Republicans on the U.S. House Appropriations Committee are demanding a cut in FY 2024 Pentagon spending on missile purchases, including for Ukraine, by more than $2.5 billion, Politico writes, citing the committee’s draft report.
“The Committee is particularly concerned that the Ministry [обороны] cannot provide realistic cost estimates and proceeded to fulfill these multi-year purchase requests without a clear understanding of the unit cost of each program and production capacity,” the document says.
The committee notes that the funds should be directed to support military training, maintenance, as well as to the Pentagon’s research work on the introduction of new technologies and weapons.
As part of the cuts, the Appropriations Committee, among other things, withheld funding for multi-year procurement rights for Raytheon Technologies’ Standard Missile-6 (SM-6, Extended Range Seeker) and Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles.
The committee blocked $1.9 billion that was intended to finance mass purchases of missiles on the principle of “economic order”. As the newspaper explains, this means that bulk purchases reduce the cost of the projectile, but the Pentagon did not provide evidence of this.
Politico recalls that the law passed to avoid default and abolished the US national debt ceiling provides for a cap on defense spending, in connection with which Congress is reviewing funding for 2024. At the moment, according to the bill, the Pentagon’s total spending is reduced by $4 billion compared to the requested one, but military spending will still grow by $2.8 billion relative to the level of the current year.
Source: Rosbalt
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