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By: Megan Eckstein The Navy is moving forward with its plans to take advantage of a commercial aviation slowdown by accelerating new orders, buying spare parts and conducting depot maintenance – all in conjunction with the other services, to get the maximum benefit of what the industry has to offer even while combating the COVID-19 pandemic. Navy acquisition chief James Geurts told reporters today that, both because customers are avoiding commercial air travel and because aviation manufacturing sites are being hit by the coronavirus, “commercial aviation is still remarkably challenged, and remarkably important because we do get a lot of benefit in the DoD from commercial aviation sector, from those companies that work in both areas. So we're working closely with them.” Geurts had said two weeks ago that the Navy was early in the process of identifying what opportunities might exist to keep aviation-related production lines moving despite limited commercial demand, while also building up Navy readiness by boosting the inventory of spare parts or getting ahead of schedule on acquisition or maintenance efforts. After Geurts made those remarks, his counterpart, Defense Department acquisition chief Ellen Lord, said that aviation was the hardest-hit sector in the defense industrial base due to the COVID-19 pandemic and response. Today, asked what opportunity there was to get ahead on aviation acquisition and maintenance even amid the sector's great disruptions, Geurts told USNI News during a media teleconference that the effort is moving forward and that aviation propulsion would be a key focus. “We're working closely with our partners in the other services so we have a whole-of-DoD approach to those companies in those efforts,” he said. He added that his focus would be less about awarding new contracts and instead looking at rephasing or accelerating work, connecting companies with grants and loans they might not otherwise have access to, and more. “We're looking at the full tools we have available and then trying to rapidly tailor those tools and the right mix to each individual sector and each individual situation,” he said. “I don't see a giant DoD-level contract. I think it's more about synchronizing efforts and working closely with my counterparts in the other services so that we're working together to get the maximum benefit, and I think that's more an alignment of strategies and tools than in a large new kind of joint contract.” For example, the Navy is looking at construction programs where “we may not have planned to buy the engine for three months, but maybe we can buy it now and gain some efficiency.” On programs like the P-8A Poseidon, a military version of the popular Boeing 737, the Navy could find money within the program to stock up on parts, or to leverage Boeing depot repair capabilities not being used by commercial planes. “There will be a natural limitation of funding and whatnot, so we can't do that infinitely, but we're looking to leverage all the different toolsets we have,” Geurts said. Outside the Navy budget, Geurts said the Navy has been trying to help its smaller suppliers get connected with the Small Business Administration to apply for loans so they can keep their production moving or even accelerate. And in the Navy's own Small Business Innovative Research, the service has $250 million in awards that Geurts is trying to get out to industry as quickly as possible over the next couple months. More broadly, Geurts said the Navy had already been taking a close look at its domestic and international supply chain and is in a good position now to be making informed decisions as the entire world faces disruptions from this pandemic. In hard-hit Italy, for example, companies that make parts for the Marine Corps' amphibious combat vehicle (ACV) – which BAE Systems builds in partnership with Italian defense contractor Iveco, which designed the vehicle for the Italian Navy – have had to shut down. “Everybody is working very aggressively to manage around it,” Geurts said, adding “there's nothing I would put in a crisis mode yet, we're just keeping an eye on it.” He said for ACV and other programs that rely on international suppliers, the program offices are looking to rephrase elements of construction to account for certain components being delayed, or may look at using spare parts for already-fielded vehicles to support construction. The latter move, though, would have to be done carefully to balance both production and sustainment needs, he said. https://news.usni.org/2020/04/28/navy-looking-to-buy-aircraft-engines-as-civilian-demand-dwindles

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy has paid defense contractors $600 million it had withheld to ensure contract performance, hoping the funds would shore up finances for suppliers ravaged by the coronavirus-driven economic downturn, a Navy official said on Tuesday. The move, which follows a similar action taken by the Air Force that released billions of dollars in payments, is aimed at replacing revenue vital Pentagon suppliers have lost in their non-military businesses as the spreading coronavirus has halted business activity nationwide. “We were immediately able to infuse about $600 million of funds that we had on withholds,” James Geurts, the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, told reporters on a conference call. A Navy spokesperson said “for example, with the ship repair industry, withholds were reduced to one percent.” The Navy was unable to say whether a portion of the $600 million was withheld due to poor contractor performance. The Department of Defense has also accelerated contract awards as it leverages its portion of the more than $700 billion