The Pentagon plans to fund the more than 50-year-old U.S. ICBM command and control structure, even if the military’s budget topline is limited to the Budget Control Act level, a top Air Force nuclear official said yesterday. “The good news is significant investment in the President’s Budget to get at this, and even at the BCA level, we’re going to make significant investment in it,” said Maj. Gen. Garrett Harencak, Air Force Assistant Chief of Staff for Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration, during a Peter Huessy Breakfast Series event on Capitol Hill. “I’m excited about it, because it’s overdue. It’s not as sexy, it’s not as cool as bombers and missiles and all that stuff, but of course, it’s vitally, vitally important, and we’ve just got to get more agile faster, but the main thing is we’ve just got to make the investment. The decision has been made to make those investments.” The House Armed Services Committee’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 matches the President’s request of $287 million for nuclear command and control (NC2). HASC reported out the bill last month, and the legislation awaits full House approval.
Maj. Gen. James Martin, Air Force Assistant Secretary for Budget, on Feb. 2, after release of the Pentagon’s FY 2016 budget request, warned that BCA level funding could jeopardize NC2 modernization. The Senate last week passed a budget framework that would establish a topline of $523 billion for defense activities in FY 2016, adhering to the Budget Control Act’s discretionary defense cap. The framework also would authorize about $90 billion for Overseas Contingency Operations in FY 2016. Defense Secretary Ash Carter this week said the President could veto the budget, expressing opposition to the roughly $39 billion proposed OCO boost over President Barack Obama’s $561 billion OCO request for FY 2016.
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