Sen. Thom Tillis said the defense spending bill approved by the Senate this week would benefit North Carolina’s military installations and troops.
 
The $700 billion National Defense Authorization Act, which was approved by an 89-8 vote on Monday, sets aside more than $350 million for construction at North Carolina military installations and provides for a 2.1 percent pay raise for troops.
 
North Carolina is home to more than 100,000 service members — the third-largest military population in the nation — and several installations, including Fort Bragg, Camp Lejeune, Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.
 
Tillis, the state’s junior Republican senator, played a key role in the Senate version of the bill. He is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and chairman of the committee’s personnel subcommittee, which has oversight over half of the Pentagon’s budget.
 
Speaking to The Fayetteville Observer this week, Tillis said the NDAA will help improve housing on Camp Lejeune, upgrade important special operations facilities on Fort Bragg and pave the way for growth at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base and Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point.
 
The bill also includes a provision to help veterans exposed to toxic burn pits overseas, requires the Department of Defense to look at security risks related to electrical grids, modernizes collaboration between the DOD and the Department of Veterans Affairs and expands eligibility for Tricare health benefits.
 
“There’s a lot in it,” Tillis said.
 
With the Senate version approved, the bill now heads to a joint House-Senate committee to resolve difference between it and the NDAA approved by the House of Representatives.
 
Tillis said the final version will have changes, but those should not affect the provisions that benefit North Carolina and local troops.
 
“It will go to conference and I feel like the provisions we worked to get in there will go to Congress,” he said.
 
The NDAA includes construction projects at four military installations totaling more than $358 million for fiscal 2018.
 
Most of that work will take place at Camp Lejeune, which is slated for eight projects totaling $258 million. Fort Bragg projects will total nearly $58 million, Cherry Point will receive more than $15 million and Seymour Johnson will see more than $26 million in construction.
 
Those projects are based largely on the needs of installations that were brought up during visits Tillis made in the past year, he said.
 
At Camp Lejeune, Tillis said, he observed Marines working and living in aging and crumbling facilities.
 
“They were literally working in places where in their off time they come back and patch the roof so their equipment doesn’t get leaked on during a rain storm,” he said.
 
Tillis said Marines weren’t asking for new facilities, but they deserve them.
 
“They were not putting it forth as a priority,” he said. “But we’ve got to give them what we consider to be respectful living conditions… We need to ask for this on their behalf.”
 
The Camp Lejeune projects include new housing for enlisted bachelors, a water treatment plant, three health care clinics, a radio battalion complex and facilities for special operations troops.
 
At Fort Bragg, the construction projects include a human performance training center, support battalion administration facility, tactical equipment maintenance facility and telecommunications reliability improvements, all of which are geared toward special operations units.
 
At Cherry Point, the bill provides for a vertical lift fan test facility for the F-35B and at Seymour Johnson projects will support the KC-46 tanker. Both are newer military aircraft.
 
Tillis said the projects will help cement those installations as being the future home for the aircraft as the military continues to build more planes.
 
“That’s very important for the region,” he said. At Cherry Point alone, he said, F-35 could eventually lead to as many as 1,000 new jobs and a more than $150 million investment in new infrastructure.
 
There were some projects that were not included.
 
Tillis said there is no provision to lengthen the runway at Fort Bragg’s Pope Field, despite the concerns of local military leaders.
 
The runway is too short for a fully loaded and fully fueled C-17 to take off. Instead, leaders must sacrifice fuel or troops and equipment to get off the ground.
 
The senator said that doesn’t make sense at Fort Bragg, which is home to much of the nation’s quick reaction forces, charged with deploying anywhere in the world on short notice.
 
“There’s no question that we need to get the airfield lengthened,” Tillis said. “But looking at priorities, it didn’t need to be in this iteration.”
 
The $700 billion bill would provide $640 billion for core military operations, including the purchase of new military equipment, and $60 billion to support the wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. That’s more than $30 billion over what the Pentagon had requested in its budget proposal earlier this year.
 
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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