S.Amdt. 2875

SA 2875. Mr. RUBIO submitted an amendment intended to be proposed to
amendment SA 2282 proposed by Mr. Inhofe (for himself and Mr. McCain)
to the bill H.R. 5515, to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2019
for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military
construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy,
to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for
other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:

At the end of subtitle D of title I, add the following:

SEC. __. SENSE OF CONGRESS ON CONVERSION OF F-22 AIRCRAFT.

(a) Findings.--Congress makes the following findings:
(1) Accelerating the modernization upgrade of F-22A Block
20 training and test aircraft would significantly increase
the total available inventory of combat-capable F-22A Block
35 fighter aircraft.
(2) Converting 34 F-22A Block 20 aircraft to a Block 35
configuration would drastically improve the readiness and
health of the entire F-22A fleet and increase flexibility to
manage availability of the combat-coded Block 35 fleet, which
is accumulating more operational flight hours than initially
anticipated.
(3) Making the conversions described in paragraph (2) would
be a cost-effective way to increase the F-22's combat-capable
force by 27 percent.
(4) If the conversion effort is not included in future base
budgets, it would be advisable for the Department of Defense
to support the effort as an unfunded priority.
(b) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that
the Secretary of the Air Force should accelerate
modernization of the F-22 Block 20 training and test aircraft
as quickly as possible.
______