What’s in the 2024 Supplemental Foreign Aid Bill for Defense Contractors?

A lot of sound and fury accompanied last week’s passage of the combined Security Supplemental Appropriations Act for Israel, Ukraine, and the Indo-Pacific Area of Operations, but very little of substance appeared in most coverage of the bill. The most important thing to understand about the legislation is that even though the public argument centers on aid for this, that, or the other country, much of the funding actually goes to the U.S. government itself. Today’s post summarizes the funding going to the Department of Defense (DOD), and the priorities outlined by the DOD (when available), in each portion of the combined bill.

H.R. 8034: Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024

The funding in this part of the bill breaks out as follows. Anything labeled “Defense Wide” is allotted for Fourth Estate agencies and organizations, not for one of the military departments.

The legislation contains no details concerning how the Fourth Estate will spend the funding listed under Operations and Maintenance and Procurement. There is, however, $2.4B for U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). An equivalent line in the Indo-Pacific Security Supplemental Appropriations Act states that such funding can be used to address previously unfunded priorities at U.S Indo-Pacific Command, so it makes sense to assume that CENTCOM can spend the funding for it in a similar way. If that is the case, then CENTCOM will almost certainly direct $450M of this funding to counter unmanned aerial systems (c-UAS). Additional priorities include “force protection, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), and innovation-related programs,” according to this March 2024 article from Breaking Defense.

As an aside, the bill also provides no details on Defense Production Act priorities.

H.R. 8035: Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024

The table below outlines the following funding in this portion of the combined bill.

No priorities are listed in the document, but from the distribution of some of the funding we can draw a few conclusions.

First, O&M includes both goods and support services. So, while we cannot determine which types of services will be needed, we can assume a portion of $34B in O&M will go to things like base maintenance, logistics, transportation, telecommunications, and other types of contract activites.

Second, Procurement and RDTE dollars are traditionally defined as “new money” in each year’s annual budget request. The “Other Procurement” category in particular tends to include money for information technology (IT) goods and services. We can probably conclude, therefore, that particularly the Air Force, due to the amount received, will use some of this funding for IT requirements.

The situation is similar for RDTE funding, much of which goes to different IT programs. In short, Congress has made another $633M available for DOD to fund new and ongoing technology-related efforts.

H.R. 8036: Indo-Pacific Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024 ($K)                        

Here is the break out for the DOD funding listed in the Indo-Pacific portion of the bill.

The part of this worth highlighting is the $542M slated for U. S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM). Language concerning INDOPACOM in the bill states, “Available until September 30, 2024, for transfer to operation and maintenance accounts, procurement accounts, and research,  development, test and evaluation accounts, in addition to amounts otherwise made available for such purpose, only for unfunded priorities of the United States Indo-Pacific Command for fiscal year 2024.”

In a list released last March, INDOPACOM identified $11B in unfunded priorities, including

• Regional Military Construction Projects - $3.3B
• Purchasing New Weapons - $2.7B
• Improved Guam Missile Defenses - $430M
• Future Increments of the New Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) - $391M

There are others as well, listed here.

Summing up, the legislation provides a wealth of funding for projects and programs supported by the Defense Industrial Base. In this sense, the bill supports the defense contractor community just as much as it provides foreign aid.