NDAA Amendment Tracker: FY2027 House vs Senate

Amendments by chamber

• House (H.R. 8800): passed the House with a $1.15T topline. The official list of House floor amendments is on the Congress.gov amendments tab for H.R. 8800.
• Senate (S. 4784): approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee with a $1.14T topline. No floor amendment votes, because the bill never got past the motion to proceed. Any filed amendments are listed on the Congress.gov amendments tab for S. 4784.
• Final bill: Expected December leaders' compromise: a text negotiated by the four Armed Services committee leaders, which wouldn't require the Senate to pass S. 4784 on the floor.

House vs Senate differences to settle

Any compromise has to reconcile two different texts. In the parsed bill text on this site, H.R. 8800 has 723 sections and S. 4784 has 611. 411 section numbers appear in both bills, 312 appear only in the House bill, and 200 appear only in the Senate bill. A shared number does not mean the text matches; the House vs Senate diff shows the word-level changes for each section.

• Sec. 847: Promoting the United States drone industrial base is in the Senate bill only.
• Military pay raise: how the House and Senate bills handle the January 2027 raise.
• H.R. 8800 vs S. 4784 guide: the main policy fights between the two bills.

Recent reporting on provisions in play

• Schumer says Republicans favor ending Iran war immediately, cites 'power of the purse' (The Hill, 2026-11-04). Alexander Bolton reports that Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) said there will be Senate Republican support for ending the war with Iran as soon as possible and that Democrats will use the "power of the purse" to starve the Defense Department of funding if necessary. "We are going to end the war. We have some Republicans already who have joined us in ending the war, and the Founding Fathers had the power of the purse as one of the ways of deterring a president who does war without the consent of the American people," Schumer said at a press conference at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) headquarters in Washington on Wednesday. Democrats are threatening to block the annual Defense authorization bill and Defense appropriations measure as long as the nation is still at war with Iran. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), the next Senate Democratic whip, told reporters several weeks ago: "My own view is that if the war is over, then the opportunity for bipartisanship on defense authorization and defense appropriations is there. I think if the war's not over it's going to be extremely difficult."
• Top Dem sees uncertain NDAA deal headed into lame duck (POLITICO, 2026-11-04). POLITICO reports that top House Armed Services Democrat Adam Smith said negotiators will face a tough road to clinching a compromise defense policy bill for President Donald Trump to sign in the final weeks of the GOP-controlled Congress. "It's going to be hard because the president's completely checked out," Smith said in a brief interview. "I don't know what he's going to want. I don't know how we're going to figure out the money. So no, I don't have easy answers to that." The comments signal uncertainty as the four leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services panels enter negotiations over a final version of the National Defense Authorization Act when Congress returns for a lame-duck session before the end of the year. The NDAA is one of the few major bills that reliably becomes law each year, though the Iran war and other rifts between the Trump administration and Democrats have complicated the process this year. Some Democrats have argued that the party shouldn't back an NDAA without significant guardrails on Trump, namely an end to the military campaign against Iran.
• The Congressional 'right to repair' solution needs some repairs itself (Breaking Defense, 2026-11-03). In a Breaking Defense op-ed published November 3, 2026, Elaine McCusker, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former acting undersecretary of defense (comptroller), argues that House Section 861 and Senate Section 804 right-to-repair / technical-data provisions need modification as House and Senate conferees negotiate a final FY2027 NDAA in the post-midterm session. The House and Senate provisions "are very similar and would set the default rights on any Pentagon contract to government purpose rights (GPR), which allow the US to use data generated by a combination of government and private funds and share that data as needed for federal purposes." She writes that the legislation as written would bypass root issues "with a one size fits all approach that could delay development and procurement, pull money from readiness accounts and drive innovative companies out of the defense industrial base when the nation needs them most," and that it "could cause more harm than good to the military's ability to get the equipment it needs and keep it running." Two core problems she identifies are negotiating government license rights to needed intellectual property and, once obtained, managing and delivering that technical data for maintainers. Defaulting all IP to GPR, she writes, could grind defense contracting to a halt and raise prices by requiring any contractor asserting less-than-government purpose rights to prove there was no government investment in their IP prior to contract award; new commercial firms "will not have the business model to easily give up IP," while traditional primes "may not possess the rights to disclose IP developed and owned by their subcontractors or supply chains," and companies "will have to price loss of IP into sales to the Pentagon." The proposed rules "will do nothing to fix the problem of repairing equipment that is in the inventory now." She says solving disagreements on the