It authorizes $14.7 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative to counter China, strengthens ties with Taiwan, authorizes more than $4 billion to bolster U.S. and allied forces in Europe against Russian aggression, and provides for a 5.2% pay raise for all military personnel. It does not include most conservative policy provisions from the House bill, and it temporarily extends through April 19, 2024, provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that allow the U.S. government to collect communications of foreigners located outside the U.S.

Some Highlights of the Fiscal 2024 Defense Authorization (H.R.2670)

It Includes:

• Sec. 589--Rights of parents of children attending schools operated by the Department of Defense Education
• Sec. 576. Prohibition on use of Federal funds to endorse critical race theory.
• Sec. 1052. Prohibition on display of unapproved flags.
• Sec. 529C. Requirement to base military accessions and promotions on merit and performance.
• Pay Increase - The agreement provides for an across-the-board 5.2% military pay increase for 2024, equal to the president's request.
• Border Patrol Agents - Establishes higher rates of special overtime pay for border patrol agents with a GS-12 rating.
• Preventing Sex Abuse - Strengthens federal laws to make it easier to prosecute individuals that sexually abuse minors.

Riders:

• Included in the conference report is the fiscal 2024 authorization for the State Department, and for American intelligence agencies.
• It also includes a four-month extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, which allows spy agencies to review phone data, emails and other messages of foreigners abroad. Critics have said FISA is too broad and has led to the warrantless collection of data from Americans. Spy chiefs have said it is a critical tool in their arsenal.

House Provisions Not Include:

• It does not include a House-passed provision that would have ended the Pentagon policy under which the department covers transportation expenses for servicemembers based in states that have effectively banned abortions to travel to other states for such services.
• It also does not contain a House provision that would have prohibited Tricare from covering sex reassignment surgeries and gender hormone treatments for transgender individuals.
• The measure does not include House-passed language that would have repealed the Defense Department's chief diversity officer position.
• The measure does not include House language that would have prohibited the department from using authorized funds for a drag show or similar event.
• The measure does not include House language that would have established a Space National Guard.
• The agreement does not include a House provision that would have excluded housing payments from the income calculations for the programs.
• Does not include a House provision that would have prohibited servicemembers or department personnel from interacting with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, or making "any decision as a result of any claim, objection, or protest made by MIFF without the authority of the Secretary of Defense." 

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the war it spawned have sent shockwaves throughout the world. Prior held beliefs on security, whether defined in military or economic terms, have been upended, while pre-war notions of seamless global supply chains of free flowing goods and services transported courtesy of cheap Russian gas and Chinese 5G networks are also being re-examined. Nowhere has this been more evident than in Europe.

Until last year, European beliefs in the efficacy of military power often were at odds with their Transatlantic brethren. As articulated by Robert Kagan in a seminal article two decades ago, America continued to be from Mars while Europe increasingly was from Venus — namely, Europeans generally saw a world where the rule of law, rather than brute force, imposed order with a web of treaties and protocols governing how nations behaved. In Europe's view, future disputes would be decided at the International Criminal Court, rather than on the plains of Kursk.

American policymakers, on the other hand, generally saw the world as a violent place where bad actors would respond only to military force. And it was America's willingness to use such force that ultimately kept the peace. Granted, there were many Europeans who did not adhere to a strict Kantian view in which force hardly played a role, including many Eastern European members of NATO who have long called for the transatlantic alliance to take a more active role in deterring Russian actions in the region. And it was the United Kingdom and France who pushed for intervention in places like Libya, at a time when many Americans were highly critical of neoconservative notions of "preemptive war" and regime change in places like Iraq that they said actually diminished America's security.

Yet, years of declining European defense spending, despite pleas from U.S. presidents from both parties, together with a willingness to embrace states like Russia in a web of economic arrangements like the Gazprom pipelines, did seem to be a reflection of a basic Kant-Hobbes divide.

