MILLIONS EARMARKED FOR BASE HOUSING; BUDGET ALSO INCLUDES B-2 UPGRADE FUNDING.Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer Edwards Air Force Base Edwards Air Force Base, U.S. military installation, 301,000 acres (121,805 hectares), S Calif., NE of Lancaster; est. 1933. It is one of the largest air force bases in the United States and has the world's longest runway. will get $46.5 million - mostly for replacing aging homes for military personnel - in a a defense bill approved by the House of Representatives, which also earmarked $142.6 million for additional B-2 bomber bomber Military aircraft designed to drop bombs on surface targets. Aerial bombardment can be traced to the Italo-Turkish War (1911), in which an Italian pilot dropped grenades on two Turkish targets. work. The House approved the 2000 Defense Authorization Conference Report, the compromise bill between the House and Senate versions of the bill. The $288.8 billion bill includes additional spending beyond that requested by the Clinton administration Noun 1. Clinton administration - the executive under President Clinton executive - persons who administer the law , including the additional B-2 work and Edwards construction money. ``The military has been underfunded un·der·fund tr.v. un·der·fund·ed, un·der·fund·ing, un·der·funds To provide insufficient funding for. underfunded adj → infradotado (económicamente) and overdeployed to dangerous levels,'' said Rep. Howard ``Buck'' McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, whose district includes Northrop Grumman's B-2 plant in Palmdale. ``This bill will not solve all the problems with readiness, procurement The fancy word for "purchasing." The procurement department within an organization manages all the major purchases. and retention of military personnel, but it is a good start.'' The additional B-2 funding is a compromise between the House request for $187 million and the Senate's allocation of $35 million. Among the improvements earmarked for the bomber include developing a system called LINK-16, intended to improve air crews' ``situational awareness'' by providing information to pilots in flight, such as changes in targets and locations of other aircraft in the sky. The system would link the B-2 with command centers on the ground, other airplanes and orbiting satellites. Other plans for the bomber include development of improvements to the cockpit's computerized instrument display, upgrades to software, and developing ways to make the bomber harder to see on enemy radar screens. The bill includes $32.7 million to replace 188 aging homes occupied by military personnel and their families at Edwards. The president's budget request was for $8.8 million. Edwards is working on a multiyear program to replace housing built in the 1950s, now considered substandard substandard, adj below an acceptable level of performance. and cramped cramped adj. 1. Uncomfortably small or restricted: cramped living quarters. 2. Difficult to read, especially for being crowded into a small space: cramped handwriting. . The bill also includes $5.5 million to construct bomber parking pads at Edwards. The project would construct three cement aircraft parking pads at Edwards' South Base, where flight testing for the B-1B, B-2 and B-52 programs have been consolidated. The president had not requested any funding for that project. The bill also includes $8.3 million for rocket and tactical missile propulsion Propulsion The process of causing a body to move by exerting a force against it. Propulsion is based on the reaction principle, stated qualitatively in Newton's third law, that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. work at the Air Force Laboratory at Edwards. The authorization bill is one of two defense bills needed to fund military programs. The other is the defense appropriations bill, which is expected to be passed within a few weeks. |
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