On Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to save the A-10 for Fiscal Year 2015 as part of the Department of Defense (DoD) Appropriations Act.
The vote was 30 – 0.
$338 million was set aside to maintain the A-10 fleet. The bill also contains $31 million to continue operations of the full fleet of 31 E-3 AWACs radar aircraft.
The bill provides $549.3 billion in base and overseas contingency operation funding, compared to $572 billion enacted in fiscal year 2014 and $550.7 billion in the President’s budget request.
The base budget appropriation is $489.6 billion with $59.7 billion for Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) of the Departments of Defense and State.
Tom Norris, a legendary A-10 pilot said, “Senate Appropriators score another win for our ground troops. They firmly believe our Sons and Daughters deserve the best CAS aircraft in the world versus the USAF proposed “compromise” aircraft (F-15E,F-16, and B-1). Many Thanks to them for their due diligence and oversight!”
“Great news for the continued funding of AWACS, too. I know first-hand the importance and value of this aircraft to the battlefield. I was the Air Combat Command Special Mission Aircraft Weapon System Manager that included AWACS,” said Chief Master Sergeant, USAF (Ret) Chuck Wooten. “Glad they are planning to do the right thing.”
Act highlights:
The Committee has included funding above the President’s budget request for several programmatic initiatives which the Committee believes are of inherent value for national defense. In several cases, funds are restored for programs which were included in previous Department of Defense budget requests, and several are for programs that the Committee believes are necessary to improve defense even though they have not been included under the request formulated by the Department of Defense.
For instance, the Committee provides additional research funding in the following areas: medical research, basic research, alternative energy, advanced metals and materials, military burn treatment, and traumatic brain injury and psychological health. The Committee believes additional research funding is warranted in these and other areas to ensure that the Department of Defense continues to pursue technological advances that are critical to our national defense.
The fiscal year 2015 budget request includes $272,775,000 for Israeli missile defense programs within the Missile Defense Agency [MDA] budget, including $175,972,000 for the procurement of Iron Dome, which concludes a previously made U.S. commitment to provide $680,000,000 from fiscal years 2012 to 2015 for the Iron Dome program in response to a request from the Government of Israel.
The Committee continues its strong, bi-partisan support for Israeli missile defense programs to ensure the fulfillment of Israel’s missile defense needs and retention of Israel’s qualitative military edge. The Committee notes the long-standing and successful contributions of U.S. industry towards meeting these goals, to include co-production of Arrow and David’s Sling components; and, beginning in fiscal year 2014, co-production of Iron Dome.Following submission of the fiscal year 2015 budget submission, the funding requirement for Iron Dome increased, and recommends an additional $175,000,000, which brings U.S. investment in Iron Dome production since fiscal year 2011 to over $1,000,000,000.