Moscow's invasion has led to a reopening of the philosophical debate and a re-examination of prior held beliefs, including the widespread notion that a major ground war in Europe could never again occur. That reassessment drove formerly non-aligned Finland and Sweden to abandon their neutrality and seek protection within NATO. Germany also seemed ready to shed its post-war aversion to the use of force rooted in recognition of Berlin's role in precipitating World War II.

After years of failing to meet the minimum NATO requirement of spending 2% of GDP on defense, or of participating in most NATO operations, the German government announced in March 2022 a "Zeitenwende" or "turning point" in which Germany would shed its reluctance and play a role in the alliance commensurate with its economic and political heft. Meanwhile Japan, which also has been viewed as a reluctant contributor to its own security but which increasingly feels threatened by North Korea and China, last year announced it would increase its defense budget (which currently represents 1% of GDP) by 65% by FY 2027.

Yet since those early reactions, critics say that Germany and others have somewhat reverted back to their former positions of relying on the United States to shoulder the majority of the burden of aiding Ukraine, even though Kyiv is in those countries' backyard. Berlin has lengthened its timeline for meeting its 2% commitment, and was reluctant to allow German-made Leopard tanks to be provided to Ukraine even though experts say they are far better suited to the needs of Kyiv than America's Abrams tank.

Such backtracking illustrates that the United States continues to subsidize its allies' security, and in particular its wealthy partners. Despite President Biden's plea that deterring Russia in Europe "cannot, and should not, fall predominantly on America's shoulders," the United States has provided more military assistance to Ukraine than committed by its European partners combined. And while European countries have taken in Ukrainian refugees and increased their commitments to provide other aid, European attempts to make up for strained U.S. munitions inventories (now taxed by Israel's war with Gaza) have come up short. To date, the U.S. has provided more than $113 billion in Ukraine-related supplemental aid since the war began, much of it in direct security assistance to Kyiv.

Not only is the United States providing more lethal aid to Kyiv, either directly or indirectly, the increase in NATO troop levels in other frontline European states is largely attributable to U.S. forces. Since the invasion, the total number of U.S. troops stationed in Europe has increased from 80,000 to nearly 100,000. Most of the additional troops have been sent to Eastern Europe, where before February the United States maintained about 6,500 troops. With the additional U.S. deployments, the United States is providing about 80% of NATO's forward forces.

In addition, the Pentagon has announced the first permanent U.S. troop presence in Eastern Europe with the establishment of the V Corps Army headquarters and a field support battalion in Poland. The U.S. will also now position a rotational brigade combat team in Romania, provide additional deployments to the three Baltic republics, forward station two F-35 squadrons to the U.K., deploy new air defense units to Germany and Italy, and increase from four to six the number of destroyers stationed at Rota, Spain.

Over the past decade, the U.S. continued to account for almost three-quarters of NATO spending, while contributions by most U.S. allies actually declined on a percentage basis, with many cutting their active-duty forces and reducing weapons purchases. As of last year, while the U.S. spent about 3.5% of its GDP on defense, two-thirds of NATO members spent less than the agreed upon level of 2%, with many wealthy nations spending just 1%. And while Russia's invasion of Ukraine seemingly caused reticent NATO members to pledge to meet their commitments, just seven of NATO's 30 member states met their 2% spending target in 2022 — the United States, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and the United Kingdom, although a few more are expected to meet the target this year.

(The United States continues to hold a sizeable spending advantage over potential adversaries. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the $877 billion the United States spent in 2022 was almost as much as the next ten countries combined, including China ($292 billion) and Russia ($86 billion). Other potential adversaries spend much less, including Iran ($5.6 billion) and North Korean (believed to be less than $10 billion). Meanwhile, wealthy U.S. allies that spend just 1% of GDP on defense include Japan ($54 billion), Germany ($58 billion) and Canada ($26 billion).)

