National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020

Floor Speech

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Mr. BACON. Mr. Chair, I rise today opposing amendment 546 that would use the NDAA to task the Director of National Intelligence reporting rules for civilian casualties.

As Chairman Smith knows and, also, Ms. Stefanik and the ranking member, though I voted for the NDAA in markup, I opposed this amendment then, and I still do.

The long story short is that this tasking should be in the Intelligence Authorization Act and not in the Defense Authorization Act.

This tasks the Director of National Intelligence, and, thus, it should be handled by the Intelligence Committee and in the intelligence authorization bill.

We believe in transparency. We believe in doing all we can to minimize civilian casualties. We believe in proportionality. We believe in knowing if we are targeting and handling these operations correctly.

I know from my experience working three decades in the Air Force that our military goes through extensive vetting, extensive legal reviews, and extensive crosschecks before putting a weapon on a target that could threaten civilians.

But let's be clear: DOD has a full and transparent oversight framework in place for DOD and U.S. military operations.

The FY18 NDAA established a robust civilian casualty reporting mechanism for the U.S. military, and the DOD reporting is fully available to the public.

Even more, there are two additional provisions in this bill that increase the level of CIVCAS reporting and directs an independent assessment of DOD's reporting and policy.

But, what is important here: This is about DOD and military operations, not the intelligence operations. It is not the DOD's role to report on the intelligence community.

It is not the role of the NDAA to task the intelligence community.

I recommend voting against this amendment. We should send it to the Intelligence Committee and let them do it the right way, if the Intelligence Committee wants to take it on.

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Mr. BACON. Mr. Chair, I come here to support the en bloc. There are three great amendments in here that I want to briefly mention.

First, we are funding the replacement of three simulators at Offutt Air Force Base, as well as programming equipment that will help us exploit data that is collected during the missions. This is critical for the backbone of the Air Force's medium-altitude manned ISR program.

Having those three simulators will have a huge impact. Instead of taking aircraft home that should be flying to Russia, China, Korea, Iran, or wherever it may be--without those simulators, they have to come back to Offutt Air Force Base to do training--this will allow us to do training at home and continue our real-world operational missions.

I also want to thank the Chamber for supporting a bill that will help enable our civilian professors to be retained in our military academies, the National War College, and all the different military schools that we have by allowing them to own the copyrighted material that they have. Prior to this bill, the civilian instructors would not be able to have ownership of these copyrighted materials, and many of them get out because they want to progress with their careers. This fixes that and allows them to stay in and maintain that ownership.

Finally, I want to praise another amendment that is in this en bloc. We are allowing the academies now to endorse, as well as participate with, foundations that are there to help support the cadets. Prior to this, the academies were not allowed to partner or to endorse these foundations, and it really limited the ability for these foundations to help our cadets.

Now that they can work together, they can help provide more money for new facilities and gym equipment, providing a better quality of life for our cadets, while at the same time lowering the burden on taxpayers.

Mr. Chair, I want to praise this effort, and I support the en bloc.

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