Here are a few more details on the Obama Administration’s $75.5 billion supplemental spending request for the Defense Department that went to Congress last week. Included in the Air Force’s $2.38 billion aircraft procurement section is $196 million to buy 10 MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles and $45 million for six manned C-12 aircraft, according to justification documents that we have seen. (We’ve already reported on the $600 million earmarked for four F-22s.) Coupled with the five Reapers included in the Fiscal 2009 bridge supplemental, the Air Force would receive a total of 15 MQ-9s using this year’s war funds on top of those it is buying in its baseline budget. As for the six C-12s, they would be part of the fledgling fleet of up to 37 manned MC-12W aircraft that the Air Force is buying to boost overhead signals intelligence and full-motion-video coverage in Southwest Asia. The supplemental procurement request would also cover data link retrofits for Reapers and MQ-1 Predator UAVs, single line of sight/beyond line of sight communication upgrades for F-16s, and large aircraft infrared countermeasures defensive systems for C-5s, C-17s, and C-130s.
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.