Amplifying the problem in Europe is that because of underfunding many European militaries have been deemed "bonsai armies" by defense experts because of their shrunken capacity. For instance, many of the German-made tanks allowed to be sent to Kyiv were found to no longer work or lacked spare parts. Christian Mölling, a defense expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations noted to the New York Times in February that years of cutting defense spending left many European nations unprepared. "At the end of the day, many were on the same track as Germany: War is a theoretical thing," he said. "So we have theoretical tanks."

Supporters of continued U.S. aid for Ukraine acknowledge that Europe needs to do more. But they fear that Kyiv will suffer in the short run since decades of European underinvestment in their defense industrial base means European nations will be unable to meet their commitments to Ukraine in the near future. Others want to end U.S. aid to Ukraine, saying it's not America's problem and that the U.S. public no longer supports spending taxpayer dollars on a war that European nations should be financing.

There is general agreement among defense experts that the United States needs to focus more on initiatives that counter China and other potential threats — including investing in hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence, microelectronics, 5G technology, cyber capabilities, shipbuilding, climate change resilience and nuclear modernization.

Such a reorientation is desperately needed, they say, as America's emphasis on costly heavy weapons, overseas deployments, excess infrastructure and large active-duty units largely reflects past threat environments, and not what America is likely to face going forward. For example, twenty years ago the Defense Authorization did not even mention the words internet or cyber. But as the nature of conflicts and national security has changed, there is now an entire title of this Defense bill devoted to cyber issues, as well as countless provisions relating to artificial intelligence, supply chains, strategic resources and minerals, and industrial base matters that were rarely addressed in the past.

Nevertheless, even those analysts who contend the U.S. should reorient defense spending acknowledge the threats that great powers like Russia and especially China pose, while others warn of the danger of over-correcting and failing to confront traditional security challenges that have not gone away. Beijing is expanding its traditional weapons programs, including a massive increase in its intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) inventory. It also plans to build more aircraft carriers, submarines, and other "Blue Water" naval vessels that will allow it to project power well beyond its borders and increasingly threaten Taiwan. China has other advantages, including lower "price levels" for manpower and procurement that give it greater capability for each dollar spent and have lead some analysts to believe Chinese defense spending is much higher than reported. And Beijing's cybertheft of information on U.S. weapons systems has allowed it to "leapfrog" costly development processes, such as with the F-35 fighter.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) recently found that China is further ahead in more leading edge technologies than had been realized. It leads in 37 of the 44 technologies evaluated, and of the 10 AI and cyber-related technologies examined, China dominates in seven. Moreover, both China and Russia engage in tactics that fall just below the threshold for armed conflict. China employs such "gray zone" tactics to coerce neighboring countries and undermine the rules-based international order (such as in Hong Kong) all the while avoiding outright conflict.

And although Russia's difficulties in Ukraine have exposed military shortcomings that have manifested themselves after years of corruption and theft, Moscow continues to be a security superpower when it comes to its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Russia has also used mercenaries, disinformation, cyberwarfare, economic blackmail, criminal endeavors and interference in western elections in a way that the West has been unwilling or unable to counter. A Pentagon report defined such actions as "not yet war but not quite peace," where social media becomes the vehicle through which the weapons of propaganda and misinformation are delivered.

Consequently, most defense experts believe the United States must carefully balance such traditional great power challenges with "asymmetric" threats such as biosecurity, cybersecurity, and even disinformation. And questions regarding defense spending are not confined to those on the left who want to reduce overall defense spending. Many defense analysts believe the U.S. military, abetted and even encouraged by Congress, continues to focus too many resources preparing for yesterday's battles. While aircraft carriers, heavy tanks, fighter jets and nuclear weapons will continue to play a role, many believe the United States must shift its focus away from war based on such old "legacy" weapons system.

In a 2020 book Christian Brose, the former Republican staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote that "Over the past decade, in U.S. war games against China, the United States has a nearly perfect record: We have lost almost every single time." Brose contends that since the U.S. military is built around "small numbers of large, expensive, exquisite, heavily manned, and hard to replace platforms that struggle to close the kill chain as one battle network," it is ill-suited to contend with a Chinese opponent that has built large numbers of "smaller, lower cost, expendable, and highly autonomous weapons."