distinction between operation, maintenance, installation and training (OMIT) data — which law already requires be provided with unlimited rights — and detailed manufacturing and process data (DMPD) would go a long way, citing a CSIS paper that "DOD guidelines acknowledge that some OMIT data also qualifies as DMPD" but that such data does not automatically fall under unlimited rights. Her suggested fix is to modify the legislation to use existing GPR authorities updated to further delineate data definitions, treat software and source code needed for repairs with a different policy as procurement of such technology already does, and have the government work with industry in contract negotiations to determine what data it actually needs; if the Pentagon has trouble defining the future need, "it should consider employing a form of special negotiated license similar to the commercial sector," an approach Congress preferred in the 2018 defense policy bill (Section 835). She also urges Congress to direct the Pentagon to demonstrate implementation of the data management section of its November 2025 Acquisition and Management of Contractor-Prepared Data (DOD Manual 5010.12) and then update the requirements of the 2026 policy bill (Section 805) to require a secure digital catalog for management and access. "Defaulting to GPR is not the answer," she writes; the solution is "to fix what is actually broken — accurate identification, acquisition and management of required IP — and availability of that data to military maintainers."
• Congress returns: National security and trade provisions to watch in the FY2027 NDAA (Covington & Burling, 2026-11-02). Michael Lowell, Lizbeth Rodriguez-Johnson, Justin Angotti, Kirsten Lowell, Lee Williams and Erika Yeager write that Congress is scheduled to return from its pre-election recess the week of November 9, with the FY2027 NDAA among its largest pending items. The House passed H.R. 8800 on July 22, 2026, by a vote of 216–212, and the Senate received it on September 14, 2026. A July 14 cloture vote on the motion to proceed to S. 4784 failed 50–46, and a motion to reconsider remains pending; the Senate has not passed either bill. A single text is expected to come together in the lame-duck session, competing for floor time with government funding that expires December 11. House bill provisions they flag include referring Section 1260H Chinese Military Companies List entries to the Federal Acquisition Security Council for possible presidential government-wide exclusion orders reaching subsidiaries and affiliates; making certain Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) items eligible for the AUKUS license exemption (Section 1736); barring the Department of War from buying or using technologies tied to China or other foreign adversaries, including humanoid robots, blockchain networks, semiconductors made on Chinese silicon carbide wafers, Chinese optical fiber, telecom contracts with entities that could be required to disclose DoW information to a foreign government, and Chinese financial apps on DoW devices; requiring IT vendors that sell in, or have operations or personnel in, China, Iran, North Korea, or Russia to agree to share security vulnerabilities with DoW first to keep DoW contracts; and directing DoW to track adversarial capital and beneficial ownership in the defense industrial base and review defense-supplier mergers and acquisitions, without giving DoW new authority to block or unwind transactions.
• Joint AAU-APLU FY27 NDAA Conference Letter (AAU and APLU, 2026-11-02). AAU President Barbara R. Snyder and APLU President Waded Cruzado write as presidents of the Association of American Universities and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities to Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker, Ranking Member Jack Reed, House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers and Ranking Member Adam Smith as they reconcile the FY27 NDAA measures S. 4784 and H.R. 8800. The combined membership of AAU and APLU includes more than 280 of the nation's leading research universities. They urge the committees to build on the research-security framework created beginning with the FY20 NDAA and the Securing American Science and Technology Act — which they say has anchored government-wide policies created by National Security Presidential Memorandum-33 (NSPM-33) and the CHIPS and Science Act — rather than layer new conflicting and confusing research security constructs on top of it. They welcome Senate Section 220 provisions that would codify NSPM-33, particularly information sharing, training, and screening procedures, and that designate an academic liaison role at the Department of Defense and chief research security officers at research universities, but say the remainder of the section would have significant unintended consequences: beginning in 2028, Section 220 would bar any university receiving DOD funds from entering into a contract for any purpose — including non-research related activities — with a covered nation or foreign entity of concern unless DOD grants a waiver; co-authorship, scholarly publication, and other ordinary forms of academic exchange would act as triggers for loss of funding; and universities would have to rely on volatile, unverified Commerce Department lists. They recommend amending Senate Section 220 to replace every reference to "countries of concern" with "entities of concern"; define "foreign talent programs" as "malign foreign talent recruitment programs," using the definition in Section 10638 of the Research and Development, Competition, and Innovation Act (42 U.S.C. §18901); define "covered institution" as a research organization or institution of higher education receiving more than $50,000,000 per year in total research funding, including funding from DOD, consistent with NSPM-33; define "fundamental