Jeff Bingaman United States Senator from New Mexico

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman today said a key piece of defense legislation gives strong support to New Mexico's military installations and the state's two national laboratories.

The bill, called the fiscal year 2009 Defense Authorization Bill, has cleared the Senate Armed Services Committee and is ready for full Senate action.

"This bill is extremely important to our state because it sets funding levels for our state's military installations, as well as Sandia and Los Alamos laboratories and WIPP," Bingaman said.  

The bill contains the following:

Cannon Air Force Base

$8.3 million for a new CV-22 flight simulator facility or which $750,000 was appropriated last fiscal year for design

$18.1 million for a flight maintenance hanger AC-130 aircraft.

"This bill takes an important step forward in helping Cannon receive the CV-22 and AC-130 aircraft for Air Force Special Operations Command," Bingaman said. 

Kirtland Air Force Base

$14.4 million to replace aging fuel storage tanks.

 "These storage tanks are important to ensure that Kirtland has a modern fuel supply network." Bingaman said. 

The bill increases the budget of the Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) Program Office to $120 million from $110 million for work on additional launch and space vehicle research as well as satellite sensors.  

At Bingaman's urging the bill directs the DOD to create a pool of set aside funds of not more than 3 percent similar to the Department of Energy's Laboratory Directed Research and Development for new initiatives at the DOD's laboratories including workforce enhancements. This program will be of great benefit to Kirtland's Air Force research Laboratory in creating new initiatives outside the bounds of day-to-day research and keep their workforce innovative and at the cutting edge.

Also at Bingaman's urging, the bill asks the DOD to formally respond how they are implementing last year's Defense Science Board study on high energy laser systems, which are principally developed at Kirtland through the Air Force Research Laboratory and tested at the White Sands Missile Range's High Energy Laser Test Facility. This report criticizes the Department's slow response for adopting these laser systems.

WhiteSands Missile Range

The bill also authorizes an additional $15 million increase for the High Energy Laser Test Facility at WSMR, bringing its operating budget to $17.8 million and criticizes the Department's poor performance in answering the Congress' request for reports from last year on how the nation's premier high energy test facility will be managed into the future.

And it authorizes the following levels of funding for Holloman Air Force Base

$14.5 million for a facility for maintaining the stealth coatings of the F-22,

$1.05 million for a facility for administering the maintenance operations for the F-22

$3.15 million for a F-22 flight simulator facility

$2.15 million for a F-22 jet engine maintenance facility

$4.6 million for a F-22 ground equipment facility

Bingaman also said he is pleased the bill authorizes funding that will help ensure that Holloman Air Force Base receives the F-22A, or Raptor, in a timely fashion. Specifically, the bill sets the funding level for the purchase of 20 F-22A at $3.05 billion.            

The Senate Armed Services Committee authorized an additional $4 million for continuing construction of the Holloman High Speed Test track which recently broke the world's land speed record and is a critical DOD test asset.

Other Department of Defense issues relevant to New Mexico, and authorized under the Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Agency:

• $6.6 billion for maintaining the stockpile
• $1.8 billion for stemming the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
• $50.2 million for the Chemistry and Metallurgy Replacement Facility construction at LANL, noting at Bingaman's urging that the future facility will be "supporting pit manufacturing operations" but not actually being used to manufacture pits. The committee goes onto note that "if there is any change in the planned mission at the Chemistry and Metallurgy Replacement Facility, the committee directed the Secretary of Energy to notify the Congressional Defense Committee." Thus fencing the operation of the facility so it cannot produce pits, only support the production operation as it has for the past 50 year by conducting scientific experiments on plutonium and its related compounds.
• $46.0 million in upgrades to safeguards for storing nuclear materials at LANL
• $19.6 million to continue to refurbish the radioactive liquid waste treatment facility at LANL
• $10 million for an ion beam laboratory upgrade at Sandia
• $229.56 million for clean up funding at LANL, an increase of $67.1 million to avoid missing milestones in the clean up consent agreement between the Department and the State
• $230.2 million for WIPP, an increase of $18.6 million