 Moreover, if a conflict occurred today U.S. satellites likely would quickly be disabled and American ships could be rendered useless since they would be too vulnerable to precise hypersonic missiles. Consequently, the U.S. should follow the Chinese and others, many argue, pointing to cheap unmanned UAVs or unmanned underwater drones. Such weapons, however, do not have the same lobbying clout as the F-35 fighter or Virginia-class submarine, both of which are exponentially more costly but provide jobs in congressional districts across the nation.

Nevertheless, while most experts agree a strategic reorientation is needed, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine has given pause to a full-scale retreat from traditional weapons and tactics. Kyiv's use of AI-enhanced targeting has enabled drones and traditional artillery to better target Russian positions. Such data driven combat, experts say, is a harbinger of future battlefields. Yet, the past year has also shown that sheer mass and firepower on the battlefield means old-fashioned attrition still matters. Ukrainian artillery is thought to have blunted Russia's original thrust north of Kyiv last year, and Ukraine's pleas for more tanks, planes and even cluster bombs is evidence of the continuing efficacy of "legacy" weapons. As General Sir Patrick Sanders, the head of the British Army, was quoted last year in The Economist, "You can't cyber your way across a river."

The Senate easily passed its version of the bill in July. However, House consideration of its bill the same month was unusually contentious, with the measure barely passing. The close House vote was largely attributable to the normally bipartisan measure being laden with various cultural issues pushed by the House Freedom Caucus and other social conservatives. Such "wedge" issues included provisions addressing department diversity initiatives and so-called critical race theory, the military's now-repealed COVID-19 vaccine mandate, transgender servicemembers, and above all — department policy regarding abortion. Democrats uniformly opposed those provisions, while the Senate bill largely didn't address such matters.

In the end, most of the contentious social policy issues were either dropped or watered down during negotiations. Instead, a final agreement was held up by a number of China-related provisions that were not in the House-passed bill. Those included steps to rein in trafficking in fentanyl, restrictions on Chinese purchases of U.S. farmland, and limits on outbound U.S. investments in sensitive technologies such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence that could end up benefitting Chinese firms and the Chinese military.

Disagreements over the Australia-U.K.-U.S. agreement on attack submarines and other defense technologies (known as AUKUS) also delayed a final agreement, as did a Senate provision to create a federal review board to declassify government records pertaining to so-called unidentified aerial phenomena (i.e., UFOs) and the question of temporarily extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which allows the government to conduct targeted surveillance of foreign individuals overseas.

The agreement authorizes a total of $874.2 billion for the Pentagon and for Energy Department weapons activities for FY 2024 — equal to the president's request and $27.2 billion (3%) more than the FY 2023 authorized level. It also assumes $23.2 billion in mandatory spending within the committee's jurisdiction.

The authorized total for discretionary funding is in line with the cap for defense spending established by the Fiscal Responsibility Act (PL 118-5) that raised the nation's debt ceiling in June. It does not authorize any of the more than $105 billion emergency assistance for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and the U.S. southern border requested by the Biden administration in October.

The total includes $841.5 billion for the Defense Department and $32.4 billion for Energy Department nuclear weapons development and associated activities. For the Pentagon, it authorizes $288.8 billion for operation and maintenance activities ($1.2 billion less than requested), $169.2 billion for weapons and other procurement ($1.2 billion more), $145.9 billion for military research and development ($965 million more), and $176.8 billion for military personnel ($2.1 billion less than requested) including $38.3 billion for the defense health program.

The agreement authorizes a 5.2% pay raise for all military personnel, extends the authority for several special payments and bonuses for active-duty and reserve personnel, and eliminates the 5% out-of-pocket housing costs. It authorizes 32,444 fewer (3%) personnel in the overall active-duty force, and makes a number of changes to accession standards to increase the number of eligible recruits.

