White House wants Ukraine inspector general out of defense bill

WASHINGTON ― The White House on Monday told lawmakers it opposes a provision in the House’s annual defense policy bill that would create a special inspector general for Ukraine aid, modelled after the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

The Ukraine inspector general was one of several provisions in the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act that the White House, in an Office of Management and Budget statement on the bill, told Congress it wants removed.

The statement also objected to several provisions in the bill related to the U.S. nuclear arsenal and addresses the Pentagon cost assessment office drawn into a debate over Navy ship procurement. The House is expected to begin voting on the FY24 NDAA as early as Wednesday.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., added the language to create the Ukraine inspector general when the Armed Services Committee marked up the NDAA in June and eventually voted 58-1 to advance the $874 billion bill to the House floor. The House’s defense spending bill, which the Appropriations Committee advanced 34-24 in June over Democratic objections, would fund the Ukraine inspector general.

The White House statement argued the Pentagon Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office “are currently undertaking multiple investigations regarding every aspect of this assistance — from assessing the [department’s] processes for developing security assistance requirements to evaluating the end-use monitoring processes for delivered assistance — at the request of the Congress.”

While the Pentagon, State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development inspectors general have a joint oversight plan for Ukraine aid, Republicans say a special inspector general can provide an additional, more coordinated layer of oversight .

The Pentagon said in June a $6.2 billion accounting error inflated the costs of equipment the U.S. has sent to Ukraine, prompting Republicans on the House Oversight Committee to ask Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for a staff-level briefing last week. The error means the Defense Department has more funds available to transfer weapons to Kyiv than it previously thought.

Congress has appropriated $35.4 billion in emergency military aid for Ukraine for FY23 , and the Pentagon has said it expects to ask for additional defense funds for Kyiv before the end of the year. The House NDAA also authorizes $300 million in longer-term aid through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative — the same amount the Biden administration asked for in its budget request.

The White House also noted in the statement it “strongly opposes” several nuclear provisions in the House NDAA. That includes language that would institutionalize the sea-launched cruise missile nuclear program and hinder the retirement of the B83 megaton gravity bomb.

The House NDAA — and its Senate equivalent — would provide nearly $196 million for continued SLCM-N development while making it a Navy program of record via a provision inserted by Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., over Democratic objections. The Biden administration has sought to scrap research on SLCM-N and did not request funding for it in its FY24 budget request .

“Deploying SLCM-N on Navy attack submarines or surface combatants would reduce capacity for conventional strike munitions, create additional burdens on Naval training, maintenance, and operations, and could create additional risks to the Navy’s ability to operate in key regions in support of our deterrence and warfighting objectives,” the White House statement notes. The statement identifies other options the military already has, like the W76-2 low-yield submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead, the air-launched cruise missile and the B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb.

The House bill also halts the Biden administration’s efforts to retire the B83 megaton gravity bomb , at least 80 times more powerful than the bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima, until the Pentagon gives Congress a report on alternative capabilities to strike a hard-and-deeply buried target.

The Biden administration in its new statement said it opposes a push for what could be a clearer catalog of spending on nuclear command, control and communications, the avenues through which the arsenal is readied, coordinated and launched.

Members of the House strategic forces panel earlier this year sought to establish a major force program for NC3, an opaque topic.

Major force programs are featured in Pentagon budgets as collections of related programs and resources. Establishing a major force program specifically for NC3, the White House said, would require a “complicated” extraction and collation of “hundreds of embedded program elements and budget lines.” The move, it continued, would be administratively burdensome and disruptive to ongoing efforts — ultimately delaying a much-needed overhaul.

The Congressional Budget Office previously estimated that plans to replace aging NC3 systems would cost $77 billion between 2019 and 2028. The Biden administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, published last year, promised to modernize and further insulate nuclear command and control, especially when it comes to cyber, space-based and electromagnetic attack.

