NDAA: Senate Takes On China, Russia – And The FCC

WASHINGTON: The battle over Army bases currently named for Confederate generals has dominated the headlines but there’s much, much more packed into the annual defense policy bill just passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee. The $731 billion package is likely to be the peak Pentagon budget before COVID-induced spending cuts kick in.

While the SASC hasn’t released its draft of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2021, it published a 20-page summary packed with bullet points whose overwhelming emphasis is clear: countering Russia and China. That includes $1.4 billion earmarked for deterrence in the Pacific, $250 million in aid to Ukraine and a host of weapons programs. It modernizes the military with everything from new anti-ship missiles for Pacific warfare to missile defense, cyber weapons, and 5G networks. And it calls for Pentagon studies on threats from Huawei 5G to Russian support of “racially and ethnically motivated violent extremist groups” in Europe and the US.

But the high-tech threat that SASC chairman Jim Inhofe appears most irate about comes from other agencies of the US government – specifically, the Federal Communications Commission and its backers on the Senate’s own Commerce Committee. In April, the FCC unanimously approved Ligado’s application to use a critical slice of radio-frequency spectrum, part of what’s called the L-band, for new 5G wireless and Internet of Things services. The problem, the Pentagon says, is that Ligado’s transmissions will interfere with GPS navigation signals used by the military and a host of private companies. The Defense Department is appealing the FCC ruling, but it’s also asking Congress to act

Inhofe and his committee can’t unilaterally overrule the FCC: They need their fellow legislators on the Commerce Committee to take action as well, something Commerce has shown no signs of doing. But Inhofe can delay the handover of spectrum and make a public issue of how big a burden it imposes on the military.

“The bill prohibits the use of DOD funds to comply with the FCC Order on Ligado until the Secretary of Defense submits an estimate of the costs associated with the resulting GPS interference,” the SASC summary says. “[The bill also] directs the Secretary of Defense to contract with the National Academies of Science and Engineering for an independent technical review of the order to provide additional technical evaluation to review Ligado’s and DOD’s approaches to testing.”

This language sounds starker than it is. Coming up with an official cost estimate will be complicated, but it probably won’t impose a major delay on implementing the FCC order – unless the Pentagon wants it to and deliberately drags its feet. Such slow-rolling is a time-honored Washington tactic, but it would attract the ire of the FCC’s powerful allies in the Trump administration. Those include Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General William Barr, men in much stronger standing with President Trump than Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who publicly and privately pushed back against the president’s desire to invoke the Insurrection Act and use active-duty troops for law enforcement.

Big Force vs. High Tech

Inhofe’s push for a bigger, higher-tech military isn’t as controversial as his feud with the FCC, but it carries an internal contradiction of its own. Sure, there have been periods where the US military could afford to grow larger and more modern at the same time – the Reagan buildup comes to mind. But more often, the Pentagon has had to choose between investing limited funds in sustaining a large force at the expense of buying new weapons, or to buy new weapons at the cost of shrinking the current force. And the staggering cost of the COVID pandemic means defense budgets may start shrinking, which will make the dilemma between force structure and modernization all the more acute.

The SASC draft of the defense bill, however, calls for the Navy to grow and outright prohibits the Air Force from shrinking.

According to the summary, the bill “expresses a sense of the Senate on actions necessary to implement the national policy of the United States to have available as soon as practicable not fewer than 355 battle force ships.” Now, a “sense of the Senate” isn’t binding legal language, but it is a clear statement that the committee is still committed to the “355-ship fleet” that then-candidate Trump pledged in his campaign. Navy leaders, however, have been backing off this goal for years now, emphasizing that it could take decades to achieve and that their priority is developing new kinds of smaller, robotic submarines and surface vessels not traditionally counted as part of the naval “battle force.”

The bill goes farther with the Air Force. It “establishes a minimum number of aircraft for each major mission area in the US Air Force and prohibits the divestment of aircraft until the minima are reached,” the summary says. (The exact numbers haven’t been released yet). It also “prohibits divestment of A-10 [ground attack] aircraft, delays divestment of KC-10s and KC-135 [tanker] aircraft until KC-46 remote visual refueling system remedies are implemented…[and] requires the Air Force to have no fewer than 386 available operational squadrons or equivalent organizational units.”

The bill also calls for the Army to increase its manpower slightly, to 485,000; the service has wavered between 475,000 and 480,000 over the last 12 months. But the summary, at least, is silent on any other requirements for the ground force to prioritize size over technology.

Of course, this draft is just one step in a long and convoluted process. While the Senate Armed Services Committee has passed its version of the NDAA, the policy bill still has to pass the full Senate. Meanwhile the House Armed Services Committee is still working on its version, which must be passed by the House and then reconciled with the Senate draft.

Meanwhile, the House and Senate appropriations committees are quietly working out the annual funding bills for the federal government, a completely separate piece of legislation that has the final say in what the Pentagon and other departments get to spend — unless Congress can’t pass that bill in time, in which case there’ll be a stopgap Continuing Resolution.