The U.S. House Appropriations Committee voted June 2 to strip about $191 million from an Air Force initiative to foster next-generation satellite technologies and blaze a trail for smaller, less-complicated satellites. House appropriators, during a closed markup of a $579 billion Pentagon spending bill that now awaits a vote by the full House, removed the $191 million from the Air Force's Space Modernization Initiative (SMI), furthering a longstanding disagreement between lawmakers and the Air Force about how the service should transition to new satellite programs. Lawmakers stripped the 2016 funding from two programs - one involving missile warning and one focused on protected communications - that are intended to test the merits of performing these missions with smaller, less-sophisticated satellites than the Air Force uses today. "The Committee is concerned that the Air Force is using Space Modernization Initiative (SMI) funding to begin and sustain new development programs," appropriators wrote in a report accompanying the bill. "The Committee believes that SMI funding should be used to make evolutionary upgrades to existing programs to enhance mission effectiveness and avoid parts obsolescence."
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