It does not include a House-passed provision that would have ended the Pentagon policy under which the department covers transportation expenses for servicemembers based in states that have effectively banned abortions to travel to other states for such services. It also does not contain a House provision that would have prohibited Tricare from covering sex reassignment surgeries and gender hormone treatments for transgender individuals.

It does contain a number of provisions to limit, but not end, department Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies and programs, while prohibiting the use of funds for the department's working group aiming to counter extremism in the military and directing the service secretaries to consider reinstating with back pay servicemembers who were discharged because they refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

The agreement authorizes $14.7 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative to optimize the presence of U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific region to counter China, and enhances the foreign military sales workforce to expedite the delivery of defense articles to Taiwan. It also authorizes more than $4 billion to bolster U.S. and allied forces in Europe against Russian aggression (including $300 million specifically for Ukraine), and $398 million for Iraqi and Kurdish forces and "moderate" forces in Syria engaged in the fight against the Islamic State.

The measure authorizes AUKUS, the tripartite security pact between the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, including authorizing the transfer of up to three Virginia-class submarines to Australia and creating a new fund that will allow Australia to help bolster the U.S. submarine industrial base.

The agreement authorizes approximately $30 billion for long-standing missile defense programs, as well as funds to develop systems to defend against hypersonic missiles and for the Space Force's new defendable missile warning satellite system.

It authorizes $18.0 billion ($672 million more than requested) for procurement of 95 Navy aircraft and $19.6 billion ($665 million less) for 117 Air Force planes — including $13 billion for procurement of 83 new F-35 planes, for research and development, and for modifications to existing aircraft and $4.4 billion for research and development of a next-generation fighter jet to replace the F-35.

For Navy shipbuilding it authorizes $32.9 billion for procurement of 10 major Navy major ships, including $7.1 billion for two Virginia-class attack submarines (plus $3.2 billion in advanced procurement); $2.5 billion (and $3.4 billion in advanced procurement) for the next-generation of ballistic missile submarine; and $4.2 billion for the next two DDG-51 Arleigh Burke destroyers. It prevents the Navy from decommissioning a number of major vessels the Pentagon wants to retire.

The agreement authorizes $32.3 billion for discretionary defense-related activities at the Energy Department — $271 million (1%) less than requested and 6% more than the FY 2023 authorization. The total includes $24.0 billion for nuclear weapons laboratories and programs operated by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), and $7.0 billion for environmental restoration and waste management.

The agreement includes a variety of provisions to promote cybersecurity and the use of Artificial Intelligence, as well as to attract skilled workforces in those areas. It further modifies the Pentagon's acquisition process, and includes provisions to bolster the development and security of the U.S. industrial base and supply chain, including enhancing the supply of critical minerals. It also includes provisions to enhance department efforts to develop alternatives to fossil fuels, address climate change, and clean up environment damage caused by its activities (in particular so-called "forever" PFAS chemicals).

It authorizes increases in funding for ship and aircraft depot maintenance, aviation training and readiness, facilities sustainment and other activities — including additional funding to support equipment and weapon system maintenance and additional parts and spares.

It also authorizes $18.2 billion for military construction and housing projects, including $2.0 billion for family housing.

The measure extends, through April 19, 2024, the federal government's ability to conduct electronic surveillance under Title VII (Section 702) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), in order to give lawmakers more time to work on a full reauthorization of those authorities.

It includes two major authorizations for FY 2024 — for U.S. intelligence agencies and activities, and for the U.S. State Department. Both authorizations focus largely on administrative issues, including improving workforce recruitment and retention policies. It also includes several other foreign policy provisions aimed at reducing corruption in foreign countries and reducing the international influence of foreign adversaries like China.

Finally, it includes a wide range of other non-defense provisions, including that authorize congressional leadership, rather than the President, to select the Architect of the Capitol.