A detailed plan sent to the Pentagon for how the House and Senate appropriations committees would have marked up the fiscal 2025 funding bill includes recommendations to make cuts from any initiatives deemed to address climate change, including advancing technology and funding hybrid electric vehicles.
President Donald Trump’s administration has made it clear it is not supportive of actions addressing climate change, despite the president’s close advisor owning an electric car company. During his first week in office, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, which commits countries to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He has also frozen funding related to initiatives on climate change.
Lawmakers’ recommendations in the 181-page document, obtained by Defense News, align solidly with the White House’s desire to abandon efforts addressing climate change, initiatives championed during former President Joe Biden’s administration.
The fiscal 2025 appropriations process has not been standard. A six-month stopgap spending bill passed by Congress last week may lower defense spending, but it also grants the Defense Department far more authority to decide how to spend its budget.
In the document crafted by the House and Senate appropriators, they recommended the Pentagon carve out $377.35 million worth of climate change initiatives and allocate that funding elsewhere, sending the message that funding related to those efforts is no longer supported by the people in power on Capitol Hill.
The majority of the cuts would take place within the Army’s research, development, test and evaluation portion of the budget, where efforts related to climate change initiatives could be cut from things like soldier lethality, ground, air and soldier system technology development.
Nearly half of the amount — a total of $167.2 million — was intended for funding hybrid-electric vehicle development work.
Lawmakers recommend zeroing out $100.25 million in funding for a Light Tactical Wheeled Vehicles HEV prototype effort, as well as $38 million for another emerging technology HEV prototype initiative and $27 million to pursue prototypes for an HEV variant of the Army’s Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.
Another $66.9 million would be cut from efforts to modify service equipment with electric or hybrid propulsion systems, and $11.5 million would be cut from Medium Tactical Vehicles development work on hybrid power options.
The Army has long tinkered with the idea of making some of its vehicles electric or hybrid, and while the technology has become commonplace in the commercial vehicle industry, the service has yet to follow.
Companies have continued to put technology in front of the service in order to show the purported benefits, arguing that the technology is ready for prime time in the Army’s modernization plans.
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The Army has evaluated the possibility of converting combat vehicles like the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle for hybrid propulsion, an effort led by the service’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office.
Army leaders have maintained that just because it hasn’t fully committed to hybrid capabilities in tactical or combat vehicles doesn’t mean the service is disinterested.
“It’s not a hard sell to anyone in the Army,” former Army acquisition chief Doug Bush told Defense News last fall. “I think wheeled vehicles is our biggest opportunity. It’s the same exact tech that’s all over the commercial sector now. A lot of people drive these cars. It’s becoming kind of normal.”
The Army is “just working on carving out the money to do it,” Bush said at the time.
While the investment is significant up front, “the long-term payoff, even a 10 to 15% fuel reduction, multiplied times a bazillion vehicles, is huge,” Bush said. “If we do this right, it’ll free up money down the road because we’re being more efficient with the vehicles.”
The capabilities a hybrid vehicle would bring are also becoming increasingly important in the modern battlefield, where silent watch and silent drive help U.S. troops evade detection by increasingly sophisticated sensors.
Additionally, the Army intends to make its Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle replacement a hybrid system, and companies competing to ultimately build the vehicle have created designs answering that requirement. The vehicles were expected to be introduced around 2030.
Lawmakers are suggesting the Army cut nearly $45 million in funding for Next-Generation Combat Vehicle technology that addresses climate change initiatives.
Other technology development areas, such as Future Vertical Lift — costing roughly $10 million — and soldier lethality — another $15 million — would see cuts to their climate change work if the Army were to take the lawmakers’ recommendations.
The Army has been working on a variety of efforts that would align with its official climate strategy that address everything from installations in the U.S. all the way to the tactical edge of the battlefield. It is unclear if the strategy itself still stands or if it will be scrapped.
The Pentagon is already busy canceling work related to climate change, including studies that look at whether a warmer Earth could lead to increased instability and insecurity in certain places around the world.
In a recent post on X, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote, “The @DeptofDefense does not do climate change crap. We do training and warfighting.”
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.
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