Congress’ defense policy bill will give its annual boost to Connecticut’s defense contractors, suppliers and workforce, including the authorization of full funding for a Virginia-class submarine and partial funding for a second after disputes this year over procurement amid production delays and federal budget caps. The House passed the National Defense Authorization Act on Wednesday to enable $895 billion in investments for various defense programs as well as support for service members and their families. It is poised to become law, though the bipartisan bill faced blowback from a number of Democrats over a provision to bar coverage of gender-affirming care for minors under the military’s active duty health care program. Like in past bills, Connecticut’s biggest defense contractors — Sikorsky, Electric Boat and Pratt & Whitney — could stand to see major investments once Congress passes its longer term spending bills, though negotiations over those will continue into next year and appropriators will get a final say on the numbers. Authorized funding for the Virginia-class submarine program will look different than previous years after a nearly year-long saga over the two-a-year production cadence. Lawmakers were unable to secure full funding for a second sub, but the bill will allow the U.S. Navy to make investments before its construction through “incremental” funding. The final NDAA legislation negotiated between the House and Senate ultimately authorized $357 million in incremental funding for the second Virginia-class submarine. That will go toward additional materials needed for a ship in a year of procurement. That funding will allow the Navy to invest in a contract for a second sub before it enters construction and without the full funding. The deal is at odds with the administration’s original proposal. Earlier this year, the Navy requested funding for only one of the nuclear-powered submarines in fiscal year 2025. Officials had cited production delays as well as federal budget caps enacted under the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Electric Boat locations in Groton and Quonset Point in Rhode Island handle much of the Virginia-class shipbuilding, along with Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia. But members on the House Armed Services Committee and U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, were pushing to restore production back to two subs and raised concerns about what it would mean for the supplier industrial base. Electric Boat’s Groton location is based in Courtney’s eastern Connecticut district. Courtney earned the nickname “Two-Sub Joe” when he first came to Congress in 2007 by increasing the Virginia-class production cadence from one to two subs per year. As the ranking member of the House Armed Services’ Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, he had been advocating to keep production at the same pace. With requests for cuts to the program, the original House version of the NDAA sought $1 billion in incremental funding for a second submarine, while the Senate also drafted a bill with money for a second vessel. At the time, both versions of the policy bill deviated from the House GOP-led defense spending bill, which only allocated money for one. Prior to the NDAA’s passage, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote a September letter opposing the path forward on the defense policy bill, saying the industry would not be able to catch up and produce a second attack sub “on a reasonable schedule,” according to Breaking Defense. He also argued that funding could delay a new aircraft. “Virginia-class, to be clear, was trying to get to a better, more healthy dynamic where we can get to the two-submarine-a-year production rate, and we thought that going a different direction was our best move in that case,” Mike McCord, the comptroller of the U.S. Department of Defense, said at a March briefing with lawmakers, noting that the boats that are supposed to be delivered this year were months behind. While Congress did not authorize the larger funding of $1 billion sought by Courtney and others, the congressman pointed to the White House Office of Management and Budget’s recent supplemental request for nearly $6 billion to help Electric Boat and the submarine industry with workforce gaps. That request could get added into a short-term funding bill to keep the government running into the new year. Part of OMB’s request could go toward an NDAA provision giving the Navy the authority to help shipyards deal with cost overruns and increase pay for workers in the metal trades as a way to bolster the hiring and retention of workforces like at Electric Boat. The company hired more than 5,300 people in 2023, with plans to grow its workforce by at least another 5,000 hires again for this year. “Despite the slowdown caused by COVID, there are promising signs of industry’s recovery,” Courtney said on the House floor ahead of the vote. “This bill recognizes this progress and rejects the Navy’s woefully inadequate budget request, which would undermine procurement stability that is essential to growing the program supply chain.” “This is not pie in the sky,” he continued. “Indeed just last month, OMB and the Navy belatedly acknowledged our