Ship procurement and cost assessments

The White House also took issue with the bill’s efforts to continue procuring the next San Antonio-class amphibious warfare ship, an ongoing debate that has prompted House Republicans to try to abolish the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office.

Its statement objected to $750 million “in requested incremental funding” introduced by Rep. Trent Kelly, R-Miss., that would allow the Pentagon to begin purchasing the next San Antonio-class amphibious warship in FY24, even though procurement would not normally begin to FY25.

Lawmakers in both parties have vehemently pushed back against the Pentagon’s “strategic pause” in amphibious ship procurement despite strong opposition from the Marines, which asked for $1.71 billion to buy the next ship in FY24 in its unfunded priorities list .

House Republicans cited the amphibious ship pause as part of their justification for an NDAA provision that would abolish the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation Office and move its duties elsewhere, accusing the office of slowing down the acquisition process.

The White House said it “strongly opposes” abolishing the office, arguing it has “helped reduce acquisition program cost breaches from over six per year to just over two per year” while providing “independent, fact-based evaluation of competing resource requests from across the department.”

Finally, the White House said it “strongly opposes” the bill’s $1.5 billion reduction in authorized funding for the submarine tender replacement.

Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered U.S. foreign policy, national security, international affairs and politics in Washington since 2014. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.

Colin Demarest was a reporter at C4ISRNET, where he covered military networks, cyber and IT. Colin had previously covered the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration — namely Cold War cleanup and nuclear weapons development — for a daily newspaper in South Carolina. Colin is also an award-winning photographer.

华盛顿——白宫周一告诉国会议员，它反对众议院年度国防政策法案中的一项条款，该条款将设立一个乌克兰援助特别监察长，其模式效仿阿富汗重建特别监察长。

乌克兰监察长是 2024 财年国防授权法案中的几项条款之一，白宫在管理和预算办公室关于该法案的声明中告诉国会，希望将其删除。

该声明还对法案中与美国核武库相关的几项条款提出异议，并提及五角大楼成本评估办公室卷入海军舰艇采购辩论一事。众议院预计最早将于周三开始对2024财年国防授权法案进行投票。

佛罗里达州共和党众议员马特·盖茨在6月份众议院军事委员会审议《国防授权法案》（NDAA）时，加入了设立乌克兰监察长的条款，最终以58比1的投票结果将这项8740亿美元的法案提交众议院全体会议审议。众议院的国防开支法案（尽管遭到民主党人的反对，但拨款委员会在6月份以34比24的投票结果通过）将为乌克兰监察长提供资金。

白宫声明称，五角大楼监察长和政府问责局“目前正在应国会要求，对这项援助的各个方面进行多项调查——从评估[该部门]制定安全援助需求的流程，到评估已交付援助的最终用途监控流程”。

虽然五角大楼、国务院和美国国际开发署的监察长制定了对乌克兰援助的联合监督计划，但共和党人表示，设立特别监察长可以提供额外的、更协调的监督层级。

五角大楼6月份表示，一笔62亿美元的会计错误导致美国向乌克兰运送的装备成本虚高，促使众议院监督委员会的共和党议员上周要求国防部长劳埃德·奥斯汀举行一次幕僚级简报会。这一错误意味着国防部可用于向基辅转移武器的资金比之前预想的要多。

国会已拨款354亿美元用于2023财年对乌克兰的紧急军事援助，五角大楼表示预计将在年底前向基辅申请额外的国防资金。众议院的《国防授权法案》还授权通过“乌克兰安全援助倡议”提供3亿美元的长期援助——这与拜登政府在其预算申请中提出的金额相同。

白宫在声明中还指出，它“强烈反对”众议院国防授权法案中的几项核武器条款。这些条款包括将海基巡航导弹核计划制度化以及阻碍B83百万吨级重力炸弹退役的条款。

众议院的国防授权法案（及其参议院版本）将拨款近1.96亿美元用于SLCM-N导弹的持续研发，并通过科罗拉多州共和党众议员道格·兰伯恩提出的一项条款，将其列为海军正式项目，此举遭到民主党的反对。拜登政府曾试图终止SLCM-N导弹的研究，并在其2024财年预算申请中未申请相关资金。

