On Monday, December 27, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a sweeping $768 million defense policy bill, setting up top lines and policy for the Pentagon, the White House announced.
Biden signed the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) after Congress scrambled to pass the annual bill earlier this month. The House passed the bill by an overwhelmingly bipartisan 363-70 vote in early December, and the Senate later passed the bill by a bipartisan 88-11 vote.
According to the statement of the U.S. President, “the Act provides vital benefits and enhances access to justice for military personnel and their families, and includes critical authorities to support our country’s national defense”.
The Act authorizes fiscal year appropriations principally for the Department of Defense, for Department of Energy national security programs, and for the Department of State.
The NDAA provides $740 billion for the Department of Defense, which is $25 billion more than what the president requested for the agency for fiscal 2022. It also includes $27.8 billion for defense-related activities in the Department of Energy and another $378 million for other defense-related activities.
While passing the NDAA is an important step, the measure does not authorize any spending, meaning Congress still needs to pass an appropriations bill.
Among its provisions, the NDAA includes a 2.7 percent increase in military basic pay, which the White House recommended.
This year’s defense policy bill also includes major changes to how the military prosecutes certain crimes, like sexual assault. For those crimes, like rape, murder, and manslaughter, the decision to prosecute would be made outside of the chain of command.
However, commanders would still have the authority to conduct trials, pick jury members, approve witnesses, and grant immunity.
The bill also weighs in on the military’s vaccine mandate, directing the service members who are discharged for not getting the COVID-19 vaccine to get at least a general discharge under honorable conditions.
But in his statement, Biden pointed to several provisions in the bill that he was against. Among them, he urged Congress to eliminate provisions that restrict the use of funds to transfer detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
He also opposed provisions that require sharing with Congress information regarding the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the threat of Iranian-backed militias to U.S. personnel in Iraq and the Middle East.
The measures would include “highly sensitive classified information,” Biden said, that “could reveal critical intelligence sources or military operational plans.”
According to the document, it is also planned that the U.S. authorities will allocate defense assistance to Ukraine of $300 million. In addition, $4 billion from the U.S. budget will be spent on the European Deterrence Initiative aimed at countering Russian aggression, as well as $150 million will be allocated to security cooperation with the Baltic region.
Other provisions of NDAA-2022 also refer to the continuation of restrictions on cooperation between the United States and Russia in the military sphere, as well as prohibit the allocation of any funds or activities that will recognize the sovereignty of the Russian Federation over theCrimean peninsula.
The bill also contains a rule obliging the U.S. Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State to provide regular reports of Congress on Russia's operations and influence campaigns against the U.S. and its allies and partners. The government is also obliged to report on measures countering such activities of the Russian Federation.