House and Senate appropriators backed the White House’s shipbuilding goals with an additional $6.5 billion in funding for fiscal year 2026—including adjustments to fix accounting errors resulting from last year’s budget reconciliation.
The compromise bill, released last week, allots a total $27.2 billion for shipbuilding, with increases across several efforts.
That $27.2 billion topline covers 17 ships, including “one Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, two Virginia-class fast attack submarines, three Medium Landing Ships, and one T-AGOS [Surveillance Towed-Array Sensor System] ship for anti-submarine warfare,” House appropriators wrote in their bill summary.
There’s also $1.5 billion in maritime industrial base funding to boost supplier capacity, technology and infrastructure, outsourcing, and workforce training.
But last year’s budget reconciliation bill—and the accounting quagmire it created—is what makes this minibus bill different from other spending bills.
“The bill addresses more than $4.6 billion in dangerous budget shortfalls created [by] the president’s decision to request a portion of critical fiscal year 2026 defense capabilities through a partisan and highly uncertain legislative process, coupled with poor decisions made by congressional Republicans in drafting their reconciliation bill last summer,” Democrat Senate appropriators wrote in a bill summary.
Appropriators referred to the discrepancies as “reconciliation funding incongruence.” Here’s a list of some shipbuilding programs that got increases in the bill:
- $1.92 billion increase for Virginia-class submarines, to “support infrastructure and wage enhancements at the prime shipyards”—a $2.74 billion total
- $23 million increase for outfitting
- $100 million increase for auxiliary vessels (plus a $145 million program increase for a $290 million total—six times the amount requested)
- $462 million for completion of prior year shipbuilding programs
The bill also includes increases for destroyers and “$1.9 billion to fully fund the Navy’s ship operations, previously noted shipbuilding impacts totaling several billion dollars,” senators wrote in the bill summary.
Other notable, but not reconciliation related, program increases:
- $242 million to procure long lead-time material for the FF(X)-Frigate
- $800 million for two Medium Landing ships (none were requested in the budget but others were funded by reconciliation)
- $100 million for frigate workforce support
- $320 million for two ship-to-shore connectors (an unfunded requirement and increase from a $238 million mandatory requirement)
There were also program funding reductions, particularly compared to the requests, due to “reconciliation funding incongruence”.
Congress zeroed out a $54.5 million budget request for small and medium UUVs due to sizable funding in the reconciliation bill. But the program received $7 million for “deep seabed scanning and over-the-horizon sensors.”
Under other procurement for the Navy, appropriators reduced funding for “spares and repair parts” from a $585.9 million budget request to $159.1 million due to “excess growth” and “reconciliation misalignments” but provided $2.1 million for a resistance welding pilot program.
Also, the budget request for advanced undersea prototyping was more than halved for reasons including reconciliation discrepancies and XLUUV delivery delays, but received $60 million for “commercially available extra large unmanned underwater vehicle technology.”
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