Aircraft
Congress Passes 2014 Defense Authorization Bill
An F-35B drops a GBU-32 guided munition during a live-fire weapons delivery test at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. (Photo: U.S. Navy)
An F-35B drops a GBU-32 guided munition during a live-fire weapons delivery test at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. (Photo: U.S. Navy)

The U.S. Congress authorized defense spending of $625 billion in Fiscal Year 2014, but calls for an independent review of the software being developed for the Pentagon’s largest weapons program, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. A separate, two-year budget law the Congress passed reduces the more than $100 billion in automatic “sequestration” budget cuts the Pentagon faced over the next two years by about one third.