A Leading Voice

Congressional leaders play a key role in shaping U.S. defense capabilities, including providing crucial funding, setting policy priorities and conducting intelligence briefings and hearings. 

Defense funding is one of the few remaining major bipartisan issues on Capitol Hill, with large majorities of both Republicans and Democrats supporting the National Defense Authorization Act each year.

We spoke to Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, to break down the key issues at play as lawmakers, the Defense Department and the private sector strive to maintain a first-class aero defense fleet.

Scott is also a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. His district is home to Moody Air Force Base near Valdosta, Ga., where the Air Force is hosting the F-35 fighter jet mission.

Scott discussed the United States’ global leadership in defense aviation, the impact of the F-35 mission and Congress’ role in military funding, especially at a time of major conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East and other parts of the world. 

Here are Scott’s remarks on key issues regarding the state of the U.S. defense aviation sector.

How Congress can improve its relationship with defense contractors

There has been a breakdown of political institutions in the recent past. I think we’ll get past the cycle of continuing resolutions and other things that create problems for our vendors and ultimately cost us more per weapon system that we buy. If we could get to a two-year budget cycle, it would probably help with some of that. 

We’ve gotten into this habit of continuing resolutions, which is costing the military, and therefore the taxpayers, billions and billions and billions of dollars. It makes it very difficult for our vendors to reach the efficiencies that they could reach if they knew exactly how many they were going to produce.

You want an efficient assembly line. And the way you get an efficient assembly line is with a consistent purchase. And if we did that we would have a lower cost per unit.

How to replenish U.S. aviation stockpiles amid multiple global wars

The thing that we have to be careful of is making sure that we don’t eliminate weapon systems that we’re currently using. 

In other words, I’m for expanding the F-35 fleet, but I also believe it makes sense to continue to buy F-15s and other less advanced aircraft. They don’t cost as much money. They’re in some cases more readily available. 

If we’re in a near-peer fight, it’s not going to be the U.S. versus China, the U.S. versus Russia. There are going to be other countries that are in this fight with us.

The GOP desire to cut spending and the impact on defense

Reducing the deficit can be done in conjunction with having more military capabilities. I think that you can find efficiencies inside the DoD. You have to have a leadership at the DoD that wants to find efficiencies inside the DoD, and unfortunately, we don’t have that right now. 

We don’t have leadership in the DoD that will acknowledge that there is a problem with the way we purchase things and that we can do a better job if we make some changes.

– Max Cohen

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