The Senate Appropriations Committee, led by Sen. Daniel Inouye, eliminated the Defense Department’s costly Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program and slashed $695 million from the military’s Joint Strike FIghter Program. 

Inouye detailed those and other cuts on Tuesday as the Appropriations Committee continued its work on a Defense appropriations bill that removes $26 billion in spending that the president requested for the department. 

Inouye explained the termination of the vehicle program as “due to excessive cost growth and constantly changing requirements.”

He said in a statement that the reduction to the Joint Strike Fighter program should not be construed as a lack of congressional faith in it. 

“We continue to strongly support this program and believe that the F-35 is showing progress since it was restructured last year.  However, excessive concurrency in development and production still exists.”

The military describes the program as the “focal point” for developing the next generation of aircraft weapon systems. Inouye said that the cuts will hold production to current levels, which will help limit costs. 

“For each aircraft we build this early in the test program, we will have to pay many millions in the future to fix the problems that are identified in testing,” he said.