annual defense budget to help keep suppliers afloat. Geurts wrote a memo on March 24 to his staff directing them to release or reduce the withholds. It did not discuss rectifying the root causes. Government waste watch-dogs criticized the move. “This current emergency shouldn't be an excuse to avoid accountability for poor performance that predated this outbreak,” said Mandy Smithberger, of the Project On Government Oversight in Washington. Earlier this month, Geurts said he had authorized “hundreds of millions” of dollars to be paid out to top suppliers like General Dynamics (GD.N) and Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII.N) which could flow to the supply chain. Representatives from Huntington Ingalls and General Dynamics said the Navy was not withholding money from them for poor performance. While the Navy did not name any companies that received payments, industry sources have said the biggest contractors have been filtering coronavirus-related funds to their suppliers and subcontractors who, because of their smaller size, are on much shakier financial footing. The Navy's multi-layered supply chain is comprised of companies building out President Donald Trump's vision for a 350 ship here Navy. The funding will help pay salaries and ensure hard-to-replace workers are not lost to other industries or early retirement. Geurts has said the Navy is pushing money into the defense industrial base by speeding up contract payments, hastening contract awards and releasing funds withheld for poor past performance. The U.S. Air Force said it would release $882 million in payments to Boeing (BA.N) that were held back due to flaws in the KC-46 air refueling tanker. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-navy-procurement/u-s-navy-pays-contractors-600-million-held-back-to-ensure-performance-idUSKCN22A33L

Lee Hudson The spread of the novel coronavirus has changed the way the Defense Department views its supply chain and the military is beginning to understand where the industrial base is “hyper efficient but very brittle,” according to the U.S. Navy acquisition executive. The Pentagon is discovering there are components made by either a single supplier or an overseas supplier that is impacted by COVID-19, Hondo Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, told reporters April 28. Geurts said the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing the Pentagon to dig deeper into understanding various supply chain elements. This allows the military to begin making deliberate choices in where it needs additional “resilience” or “flexibility, he said. “We meet now weekly at the department level to have a look through industrial base concerns, issues, hot spots or strategic challenges,” Geurts said. “That's one of the areas that I view, when we come out of this, that needs to be a normal course of business.” The Pentagon identified Mexico and India as countries where the defense industrial base is being hit hard by supplier closures, Ellen Lord, under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, told reporters April 20. Geurts said it is not that other nations do not deem defense work as essential, but they are facing different circumstances with the novel coronavirus. His team is looking at various programs where there are overseas supply chains and understanding how they are operating or not during this time. The Navy not only has many contracts with suppliers in Mexico, but also in Italy and Spain. “We're just keeping an eye on it,” Geurts said. “We have flexibility and may have programs that rephase elements of construction or use stock we have on hand.” Separately, since commercial aviation is being hard hit by COVID-19, the Pentagon is specifically focusing on propulsion contractors to put in orders during this time by rephasing work. For example, the military did not intend to purchase an engine until three months from now, but because of the global pandemic will submit an order early. “There'll be a natural limitation of funding, so we can't do that infinitely, but we're looking to leverage all the different tool sets we have,” Geurts said. https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/supply-chain/covid-19-alters-dod-view-supply-chain

By: Tom Kington ROME — Defense experts are concerned that Europe's newfound commitment to joint defense spending may be cast aside as the European Union diverts cash into economies hammered by the coronavirus lockdown. The scenario was discussed in a webinar hosted by Italy's IAI think tank on April 8. And last week, Polish and German experts wrote of the risk that the fledgling European Defence Fund will be savagely cut. Then on April 27, eight experts issued an appeal to EU policymakers, arguing that rather than cutting defense funds to free up money to support hard-hit businesses, they should do the opposite and beef up defense spending. With so many high-tech jobs in the defense industry, “specific support for this sector will be needed to mitigate the economic crisis' effects and preserve the long-term future of Europe,” wrote the experts, who hail from Spain, Italy, the U.K., France and Lithuania. According to the letter, the EU plans to pack its 2021-2027 budget with measures to limit a recession some economists believe will follow the pandemic. Economists have also warned such a recession would dwarf the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis. “Undoubtedly it will focus on critical sectors such as health or energy. We believe that the defence sector should be included in such critical sectors and that a revised version of the [budget] should be the opportunity to reassert a truly ambitious budget for the European Defence Fund,” the experts wrote. Apart from shoring up defense