白宫声明指出：“在海军攻击型潜艇或水面作战舰艇上部署潜射巡航导弹（SLCM-N）将降低常规打击弹药的运载能力，增加海军训练、维护和作战的负担，并可能对海军在关键地区执行威慑和作战目标的能力构成额外风险。”声明还列举了军方已有的其他选择，例如W76-2低当量潜射弹道导弹弹头、空射巡航导弹和B61-12核重力炸弹。

众议院的这项法案还阻止了拜登政府退役B83百万吨级重力炸弹的努力，这种炸弹的威力至少是美国投在广岛的原子弹的80倍，直到五角大楼向国会提交一份关于打击坚硬且深埋目标的替代能力的报告。

拜登政府在最新声明中表示，反对推动制定更清晰的核指挥、控制和通信支出清单，因为核武库正是通过这些途径进行准备、协调和发射的。

今年早些时候，众议院战略部队委员会成员试图为NC3制定一项主要部队计划，这是一个晦涩难懂的话题。

五角大楼预算中，主要部队项目通常以相关项目和资源集合的形式列出。白宫表示，专门为NC3设立一个主要部队项目，需要“复杂地”提取和整理“数百个嵌入式项目要素和预算项目”。白宫还指出，此举将增加行政负担，并扰乱正在进行的工作，最终延缓亟需的改革。

国会预算办公室此前估计，更换老旧核指挥控制系统的计划在 2019 年至 2028 年间将耗资 770 亿美元。拜登政府去年发布的《核态势评估报告》承诺对核指挥控制系统进行现代化改造，并进一步加强其防护能力，尤其是在网络、太空和电磁攻击方面。

船舶采购和成本评估

白宫也对该法案继续采购下一艘圣安东尼奥级两栖作战舰艇的努力表示不满，这场持续不断的争论促使众议院共和党人试图废除五角大楼的成本评估和项目评估办公室。

该声明反对密西西比州共和党众议员特伦特·凯利提出的 7.5 亿美元“新增拨款请求”，该请求将允许五角大楼在 2024 财年开始采购下一艘圣安东尼奥级两栖战舰，尽管采购通常要到 2025 财年才会开始。

尽管海军陆战队强烈反对，两党议员仍然强烈反对五角大楼暂停两栖舰艇采购的“战略举措”。海军陆战队在其未拨款的优先事项清单中要求拨款 17.1 亿美元，用于在 2024 财年购买下一艘舰艇。

众议院共和党人以两栖舰艇项目暂停为由，支持一项旨在废除成本评估和项目评估办公室并将其职责转移到其他地方的国防授权法案条款，指责该办公室拖慢了采购进程。

白宫表示“强烈反对”废除该办公室，并辩称该办公室“帮助将采购计划成本违规事件从每年超过 6 起减少到每年略多于 2 起”，同时还“对来自整个部门的相互竞争的资源请求进行独立、基于事实的评估”。

最后，白宫表示“强烈反对”该法案削减潜艇补给舰更换项目15亿美元的授权资金。

布莱恩特·哈里斯是《防务新闻》的国会记者。自2014年以来，他一直在华盛顿报道美国外交政策、国家安全、国际事务和政治。他还曾为《外交政策》、《Al-Monitor》、《半岛电视台英语频道》和IPS新闻撰稿。

科林·德马雷斯特曾是C4ISRNET的记者，负责报道军事网络、网络安全和信息技术方面的新闻。此前，他曾为南卡罗来纳州的一家日报报道美国能源部及其下属的国家核安全管理局，主要关注冷战后的清理工作和核武器研发。科林还是一位屡获殊荣的摄影师。