research" consistent with National Security Decision Directive-189; narrow §4146(c)(7) so that co-authorship, publication, and open scholarly exchanges are not used as triggers for loss of funding; narrow the §4147 contracting prohibition to DOD-funded awards and DOD-supported researchers; remove the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) Entity List, the Unverified List, and Military End-User List as automatic triggers for cancellation of DOD funds; set clear compliance timeframes, provide adequate wind-down periods when entities of concern are newly listed, and bar retroactive penalties; and direct consequences toward individual researchers who engage in intentional misconduct rather than at an entire university. Recommendation: oppose inclusion of H.R. 1048 and/or Senate Amendment 6448 (the DETERRENT Act) in the final FY27 NDAA conference agreement, arguing it would significantly expand the Department of Education's authority to evaluate and approve research contracts even though the department does not have a research security office or requisite expertise, and that a rewrite of Higher Education Act Section 117 — which the Armed Services Committees have not marked up, was not made in order for House NDAA debate, and which the Senate has never considered — should not be wedged into a conference report on defense policy. Recommendation: strike Senate Sections 843 and 849 and House Section 1244, which they say would significantly broaden the Section 1260H list of Chinese military companies operating in the United States, rendering its targeted application useless — the House provision would expand "formal association" to include "research collaborations" and "assistance" to include grants and sponsored research, along with discounts, employees, real property, or "any other preferential treatment," and the Senate provisions would reach entities that merely have the potential to advantage the Chinese military. Recommendation: strike House Section 236, which would bar DOD funding for a broadly defined category of "gain-of-function" research that they say extends well beyond pathogens of pandemic potential to techniques that protect U.S. troops and American lives, including cancer immunotherapies, improved insulin production, and resilient crops, and that risks coming into conflict with Executive Order 14292 on "Improving the Safety and Security of Biological Research" and the government-wide "U.S. Government Policy for Stopping High-Risk Life Sciences Research." Recommendation: strike the Norman and Scott amendments, adopted by voice vote on the House floor — Norman Amendment #32 would extend the Stevens Amendment's public communications disclosure requirements to DOD, and Scott Amendment #34 would bar foreign nationals from non-public areas of the national laboratories, several of which are managed by AAU and APLU member universities. They urge retention of House report language on analytical tools to improve DOD research security and on protecting defense innovation from adversaries; Senate report language directing a JASON study of co-authorship metrics and university research security, supporting university affiliated research centers, and implementing the Shared Classified Commercial Infrastructure Pilot Program; and the National Quantum Initiative offered as amendments by Senators Todd Young and Dick Durbin. They also support Senate Section 1633, which would direct DOD to establish a pilot program for military cyber units to partner with universities recognized in the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity program, and Senate Section 549B, which establishes standards and restrictions for higher education institutions participating in DOD education programs.
• President Delegates NDAA Sanctions Authority to Treasury and State (Daily Federal, 2026-10-31). Daily Federal reports that on October 28, 2026, the President issued a memorandum titled "Delegation of Authority Under Section 8335 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026," assigning sections of the enacted FY2026 NDAA — not the pending FY2027 bill — to the Treasury and State secretaries and to agency heads. The memorandum delegates to the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, the functions and authorities vested in the President by section 8335(a) (22 U.S.C. 10704(a)); once sanctionable foreign persons are identified by the Secretary of State, heads of relevant executive departments and agencies may implement such sanctions. The President further delegated to Treasury the authorities under sections 8335(c)(1) and 8335(d)(1), section 8335(f) in consultation with the Secretary of State, and section 8335(i); the Secretary of State received the authority vested in the President by section 8335(g). Section 2 of the memorandum provides that these delegations apply to any provision of any future public law that is the same or substantially the same as the referenced provision. Section 3 directs the Secretary of the Treasury to publish the memorandum in the Federal Register. The notice appears as FR Doc. 2026-22386, 91 FR 69203 (Federal Register Volume 91, No. 210, pages 69203-69204), filed on October 30, 2026 at 11:15 a.m., on public inspection October 30 and publishing November 2.

What happens next

The Senate is scheduled to be in session only 8 days in November and 14 days in December, counting Fridays, which aren't typically Senate workdays. Government funding expires December 11, competing for lame-duck floor time. Thanksgiving recess is November 23–27 and the Senate is out December 21–31. Sen. Mike Rounds said, "I think the NDAA will come together after the election." The expected path is a compromise text negotiated by the four Armed Services committee leaders, which wouldn't require the Senate to pass S. 4784 on the floor.

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