While the Senate’s appropriations bill for the Department of Defense includes a $21.7 billion topline increase, many nuclear modernization programs in the DoD got a reduction.
The Senate Appropriations Committee last Thursday voted to advance its $852.5 billion fiscal 2026 defense spending bill, approving a $21.7 billion topline increase that boosts funds for shipbuilding, munitions and Ukraine aid.
Senate appropriators voted 26-3 to advance the defense spending bill, with Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) opposing the legislation.
The Senate is likely to take up the defense appropriations bill after returning from its August recess, and then will eventually have to settle the difference in topline with the House’s version of the bill that sticks to the administration’s requested spending level.
In terms of programs that received cuts in the SAC-D bill, the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider stealth bomber got a $666 million “classified” reduction from SAC-D compared to the Air Force’s nearly $2.6 billion request.
While the Air Force requested almost $224 million for B-52 modifications in fiscal 2026, SAC-D reduced that by $128 million due to Radar Modernization Program (RMP) development delays. In May, the Air Force said that RMP had exceeded the 15% significant unit cost increase threshold under the fiscal 1982 National Defense Authorization Act’s Nunn-McCurdy provision “due to design, production, and installation cost increases.”
SAC-D also cut the Air Force’s nearly $607 million research and development request for the future nuclear-tipped Long Range Standoff Missile (LRSO) by $235 million due to unjustified funds, or funds that lack sufficient Congressional oversight or authorization, requested by the Air Force for termination liability.
The B-52H bomber is to get a new rotary launcher for LRSO, and eventually the Air Force wants LRSO to fly aboard the B-21.
When asked by the Exchange Monitor at a background briefing last week about funding to other nuclear modernization programs, such as the Northrop Grumman Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, a senior Senate GOP aide said the programs’ funding was a “mystery.”
“They’re not funded on our bill, because they were requested as reconciliation, and so we were expected to have a request for Sentinel and SLCM-N [the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile] but those were taken care of in reconciliation,” the aide said. “And so there are the sorts of things where, I think there is bipartisan support, they are long term modernization programs that our nation requires, and it’s the sort of thing that should be funded in a base appropriations bill on an annual basis.”
Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily contributed to this story.