GRAND FORKS — The latest defense authorization bill expands mental health care access for North Dakota’s military service members and adds new provisions for countering threats posed by unmanned drones.

Those are among the provisions touted by North Dakota’s two U.S. senators in the annual National Defense Authorization Act. President Joe Biden signed the bill into law Monday after it passed by divided votes in the House and Senate.

Language in the latest NDAA includes an order to establish a counter-UAS task force combatting drone incursions onto U.S. military bases and several provisions for current service members’ mental health care, including measures singling out pilots of U.S. combat drones.

Drone incursions have been reported in recent weeks over U.S. military bases in England and Germany, while residents of several eastern states have reported seeing numerous unidentified lighted drones flying overhead, though U.S. officials say most of the latter incidents have been manned aircraft.

Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said the NDAA “helps formalize what (the Defense Department) is already doing” to combat unwanted drone use, citing the counter-UAS goals of

Project ULTRA

and ongoing efforts to

integrate drones into U.S. airspace at the Northern Plains UAS Test Site.

Project ULTRA — which stands for UAS logistics, traffic, research and autonomy — seeks to boost national security and operational efficiency of unmanned aerial system operations.

“The interesting thing about Grand Forks is we’ve built an ecosystem where, I’ve talked about us being the tip of the spear against China; we’re the tip of the spear in developing drone and counter-drone,” Hoeven said.

Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., has championed a provision that expands the number of mental health providers certified under military health insurance provider TRICARE.

Cramer said he pushed for the expanded access in response to a pair of suicides among Grand Forks Air Force Base personnel in the past several years.

“The standards to join TRICARE are so stringent now, they don’t take into account that some states like North Dakota only have certain accreditations and certifications that are available to them,” Cramer said. “If you don’t get the right credential — it’s not that it’s a better credential, just the right one — your providers don’t meet the standard for TRICARE.”

He’s also pushed for a provision creating a combat status identifier for pilots of remotely piloted aircraft involved in combat operations.

Cramer cited as inspiration the 119th Wing of the North Dakota National Guard, which flies MQ-9 Reaper unmanned planes.

“Our remote pilots are treated differently when it comes to things like PTSD potential or depression or mental health challenges as the result of, say, a kill shot,” he said. “I wanted to make sure the remote pilots are given the same type of consideration as somebody that’s in the cockpit of an airplane.”

This year’s NDAA also authorizes $1.9 million in planning and design funding for maintenance on Grand Forks Air Force Base’s runway —

one of Cramer’s pet projects

— and reauthorization for the Space Development Agency’s mission, including its recently-established Operations Center North at Grand Forks Air Force Base.

Hoeven said his office is working to appropriate another $450 million toward an advanced fire control system

built off the SDA’s network of low-Earth orbit satellites.

Other North Dakota-specific provisions in this year’s NDAA include authorization for funding to update the UH-72 Lakota helicopters used by the North Dakota National Guard and funding authorization to modernize Minot Air Force Base’s nuclear capabilities.

Policy measures, like more provider options for mental health care or the counter-UAS task force, became law with the passage of the NDAA.

However, NDAA provisions that require funding — like nuclear modernization or the runway study — will need to pass in a separate defense appropriations bill.

“An authorization just says that it’s approved,” Hoeven explained. “In defense appropriations, we allocate the dollars to do it, and if we don’t provide those dollars for the NDAA, for those authorizations or programs, then obviously they don’t advance.”

The federal government is currently operating at last year’s funding levels via a continuing resolution set to expire in March. Congress will have to attempt to pass a defense appropriations bill before then or pass another continuing resolution.

The NDAA usually passes with significant bipartisan support. This year, however, the bill passed with significant dissent from both House and Senate Democrats after a last-minute amendment by House Speaker Mike Johnson

added language barring TRICARE from covering some gender-affirming care

for transgender children of service members.

Both Hoeven and Cramer expressed support for Johnson’s amendment, which blocks gender-affirming care “that could result in sterilization” — though medical professionals say hormone therapy (like puberty blockers) generally does not cause infertility.

Cramer said providing gender-affirming care did not support military readiness and dismissed concerns about the mental health impact of denying that care to minors.

“(The amendment) has a much lower priority than caring for people who are stressed out by the fact that they’re a warfighter,” he said. “We need them to be healthy, we need them to be ready for war, and puberty blockers, gender-affirming care, just simply don’t do either of those things.”

Hoeven said gender-affirming care was hurting military readiness and recruiting and decried providing gender-affirming care as a “social experiment,” a phrase also used by Cramer.

President-elect Donald Trump is widely expected to reinstate a ban on transgender service members in the U.S. Armed Forces, as he did in his first administration.

North Dakota’s U.S. senators also dismissed concerns that the Johnson provision could affect bipartisanship or productivity in the next Congress.

The Senate ultimately passed the NDAA 85-15, while less than half of the House’s Democrats supported the act.

More Democrats attacked Johnson’s last-minute addition while saying they felt compelled to vote for the broader bill.

“I’m hopeful Democrats will come around and join us with what we’ve always done with our military, which is support our professional, great men and women in uniform who do such an outstanding job, not a bunch of social policies that shouldn’t be in there,” Hoeven said.

He also said he expects the embattled House speaker, who holds one of the smallest House majorities in history, to be reelected next year.

Cramer called this year’s NDAA a loss for the political left but said he “wouldn’t read a whole lot” into the dissent, pointing out the bill had continued its decades-long streak of passing into law despite partisan gridlock.

The 118th Congress, which ends Jan. 3, has been called one of the least productive Congresses in decades, and is by some counts the least productive in U.S. history.