House Votes to Trim Pentagon Cuts
The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation Thursday that would scale back automatic budget cuts to the Defense Department and retirement benefits to military veterans.
The bill – crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., chairman of the House Budget Committee, and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., his counterpart in the Senate – easily passed the Republican-controlled House by a vote of 332–94.
The Ryan-Murray bill, known as the Bipartisan Budget Act, would undo about $62 billion of the government’s across-the-board spending reductions, known as sequestration, over two years, according to a cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office. The funding would be split evenly among defense and domestic programs, meaning the Pentagon would receive about $31 billion in additional funding in 2014 and 2015.
U.S. looking to sell portion of Afghan MRAP fleet
WASHINGTON — The U.S. government is working to sell as many as 2,000 of its hulking mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles in Afghanistan instead of sending them home or destroying them in place — provided the foreign buyers pay to ship the trucks out of the country themselves.
The cost of shipping an MRAP back to the U.S. and fixing it up runs the Pentagon about $250,000 to $300,000 per vehicle. With about 11,000 MRAPs in Afghanistan, bringing them all back home is too expensive to contemplate, according to Pentagon officials. Overall, the US military is destroying about $7 billion worth of material in Afghanistan as US troops head for the exits.
Iraq to Buy Hellfire Missiles, ScanEagle Drones
The U.S. is sending more missiles and unarmed drones to Iraq to help the government there fight an increasingly deadly insurgency.
The Shiite-led government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will receive 75 AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles made by Lockheed Martin Corp. and 10 ScanEagle reconnaissance drones made by Boeing Co.‘s Insitu unit, according to a Dec. 25 article in The New York Times by Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt.
The missiles, which cost about $70,000 apiece, will be outfitted onto small Cessna turboprop planes and fired at militants using targeting information supplied by the C.I.A., according to the report. The drones, which cost about $100,000 apiece, are small, low-altitude craft that can be launched from a catapult.
The U.S. Defense Department’s top weapons buyer is assembling a team of independent experts to study the F-35 fighter jet’s software development delays.
Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, was ordered to put together a group to study the issue and submit a report to Congress by March 3 as part of 2014 National Defense Authorization Act, which sets policy goals and spending targets for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.
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06-01-2014, 20:27
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