Text of Senate Amendment 5994

On 2026-06-23, Senator John W. Hickenlooper (D-CO) delivered a floor speech titled "Text Of Senate Amendment 5994" in the Senate.

Text of Senate Amendment 5994

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 105 (Tuesday, June 23, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 105 (Tuesday, June 23, 2026)] [Senate] [Page S3122] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] SA 5994. Mr. HICKENLOOPER (for himself and Mr. Bennet) submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill S. 4784, to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2027 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 title X, add the following: SEC. 1094. ASSESSMENT OF NATIONAL SECURITY IMPACTS OF RESTRUCTURING THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH. (a) Findings.--Congress finds the following: (1) The Department of Defense relies extensively on foundational atmospheric modeling, predictive analytics, and basic research of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (referred to in this section as the ``NCAR'') to support global operational weather forecasting, flight and satellite safety, and strategic mission planning. (2) Any disruption to these interconnected capabilities risks creating critical gaps in environmental intelligence, degrading the accuracy of severe weather tracking, and compromising the operational readiness of advanced national defense platforms on earth and in space. (b) Report.-- (1) In general.--Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shall submit to the congressional defense committees a report assessing the national security impacts of a potential dismantling, restructuring, or divestiture of the capabilities and infrastructure of the NCAR. (2) Contents.--The report under paragraph (1) shall include-- (A) a complete inventory of all current Department of Defense programs, initiatives, research and development efforts, and operational workflows that rely on NCAR- developed models, software frameworks, data streams, or computational infrastructure; (B) an operational impact assessment detailing how the loss or degradation of NCAR's specialized assets, including the atmospheric research aircraft fleet of the NCAR and the NCAR- Wyoming Supercomputing Center, would affect flight safety, long-range deployments, and global operations; (C) a detailed analysis of the interagency dependencies involved, specifically evaluating how a disruption to the NCAR would impact the ability of the Department of Defense to integrate next-generation satellite observations into military weather models; (D) an evaluation of the impacts on national security space operations and critical defense infrastructure resulting from any degradation to the solar physics and space weather forecasting capabilities of the NCAR, with a specific focus on how disruptions to solar monitoring assets would affect early-warning timelines for coronal mass ejections, geomagnetic storms, and solar flares that threaten military satellite communications, global positioning systems, and orbital tracking; and (E) recommendations for mitigation strategies or legislative safeguards necessary to maintain the uninterrupted continuity of critical environmental intelligence and to ensure that any civilian agency restructuring does not inadvertently compromise national security capabilities or readiness. ______