Congress has now voted on the record and in bipartisan agreement in both the House and Senate that the White House’s 2023 defense budget request was inadequate. The focal point of its insufficiency was on the much-reduced Department of Defense (DoD) buying power and the shrinking ratio of what the Pentagon is researching and developing (RDT&E) for the future and what the US military can actually field today to strengthen combat power in the near term. The support will only grow from here until final passage.

Last week, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) added $37 billion to the president’s request for defense in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Similarly, the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) added above the White House request—only more, at $45 billion. Though these are not appropriations bills, they do set the stage for what will be eventually approved and funded to support better resourcing the defense strategy.

While debatable given its qualitative nature, the question
now is whether Congress injected funds where aid was most needed for troops and
their families. In their bill
markup, the House Armed Services Committee, led by Chairman Adam Smith
(D-WA) and Ranking Member Mike Rogers (R-AL), remedied the defense budget where
it was clearly needed. Of the additional $37 billion, $16 billion (or 43
percent of the total plus up) went to procurement across the armed forces and
associated agencies.

Not only does this help alleviate some of the significant
inflationary pressures on the defense department and their efforts to buy anything,
it also helps improve the previously anemic ratio between research and
development to procurement, which had shrunk to a record low in the president’s
latest budget request. The $16 billion in extra funds from the House of
Representatives for purchasing systems and technologies represents an 11 percent
increase from amounts requested by President Joe Biden.

Whereas the White House budget request would have meant the
military spent only $1.11 in procurement for every $1.00 in RDT&E, the
revised House defense policy bill would make it a more healthy $1.16 in
procurement for every R&D dollar of investment.

What does this help enable, and why is it important? Because
without ample dollars to take products from experiment and prototype to tangible,
fielded capabilities in mass quantity that can aid warfighters, Congress and the
Pentagon waste billions in the development of systems that never make it out of
the laboratory.

From the Reagan build-up and Cold War era, when the procurement-to-R&D ratio was $2.74 to $1.00, to the mid-2000s during the wars in the Middle East when it was $2.07 to $1.00, history shows that when defense capabilities are needed in the moment . . . or even within five years’ time, the armed services need money to not just to field systems but to field enough of them to matter.

The House has made a praiseworthy step in restoring the Defense Department’s buying power and therefore their conventional deterrence today. It is very likely that the Senate’s closed-door markup will match HASC’s investment trends. And it is even more important that House and Senate appropriators follow suit and provide the procurement that will, in turn, provide for our common defense.

The post Congress Hones in on Weapons Procurement for the Armed Services appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.