What is the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024?

Recently, on July 14, 2023, the National Defense Authorization for Fiscal Year 2024 was passed by the House of Representatives. The bill was put forward in the United States Congress. It seeks to redefine the United States military budget for the year 2024. Every Congress chamber proposed a version of the National Defense Authorization Act. On July 14, 2023, the House assented and passed its version through a vote of 219-210. On July 27, 2023, the Senate passed their version, i.e. S.2226 through a vote of 86-11. On the very same day, the Senate was received by the House the latter's version. The State then took the decision to reconcile and go ahead with the version of the House. On July 27, 2023, it then passed the version through unanimous consent.

The provisions of the bill

The bill comes with not one but a myriad of provisions. For the starters, the bill seeks to abolish the ordinary Space Force entity. The rationale behind is to welcome enhanced flexibility for the Space Force by means of switching to "full-time" or "sustained duty" from "active duty". It is important to note that this particular change will not be applicable to other armed services, but will only be limited to the Space Force.

The second change to talk about is, for the National Guard, the establishment of a Space National Guard reserve section. Not to miss, this also includes the transfer of 1,000 Air National Guardsmen to the new reserve component.

Another change that the bill seeks to bring is to make it possible for the vice chief of the National Guard Bureau to hold a statutory rank. For the chief of the National Guard Bureau, the bill seeks to make the chief eligible to be selected for reassignment as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

The bill also seeks to set again a statutory three-star rank for every member of the regular reserve chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. Another change that the bill seeks to introduce is toe reestablish for the surgeon general of the Navy a statutory three-star rank. 

One more change that the bill seeks to bring about is to set the titles of commissioned officer ranks of the Space Force to be exactly similar to the Marine Corps, Air Force, and Army.  

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