jobs, feeding the European Defence Fund would help defend the EU as threats grow, they wrote. “Indeed, COVID-19 will not stop or mitigate the ongoing worsening of the international security environment threatening European security and interests. On the contrary, it is likely to make the world more unstable and more insecure,” they added. Defense spending had been slashed after 2008, the experts said, and faces a similar fate now, just as “Europe is trying to develop next-generation fighter aircraft, main battle tanks, frigates and other capabilities such as unmanned systems crucial for its military and technological edge.” Cutting budgets would not only increase Europe's dependency on “third states” but would “significantly hinder the credibility of European nations as military partners, notably within NATO,” they added. Prior to the spread of coronavirus, pressure had grown inside the EU to halve the €13 billion (U.S. $14 billion) planned for the European Defence Fund during 2021-2027. Now, the EU should halt any plans to cut the fund and instead increase it, the experts wrote. “As Europe gradually emerges from the pandemic, there [cannot be a] secure ‘new normal' without a solid European defence,” they concluded. The letter's release coincided with a report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute that found total global military spending rose 3.6 percent in 2019 to $1.917 trillion — marking the largest annual growth in spending since 2010. The think tank report also found that U.S. spending grew by 5.3 percent to a total of $732 billion in 2019, at 38 percent of the global total. The increase alone in U.S. spending was roughly equal to the entire budget of Germany. The European country's military spending rose by 10 percent last year to $49.3 billion, which the think tank said was the largest increase in spending among the top 15 military spenders in 2019. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/04/27/back-hard-hit-businesses-experts-press-eu-to-instead-boost-defense-spending/

By: Kirk Pysher In a few months, the U.S. Air Force will choose two of the four competing space companies to provide five years of launches in the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program. One of the core objectives for this program is to increase affordability by leveraging the technologies and business models of the commercial launch industry. Is that a realistic expectation given the current commercial space market and historical precedents? Historically, the commercial launch market has seen significant variability. Launches of commercial communication satellite constellations began in the early 1970s with NASA serving as the launch provider. New launch providers began to emerge from the commercial world after the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984 allowed the private sector to provide launch services. We then witnessed a remarkable growth in commercial space launches in the 1990s that peaked just before the turn of the century. Then, until about 2014, the commercial launch market stabilized at 20-25 commercial geostationary orbit satellites per year that were split essentially between three global launch suppliers. Since then, new entrants into the commercial launch market and pricing pressure from terrestrial-based communication systems have significantly impacted the viability of the commercial launch market, reducing profit margins and returns on investment across the board. The expected 20-25 commercial GEO missions is now in the range of 10-15 launches per year and is expected to remain at that level beyond the NSSL five-year period of performance. With new entrants into the commercial launch market, that 40-50 percent reduction in annual launch opportunities will now be competed among seven to eight global launch providers, putting further pressure on the viability of those launchers. Additionally, commercial launch revenue is also expected to decrease over that period by as much as 30 percent as satellite operators look to reduce their launch cost through shared launch, smaller spacecraft and reduced launch pricing. Given the projected commercial launch market and additional competition from new entrants, launch service providers will have difficultly building and maintaining viable commercial launch business plans, let alone having commercial launch-driven capital to invest in new technology. History has proven that no commercial launch service provider can succeed without having an anchor government customer. The commercial launch market simply has not been able to provide the stable, long-term demand needed to maintain affordable pricing, innovation and factory throughput for the Air Force to benefit from. History has also demonstrated that it is the Air Force with NSSL since 2003 that has provided the launch service providers with a stable number of launches. The defense and commercial launch markets have a fundamental difference. The former focuses strictly on satisfying national security mission requirements in space — needs that are driven by risk, strategy and geopolitical events regardless of vulnerabilities in commercial markets. The defense market began in the late 1950s with industry designing, developing and building launch vehicles for the U.S. government to place critical national security satellites into orbit. Early on, we saw a large number of launches in the beginning — peaking at more than 40 in 1966 — before activity levels decreased to level out by 1980. After more than 400 launches of defense-related satellites, the defense launch market finally settled into an average eight launches annually, whereas the commercial launch market is strictly tied to the ability of global satellite operators to close business plans and obtain