That includes $15 million in a Senate bill authorized to fund design and repair of a Wright-Patterson primary runway, and $1.9 million authorized to fund planning and design of a new building to house the National Space Intelligence Center (NSIC), according to the office of Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Currently, NSIC shares space with the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, better known as “NASIC.”
Brown’s office says the Senate bill also includes $53 million for upgrades to a base cooling plant.
On Thursday, the office of U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, a Dayton Republican who is a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, indicated that the House in its own preliminary spending legislation does provide funding for a project previously referred to as an “intelligence facility central utility plant.”
But at the moment, the House version of the legislation does not include funding for the base runway or a new NSIC building.
A previous commander of the 88th Air Base Wing at Wright-Patterson, Col. Christopher Meeker, has spoken of the need for runway work at the base.
In January, Michael Gessel, a vice president of federal programs for the Dayton Development Coalition based in Washington, D.C., said that at that time specific congressional funding had not yet been directed toward runway repairs.
“The runway is not scheduled for construction this year so the only way that it would be affected by this year’s congressional action is that a backlog will be created if Congress failed to provide for the maintenance of Air Force and Defense Department facilities,” Gessel told the Dayton Daily News in January.
In June, a House defense spending and policy blueprint authorized $45 million for the construction of a Human Performance Wing Laboratory at Wright-Patterson, with another $9 million for planning and design of an Advanced Research Laboratory at the base.
“This year’s NDAA authorizes more than $50 million for projects at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and delivers a much-need pay increase with significant quality of life improvements to support Ohio’s dedicated servicemembers,” Turner said in June.
The House and the Senate each work on their own versions of the annual defense spending and policy bill, which are then reconciled by a conference committee comprised of members of both chambers. Then the reconciled package heads to President Biden for his signature.
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