Request to use war funds on F-35s, Apaches rejected

http://hamptonroads.com/2014/09/request-use-war-funds-f35s-apaches-rejected

Request to use war funds on F-35s, Apaches rejected
By Tony Capaccio | Bloomberg News
© September 23, 2014

WASHINGTON

Lawmakers have rejected the Pentagon's request to shift as much as $1.5 billion in war spending to buy eight new Lockheed Martin F-35 jets and 21 additional Boeing AH-64 Apache helicopters.

The Defense Department asked for the additional jets and helicopters in a Sept. 8 request for permission to shift, or reprogram, about $2 billion in its war operations budget, partly to pay for expanded operations against Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria.

The move to include new aircraft was rejected by the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee, one of four spending and authorization panels in the House and Senate that must approve each item in such requests.

Panel members are concerned that the overseas contingency funds - provided separately from the annual defense budget to pay for war operations - are being used to "backfill budgetary shortfalls in acquisition programs that have only tenuous links to the fight in Afghanistan and other current operations," Republican Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, the subcommittee's chairman, said in a Sept. 19 letter to Pentagon Comptroller Michael McCord.