institutional and/or private funding on new and replacement satellites. The global COVID-19 pandemic is a stark reminder of the vulnerability of all commercial markets. Airlines, aircraft manufacturers and commercial space companies are needing to seek tens of billions of dollars in government assistance; and private commercial space investors are also reassessing their risk postures, as is demonstrated by the recent OneWeb bankruptcy filing. Given the projected decline in commercial launch along with the historical precedents, there would be significant risk for the Air Force to expect to leverage benefit from commercial launch. In fact, I believe history has demonstrated that it is commercial launch that is able to leverage the benefits derived from the steady cadence of defense and civil government launches. The Air Force, in its role as anchor customer, needs to clearly understand commercial market dependencies and business cases of its key providers. With that understanding, the Air Force will mitigate any risk of critical national security missions being dependent on a finicky and fluctuating commercial market. Kirk Pysher is an aerospace executive with more than 20 years in the commercial launch market, serving most recently as the president of International Launch Services until October 2019. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/04/28/will-commercial-and-military-launch-programs-ever-be-truly-complementary/

Kyle Rempfer Researchers made adjustments to the digital thermal sensors on their Integrated Visual Augmentation System, or IVAS goggles, so the devices can now detect a fever, service officials said this week. A version of the IVAS goggles are now being used at Fort Benning, Georgia, on hundreds of soldiers arriving each day to train at the post, which hosts basic combat training, Airborne School and Ranger School. Five seconds was all it took for the goggles to detect the forehead and inner eye temperature of troops as they filed in through a processing center. The temperature of a soldier is registered through the goggle-wearer's heads-up display. Those who registered a fever were moved to a medical station for further evaluation. The goggle screening system cleared a group of about 300 soldiers in roughly 30 minutes, according to the Army. The process could also be more sanitary than traditional screening measures, which require closer contact between medical personnel and patients. “We've always planned for an agile software system and a digital platform that can be upgraded and adapted to use against emerging threats in the future. No one anticipated the next threat to emerge would be a virus, but that's the enemy we face today,” said Tom Bowman, director of the IVAS Science and Technology Special Project Office, who helped orchestrate the thermal tweaks to the devices. However, even though fevers are a known symptom of coronavirus, it's far from an absolute predictor. Up to 25 percent of people with the virus may never show symptoms, Centers for Disease Control director Dr. Robert Redfield has previously warned publicly, meaning symptoms could be a less effective gauge of troop health than originally hoped. IVAS goggles — which combine night vision, a rifle-linked targeting scope and navigational markers within a soldier's field of view — are still undergoing field tests, including one at Fort Pickett, in Virginia, in late October and early November. The version of the goggles used to screen troops at Fort Benning are an earlier iteration of “non-ruggedized” goggles. They can't be used outdoors, instead requiring a stable room temperature so the goggles can be accurately calibrated. Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 29th Infantry Regiment, an instructional unit for the Army Infantry School, were trained to use the devices to scan others. “That's the genius of this system; we can use this technology today to fight the virus, even as we shape it into the combat system our soldiers need tomorrow. This shows the extensibility of the IVAS technology and the system,” said Brig. Gen. Tony Potts, who directs the modernization of infantry equipment. IVAS goggles are the signature technology coming out of the Army's Soldier Lethality Cross Functional Team. The devices are designed in partnership with Microsoft using the company's HoloLens. Brig. Gen. Dave Hodne, the Army's chief of infantry who has a major role in testing the new technology, told reporters on April 17 that the Army still plans to field the devices in the final quarter of fiscal year 2021, even if a second wave of coronavirus hits during the fall testing period. “It would come at a cost of a two-week isolation period in advance of beginning the test,” said Hodne, adding that students trying to vie for a Ranger tab at the moment are already doing two-week isolation periods. “We've got 8,000 infantry trainees on Sand Hill who are executing a 22-week one-station unit training, you got an Airborne class that just graduated on Wednesday jumping out of airplanes,” Honde said. “The Army has frameworks for operating in biological hazards. It just requires us to make adjustments.” https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2020/04/28/army-tweaks-new-goggles-to-scan-for-fevers/

