The Army has testified that it would prefer to end production of Paladins in fiscal 2027 and apply the savings instead to two other initiatives: procuring High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launchers — known as HIMARS — and developing a new mobile tactical cannon.

However, House Appropriations Chairman Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., has consistently argued for buying more Paladins than the Army has budgeted for.

The Defense subcommittee’s proposal is the product of input from more than one member. But Gabe Murphy, a policy analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, said by email that Cole, as the committee chairman, “has an outsized say in which increases make it into the bill and at what size.”

Murphy also said the proposed Paladin funding surge for fiscal 2027 is unusually large even in the context of the Pentagon budget.

In the fiscal 2026 Defense spending law (PL 119-75), for example, only eight of the 1,090 increases enacted for procurement and research programs allocated $577 million or more, Murphy said.

Murphy noted, too, that Cole’s campaign committee and leadership political action committee have collectively received $20,000 per election cycle in each of the past five cycles from the PAC of BAE Systems, which has a facility involved in the production the Paladin near Cole’s district.

The Paladin system is tested at nearby Fort Sill.

“Lawmakers have a responsibility to look out for their districts, but not at the expense of the nation’s fiscal health or a Pentagon budget built on strategy rather than corporate welfare,” Murphy said. “Taxpayers deserve funding to be awarded on the basis of project merit, not parochial politics.”