Are US, Israeli militaries ‘merging’? What defense bill actually says

As the annual defense budget and policy bill moved through Congress — passing the U.S. House of Representatives on July 22, 2026 — one section of the bill snagged public attention, with many people claiming it would effectively “merge” the U.S. and Israeli militaries.

The rumor raised concerns about U.S. sovereignty among social media users amid increasing cooperation between the two governments and declining popular support for Israel.

“Tomorrow, the House will vote on the NDAA, which includes a provision to merge parts of our military with the IDF,” U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., posted on July 21 (archived), referring to the National Defense Authorization Act. “This amendment is an existential threat to American sovereignty and democracy.”

We first addressed the claim that this section of the bill would merge or integrate the two nations’ militaries after online foreign policy magazine Responsible Statecraft published an article on May 29, 2026, titled “Congress quietly moves to integrate US and Israeli militaries.” The report claimed that Section 219 — then Section 224 — of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act would “all but fuse the two countries’ armed forces together.”

Alabama Republican Rep. Mike Rogers and Washington Democratic Rep. Adam Smith introduced the bill on May 13, 2026.

Although there is no evidence the two militaries would fully merge, Section 219 of the NDAA would install an executive agent responsible for overseeing U.S.-Israeli cooperative efforts in defense technology and otherwise “promote the long-term integration of joint capabilities between the United States and Israel” (Page 106).

On June 4, 2026, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California introduced an amendment to strike the section from the bill, which the Armed Services Committee voted down.

In response, Rogers, chairman of the committee, said (at 4:39:26): “Section 224 doesn’t create any new programs within the Department of Defense; it simply designates a single, senior official to coordinate existing initiatives. Section 224 actually improves oversight and accountability of these programs by designating a single official responsible for them.”

According to the text, the executive agent’s responsibilities would include identifying Israeli technology that could be integrated into U.S. systems, promoting joint-training exercises and information-sharing mechanisms and more (pages 102-103).

While this specific executive agent role was not included in previous NDAAs, cooperation with Israel for defense technology development has been. Although the majority of U.S. NDAA content on Israel has involved development of the Iron Dome, Israel’s missile defense system, the two governments have coordinated development in other areas.

For example, the 2016 NDAA said the U.S. government would “carry out research, development, test, and evaluation, on a joint basis with Israel, to establish anti-tunnel capabilities to detect, map, and neutralize underground tunnels that threaten the United States or Israel” (PDF Page 355).

Section 219 of the 2027 NDAA, titled “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” begins (Page 102, emphasis ours):

SEC. 219. UNITED STATES—ISRAEL DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY COOPERATION INITIATIVE.

(a) Establishment.—The Secretary of Defense shall designate an executive agent, as such term is defined in Department of Defense Directive 5101.01 (relating to DoD Executive Agent, issued February 7, 2022), responsible for synchronizing cooperative efforts between the United States and Israel, to expand and accelerate bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation.

The cooperative efforts for which the appointed executive agent would be responsible read as follows (pages 103-104):

(1) Counter-Unmanned Systems including aerial, maritime, and ground platforms. 

(2) Anti-tunneling and subterranean threats. 

(3) Missile and air defense technologies. 

(4) Artificial intelligence, quantum, machine learning, and autonomous systems. 

(5) Directed energy and advanced sensing. 

(6) Cyber defense, electronic warfare, and digital resilience. 

(7) Biotechnology, biomanufacturing, and medical defense.

(8) Network integration, data fusion, and contested logistics. 

(9) Defense industrial base cooperation, manufacturing, and co-production. 

(10) Other emerging technologies as jointly agreed by the United States and Israel.

The section then outlines coordination with other federal departments, how progress will be updated and how the public will stay informed. The full text of Section 219 reads as follows:

U.S.-Israeli collaboration in air defense technology, combatting tunneling threats, directed energy development (2017 NDAA, PDF Page 541) and more has long been established. There is evidence of U.S.-Israeli collaboration in other areas identified, such as artificial intelligence; for example, joint-government foundation BIRD has funded collaborative research for homeland security purposes since 1977.

Alongside historic, unparalleled U.S. support for Israel, cooperation between the two militaries is not new. American and Israeli soldiers have long trained together, troops have swapped military equipment and technology and the U.S. has spent more than $300 billion on Israel (adjusted for inflation) in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding since 1948.

While introducing his amendment to strike the section on June 4, Khanna said its addition was a strategic request by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a member of Congress given the lack of popular support for aid to Israel. 

Khanna pointed to an authentic letter Netanyahu sent to Republican Rep. Marlin Stutzman of Indiana, who introduced a House resolution a week after they met in Israel that would transition the U.S.-Israel relationship “away from one of traditional foreign assistance towards a new era of mutual cooperation, joint investment, and shared development.”

Netanyahu’s letter to Stutzman read in full:

While speaking on Fox News on July 12, 2026, Netanyahu again said the section would be a move “from aid to partnership.” He continued (at 14:13):

So we take away the money that is given to Israel which is one part, but the other part is we co-invest, in equal measures, in the new technologies that are needed to give our military and your military the advantage. So there are some unbelievable projects. So we’d invest jointly and take the fruits equally, you move from aid to partnership and I think that represents what Israel is. 

And remember, the other thing is that we share with America unbelievable intelligence to save American life. [Former Air Force] Gen. [George] Keegan has said that when he was working in American intelligence, what Israel was giving the United States was worth, he said, five CIAs. Now I’m not trying to be mathematically exact, but Israel’s contributions to America’s defense are important, our technology is incredible, and since yours is incredible too, and you’re the great champion of liberty and free markets, I think the meshing of our two great countries of talent would strengthen America’s competitive position both in the economic marketplace and in the military battlefield in many important ways. 

So that’s the idea. The idea is to take away aid, one-sided aid and move it into bilateral investments for common benefit.

While the Israeli and the U.S. militaries have collaborated for decades, Section 219 would formalize and expand these collaborative efforts into a wide array of areas, some of which are vaguely identified, such as “network integration” and “data fusion.” As the 2027 NDAA moves to the Senate, these items may be more openly debated.

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