The Hill:
A Senate panel’s decision to cut significant funds from the Pentagon’s most expensive program to date, the Joint Strike Fighter, could create a maelstrom in the Pentagon and potentially during conference deliberations with the House over the 2007 defense authorization act.
The Senate Armed Services Airland Subcommittee, chaired by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), slashed $1.2 billion from the Pentagon’s request for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), a multiservice, multinational program....... McCain’s panel recommended cutting $870 million from the procurement funds for five of the Air Force’s JSF aircraft in fiscal 2007. The panel also recommended cutting $245 million, which makes up the entire so-called advance procurement funding for eight of the Marine Corps’s short-takeoff and vertical-landing version of the aircraft, slated for 2008, as well $85 million of the Air Force’s advance procurement request of $145 million for eight aircraft in 2008.......
Advance procurement ensures that some necessary components, parts and material are made available before the Pentagon makes the request to buy a certain number of aircraft in a specific budget year.
If the Airland decision passes muster with the entire Armed Service’s Committee, chaired by Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), and on the Senate floor, it will complicate matters when the defense authorization bill goes to conference with the House Armed Services Committee. The full Senate panel is expected to consider the bill today.
The House panel, which has marked up its version of the 2007 defense authorization bill, has been more generous with the Joint Strike Fighter. The House panel cut $241 million from the advance procurement of 16 aircraft in 2008 because of concerns over the fact that the research and development for the fighter jet was too concurrent with the actual buying plan for the aircraft.....
While the House funded the advance procurement of five aircraft in 2008, the Senate funded no aircraft.