committee’s stance and sent over a supplemental request to Congress of nearly $6 billion for the Virginia-class submarine program. It is our hope with this bill and the supplemental request, Navy and industry can achieve even higher production cadence and execute the long overdue next block contract for the program.” The debacle over the Virginia-class program comes as the industry seeks to address disruptions that have put a strain on production due to the pandemic, supply chain issues and an aging workforce that is retiring. Companies like Electric Boat have been setting higher hiring goals to address those gaps and boost production rates, especially with the Australia-United Kingdom-United States security partnership. As part of AUKUS, Australia has agreed to initially buy three Virginia-class submarines from the U.S., but the first transfer is not expected to happen until the early 2030s. In addition to authorizations for the Virginia class, the legislation will also provide a boost to the Columbia-class with about $3.3 billion for the second increment of funding to go toward construction of the second vessel in that program as well as about $6 billion in advance procurement for long-lead-time materials. Congress also approved investments in research and development for future submarines as well as hundreds of millions of dollars to help the engineering and design teams at Electric Boat with capability upgrades for future submarines. Aside from investments in shipbuilding, the NDAA will authorize about $2 billion in funding for Sikorsky to build 20 CH-53K heavy lift helicopters and $709 million for 24 UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters. Another $25 million will go toward modernizing the Army’s current Black Hawk fleet. The bill also enables $527 million for the F135 Engine Core Upgrade. The Defense Department had approved new contracts for Pratt & Whitney to remain the sole provider of the military jet engine following a decades-long push by Connecticut’s congressional delegation. Overall, the sweeping defense legislation authorizes pay raises: 14.5% for junior enlisted members and 4.5% for all other service members. That comes a year after Congress enacted the largest basic pay increase — 5.2% — in two decades. Other measures include funding for the child care fee assistance programs and ways to help ensure pay for staff at military child care centers will be competitive with those within the private sector to deal with recruitment and retention. The must-pass defense bill typically becomes a venue for potential policy riders that are either irrelevant to the military or ideological measures that can complicate negotiations and passage of the NDAA. A controversial provision pushed in recent days by U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to ban coverage for gender-affirming care for minors under TRICARE, the military’s health care system, earned the ire of Democrats and led to the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., voting against the legislation he helped negotiate. More House Democrats voted against the NDAA than in the previous year. Eighty-one Democrats ultimately supported the bill. Every House member in Connecticut’s congressional delegation voted for the bill with the exception of U.S. Rep. John Larson, D-1st District. Some of the Connecticut members who voted for the bill cited concerns with the provision that would block certain care for transgender kids but said the overall bill would be beneficial to the military and Connecticut’s workforce. “I am frustrated that Speaker Mike Johnson tucked in a provision to target the LGBTQI+ community that limits TRICARE health care coverage for children of servicemembers – one that was initially removed in a bipartisan, bicameral agreement on this legislation,” U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District, said in a statement. “Our troops put their lives on the line, and our servicemembers and their families do not need the federal government dictating medical decisions. We must work together on a bipartisan basis to support our troops and protect our national security. Partisan provisions jeopardize that work.” Courtney echoed a similar sentiment. “It is unfortunate that one item that came out of the Senate that limits some TRICARE health care coverage for specific procedures for some minor dependents of service members stayed in the bill at the insistence of Speaker Johnson,” Courtney said. “That said, Speaker Johnson’s intrusion cannot jeopardize delivering major quality life improvements to the sailors in eastern Connecticut and the investments needed to grow our submarine fleet, which the FY25 NDAA achieves,” he added. But the NDAA only authorizes defense funding, and Congress will need to approve that money through fiscal year 2025 spending bills. Lawmakers are unlikely to tackle longer term funding until next year when Republicans take back control of both chambers. Instead, Congress is likely to keep government funded at current spending levels through March. The deadline to pass a funding bill is Dec. 20. The U.S. Senate will take up the bill next before Congress leaves for the holiday recess at the end of next week. President Joe Biden is expected to sign the bill into law.