Congressman Mo Brooks Improves and Supports FY22 National Defense Authorization Act in Armed Services Committee

Press Release

Early on September 2nd, after a 16.5-hour committee debate and vote series, Congressman Mo Brooks (AL-05) voted "Yes" on the House Armed Services Committee passage of H.R. 4350, the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act ("NDAA"). The NDAA passed on a 57-2 vote.

Congressman Brooks said the following:

There are few more important federal government functions than authorizing America's national security programs. The House Armed Services Committee's year-long national security policy process culminated in this morning's Fiscal Year 2022 NDAA passage. While I am disappointed the NDAA was not as strong as I would have preferred, I'm pleased both Republicans and Democrats came to an agreement on several key defense issues to pass the NDAA for the 60th straight year.

This year's NDAA authorizes $779 billion in total defense spending. With America's geo-political foes, especially China, investing heavily in their military capabilities, it's imperative that America keep pace. The lesson of World War II is that America's enemies must never be allowed to mistakenly believe they can overpower America. By maintaining robust defenses, America maintains peace.

The FY22 NDAA strengthens national security by:

Providing troops a 2.7% pay raise;
Directing federal government agencies to provide Congress with a report on the Communist Chinese Party's efforts to expand its presence and influence in Latin America;
Encouraging American production of certain defense-critical circuit boards while tightening restrictions that will reduce supply chain vulnerabilities that China can exploit to disrupt America's access to defense-critical circuit boards; and,
Providing $6.2 billion, $1.1 billion more than the president's budget request, for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI), a program specifically to counter China's aggression in the Indo-Pacific region.
I'm especially proud that one of my bills, the Civilian Aviation Certification Equity Act, was included in the base text of the FY22 NDAA. This bill requires the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to modify existing regulations so that Department of Defense civilian pilots who receive the same training, instruction, and qualifications as their active-duty, reserve, and national guard counterparts receive the same treatment with respect to FAA recognition of pilot ratings.

Each year the Redstone Arsenal military and contractor support community submits requests to my office concerning America's national security needs. This year, my office (working with allies) successfully helped insert 41 Redstone Arsenal community requests into the NDAA. Thirty-eight of these policy requests were negotiated with HASC Chairman Adam Smith (D, WA-09) and included in the Chairman's base bill.

My office's (in conjunction with Congressional allies) NDAA inclusions include, but are not limited to:

Full funding for a newly created system integration lab at Redstone Arsenal to support Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) testing. MOSA will drastically cut production and sustainment costs while enabling integration of innovative technologies. This provision puts Redstone Arsenal at the center of the Army's primary modernization priority;
Full funding for the projected increase in procurement of the Navy's Standard Missile-6 and Standard Missile 3 Block 2A, which are assembled at Redstone Arsenal;
Funding for Tennessee Valley-produced specialty nickel-based alloys that are used in hypersonic missile engines and in 3D printed parts expected to be included in multiple major weapons systems still under development;
Full funding for Missile Defense Agency developing enhanced THAAD capabilities for a layered homeland missile defense;
Full funding for the Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP), a new helicopter engine that will go into the existing Apache and Black Hawk fleets, as well as the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft;
Authorization for the U.S. Airforce to establish a Service Acquisition Executive (SAE) for Space Systems and Programs before October 1, 2022;
Funding for a Missile Defense System (MDS) Architecture Integration and Analysis Center (IAC) in Huntsville, AL, which adds contact personnel to focus on end-to-end analysis of integrated ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missile architectures as well as missile defeat technologies;
Funding for development of the Missile Effects Artificial Intelligence Decision Engine (AIDE) prototype capability which enables warfighters to rapidly explore missile planning options to select and synchronize the most cost-effective combination of missiles to use against a target;
Funding for the development of the Missile Mission Engineering Toolkits with Operational Rigor (Missile MENTOR) capability, giving the military digital engineering tools that will eliminate the need for expensive and redundant physical prototyping.
In addition to the 38 policy requests negotiated into the Chairman's base bill, another 3 Mo Brooks amendments were added to the NDAA during the HASC debate, to-wit:

Funding for research of Alternative Positioning Navigation and Timing (ALT-PNT) techniques through the use of combined but spatially separated antennas;
Funding for the establishment of a world class test facility at Redstone Arsenal to simulate, characterize, and develop innovative technologies that assure ALT-PNT resiliency;
Funding to support the acceleration of research and development to support U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) to test and assess emerging weapon systems for expedited transition to operational use.

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