Nathan Strout Lockheed Martin will perform the first phase of satellite integration on Project Blackjack for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the company announced April 24. With Project Blackjack, DARPA hopes to demonstrate the value of a proliferated constellation of low earth orbit satellites for the Department of Defense. And while Project Blackjack is expected to consist of just about 20 satellites, the lessons learned will feed into a constellation of hundreds. From early on, the Space Development Agency has said that it planned to build off of the advances made with Project Blackjack for its own proliferated constellation, which will perform tasks ranging from beyond-line-of-sight targeting to tracking hypersonic weapons. The SDA's current plan is to put 20 satellites on orbit in the summer of 2022, adding more and more in two year cycles until the agency's constellation includes hundreds of satellites. Under the $5.8 million contract, Lockheed Martin will define and manage interfaces between the bus, payload and Pit Boss, a system that will be able to process data collected by the satellites in space and disseminate that information to users on Earth without any human input. BAE Systems, SEAKR Engineering, Inc and Scientific Systems Company Incorporated were each awarded contracts in 2019 to design Pit Boss. Lockheed Martin will also perform testbed validation of vehicle interfaces. “Lockheed Martin has built and integrated a variety of payload types and sizes for every type of mission and we bring all of that experience to the Blackjack program,” said Sarah Reeves, vice president of missile defense programs at Lockheed Martin. “This is an exciting new approach to plug-n-play design for LEO and we are up for the challenge.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2020/04/27/lockheed-martin-to-integrate-project-blackjack-satellites/

By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — Global defense spending hit $1.917 trillion in 2019, a 3.6 percent increase over previous year figures and the largest increase in one year since 2010, according to the annual report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The United States remains the world's largest defense spender in 2019, with its $732 billion representing 38 percent of global military spending, SIPRI has reported. That was followed by China ($261 billion, at 14 percent of global total), India ($71.1 billion, at 3.7 percent), Russia ($65.1 billion, at 3.4 percent) and Saudi Arabia ($61.9 billion, at 3.2 percent). All told, the top five nations accounted for 62 percent of overall military spending. “Global military expenditure was 7.2 percent higher in 2019 than it was in 2010, showing a trend that military spending growth has accelerated in recent years,” SIPRI's Nan Tian said in a statement. “This is the highest level of spending since the 2008 global financial crisis and probably represents a peak in expenditure.” Large year-over-year increases were seen in China (5.1 percent), India (6.8 percent), Russia (4.5 percent), Germany (10 percent) and South Korea (7.5 percent). Regionally, military spending increased in Europe by 5 percent, Asia and Oceania by 4.8 percent, the Americas by 4.7 percent, and Africa by 1.5 percent. Combined military spending by the 29 NATO member states was $1.035 trillion in 2019. SIPRI is widely considered to be the authority on military expenditures and exports, having gathered such data for decades. Other key developments, as noted by the researchers: Together, the top 15 countries spent $1.553 trillion, 81 percent of global military spending. All but three countries in the top 15 had higher military expenditures in 2019 than in 2010, the exceptions being the U.S. (15 percent drop), the U.K. (15 percent drop) and Italy (11 percent drop.) Total military expenditures of the 11 countries in the Middle East for which data is available decreased by 7.5 percent to $147 billion, driven in part by an estimated 16 percent drop from Saudi Arabia. That overall percentage also decreased in 2018. SIPRI was unable to calculate totals from Qatar, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Military spending in South America was relatively unchanged from the previous year, coming in at $52.8 billion. Fifty-one percent of that spending, $26.9 billion, came from Brazil. Combined military expenditures from Africa grew by 1.5 percent to an estimated $41.2 billion in 2019, the first time that region saw a spending increase in five years. That includes plus-ups in Burkina Faso (22 percent), Cameroon (1.4 percent), Mali (3.6 percent), the Central African Republic (8.7 percent), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (16 percent) and Uganda (52 percent). Of the 149 countries SIPRI studied, 10 allocated 4 percent or more of their gross domestic product to the military, which the group defines as the “military burden.” Thirteen countries had a military burden of 3 to 3.9 percent of GDP; 24 had a military burden of 2 to 2.9 percent; 65 had a military burden of 1 to 1.9 percent; and 34 allocated less than 1 percent of their GDP to the military. Three countries had no military expenditures in 2019: Costa Rica, Iceland and Panama. https://www.defensenews.com/global/2020/04/27/global-defense-spending-sees-biggest-spike-in-a-decade/

By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― Though the Pentagon is hunting for billions of dollars in a future package to combat the coronavirus pandemic, it looks like the next massive relief bill will be swamped in a partisan fight. The Pentagon announced it's seeking the funds to prop up the military's network of suppliers following $3 billion in new “progress payments" to increase cash flow to primary contractors and more vulnerable, smaller subcontractors. The details have yet to be disclosed as the Defense Department works through them with the White House budget office. But last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he wants to “push the pause button” on the next aid package and, because Democrats aim to center it on bailouts for states hit hard by the pandemic, “move “cautiously.” “You've seen the talk from both sides about acting, but my goal from the beginning of this, given the extraordinary numbers that we're racking up to the national debt, is that we need to be as cautious as we can be,” McConnell told reporters on April 21. The Senate will reconvene in full on May 4 to work on coronavirus aid legislation, McConnell said Monday. It would mark the first time the chamber has been back in full since late March. The prospects for a speedy compromise looked dim when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., set herself at odds with McConnell last week, saying, “There will not be a bill without state and local” aid. