07/23/2021 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 07/23/2021 15:32
WASHINGTON-U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), voted with 22 of his colleagues this week to advance from committee the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would raise the Department of Defense's (DOD) budget by $25 billion beyond President Joe Biden's defense budget proposal. Senator Sullivan has argued repeatedly over the past several weeks that the president's defense budget is inadequate, not even keeping pace with inflation and amounting to a cut.
'The Armed Services Committee has delivered an overwhelming, bipartisan rebuke of President Biden's inadequate budget proposal, raising the Pentagon's budget in this year's NDAA at the pace recommended by the 2018 bipartisan defense strategy commission,' said Senator Sullivan. 'I applaud my colleagues-Republicans and Democrats-on the committee for doing what the president and far-left members of the administration failed to do-prioritizing our national security and our troops.
'I'm glad to report that the FY 2022 defense authorization also includes a number of vital provisions that I secured recognizing the strategic importance of Alaska to our nation's defense. Chief among these is the new 'Arctic Security Initiative.' This initiative will direct the Pentagon to identify the resources and activities needed to fully fund and implement the series of Arctic strategies that we worked so hard to get the military departments to release over the past few years. The ASI will ultimately mean more focus, personnel, vessels, infrastructure, aircraft and investment being directed to America's Arctic-to Alaska-in defense of our nation's interests in this critically-important region.'
Congress has historically only authorized two region-specific security initiatives-the European Defense Initiative in 2014, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI) in 2021, following China's militarization of the South China Sea and other provocative actions in Asia. Senator Sullivan was able to include a provision authorizing a third such initiative in the FY 2022 NDAA-the Arctic Security Initiative (ASI), which features a five-year plan to fully resource the DOD's and individual service-specific strategies for the Arctic that have been released over the past several years.
In addition to authorizing the ASI, the FY 2022 NDAA:
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