually procure an adequate number of fighters. If the program encounters significant delays, the U.S. may once again find itself delivering a capability that has not kept pace with where the threat has advanced.

What, then, should we do?

First, I urge Congress and the DOD to provide adequate funds to the Air Force so that all these important programs remain on track.

Second, I urge the Air Force to consider innovative design and acquisition strategies — perhaps along the lines of the “century series” approach that former Air Force acquisition chief Will Roper once spoke of. This approach would involve less-expensive and quicker-to-produce fighters with iterative designs that could change every few years if necessary. Engaging in discussions with industry on such an approach is crucial, as it represents a very different way of doing business and we need to ensure its feasibility.

It’s time for us to come together, think outside the box and find new ways to support our military’s needs.

The only thing we can say for sure is that China is ruthlessly advancing its NGAD equivalent and does not appear to be slowing down due to budgetary concerns. Moreover, China is continuing aggressive actions in the South China Sea and has stepped up military drills that simulate a blockade and possible invasion of Taiwan.

The 2030s will be upon us in an instant, so we can’t afford to delay NGAD. Doing so would mean risking loss in a future conflict.

Deborah Lee James is a former secretary of the U.S. Air Force. She serves as chair of the Defense Business Board and is affiliated with several organizations and businesses.

Austin announced the decision in a statement Monday morning, calling Chollet “one of the most distinguished, far-sighted, and skillful national-security practitioners of his generation.”

The decision comes nearly two weeks after Austin’s longtime Chief of Staff Kelly Magsamen said she would leave her post in late June, after three and a half years in the role. It also puts to rest the long saga of Chollet’s nomination to lead the Pentagon’s policy shop, afflicted by personnel turnover since its former leader Colin Kahl left last summer.

Shortly after Kahl left, the White House submitted Chollet’s name to fill the role. But the confirmation stalled in the Senate, in large part due to Republican objections over his role in the Afghanistan pullout in 2021.

Those frustrations crescendoed last September in a contentious hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Since then there has been no progress in actually confirming Chollet. The decision to move him to the chief of staff role may also have to do with the calendar. There’s only seven months until January, when there could be a turnover in administrations depending on November’s election

Amanda Dory, a longtime Pentagon hand, is now serving as undersecretary of defense for policy on an acting basis.

Magsamen’s deputy, Caroline Zier, was initially set to take over the chief of staff role. Chollet, who has served in senior positions within the Pentagon before, will start in July.

During last week’s debate over the annual defense authorization bill, House lawmakers inserted language in the massive military policy measure to require a new assessment from the Defense Department on “the threat of rifle-toting robot dogs used by China” in potential future conflicts.

The issue has gained public attention in recent weeks after Chinese military officials showed off armed robotic quadrupeds during recent military drills with Cambodia.

In a video released by state-run CCTV on May 25, a 110-pound dog-like robot is shown carrying and firing an automatic rifle. A spokesman for the Chinese military said the robot, which can perform many tasks autonomously, could “serve as a new member in our urban combat operations.”

Marines test robotic mule that could carry weapons, sensors

Drone warfare is not new to the U.S. or foreign militaries, and the American military for years has experimented with robot dogs for use in reconnaissance and unit support roles.

But the idea of a robot version of man’s best friend shooting at American soldiers was enough to prompt House members to demand that the secretary of defense investigate “the threat such use poses to the national security of the United States.”

The amendment was adopted without objection from any members of the chamber. But it will have to survive negotiations with senators on the broader defense measure in coming months before it can become law.

The Senate is expected to hold floor debate and make possible amendments to its draft of the legislation in the next few weeks.