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other congressional Democrats have added pressure on McConnell by pillorying the majority leader's suggestion that states declare bankruptcy. “Republican Senators: Raise your hand if you think your state should go bankrupt,” Schumer said in a tweet. McConnell's negotiating stance comes as the Congressional Budget Office projected Friday that the federal budget deficit would quadruple to $3.7 trillion, driven by the coronavirus pandemic and a government spending spree on testing, health care, and aid to businesses and households. According to the report, the 2020 budget deficit will explode after Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed four coronavirus aid bills that promise to pile more than $2 trillion onto the $24.6 trillion national debt in the remaining six months of the current fiscal year. Meanwhile, defense hawks are warm to a defense spending boost. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., has voiced support for an additional cash infusion for the defense industry. “The federal government can play a vital role in keeping military suppliers afloat,” Wicker, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in his weekly newsletter to supporters. “Already the Department of Defense has announced it is spending $3 billion to reimburse contractors affected by work delays and breaks in the supply chain. “As Congress considers new relief measures, I will work to include targeted funding to ensure that suppliers get the stable cash flow and contracts they need to endure this crisis. These awards should go toward projects the military has already identified as priorities and should not break the bank." Also last week, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., introduced legislation last week that calls for $43 billion for military infrastructure and weapons as part of a larger effort to confront China in the Indo-Pacific region. That bill also calls for $11 billion to mitigate pandemic-related cost overruns on weapons programs and $3.3 billion to mitigate COVID-19 impacts to the defense-industrial base. But Cotton's proposal is also loaded with new weapons purchases that would prove a boon to defense firms, albeit at a slower pace than a direct cash infusion. There's an added General Dynamics/Huntington Ingalls Industries-built Virginia-class submarine; more Lockheed Martin-built F-35A jets; Boeing-built F-15EX fighter aircraft; a battery for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense air defense system; and anti-ship/strike weapons. Cotton's bill follows a $6.1 billion China deterrence package from the influential ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas. That bill would fund an Indo-Pacific Deterrence Initiative, also favored in principal by HASC Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash. Observers predicted the added funding might find a way through any deadlock on a stimulus bill. “We don't foresee stand-alone adoption but do think elements of it could be spread across different spending bills,” analyst Roman Schweizer of the Cowen Group said of Cotton's bill in a note to investors. “With Congress in full-bore debt-spending mode, defense proponents might be able to bury this money in larger packages. The American Enterprise Institute's Mackenzie Eaglen proposed in a Defense News on Monday that the next package for the Pentagon should avoid submitting unfunded procurement priorities and also “focus on the health, safety and continuity of all the Pentagon's workforce.” “Democrats want another stimulus, ideally on ‘shovel ready' infrastructure jobs. DoD is absolutely going to need more help in some sort of bill to keep the defense supply chain from going to the unemployed lines, or worse, gobbled up by China,” Eaglen said in an email. “Most of defense stimulus is to prop up jobs and employment so I'd like to be optimistic and think Democrats would be very supportive.” Democratic leaders haven't yet signaled how they're predisposed toward added defense spending in a stimulus package. However, a House Democratic aide said that scenario would invite serious opposition from the progressive wing. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a member of HASC and the House Progressive Caucus leadership team, previewed the messaging in this fight in a tweet on April 21 saying: “The Pentagon shouldn't get any more COVID relief money." “A single F-35 could pay for 2,200 ventilators. 1 nuclear warhead could pay for 17 million masks,” Khanna said, adding that the Pentagon budget dwarfs the combined budgets of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and U.S. contributions to the World Health Organization. In the Senate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., “will strongly oppose no-strings-attached giveaways to the arms industry, as news reports seem to indicate are the Pentagon's likely request of Congress," said his spokesman, Keane Bhatt. "This is the time to put ordinary workers and small businesses first — not prioritize the profits of Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.” https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/04/27/storm-clouds-await-pentagons-request-for-defense-industry-cash/