[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 123 (Thursday, July 17, 2025)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E686-E687]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2026

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                               speech of

                            HON. DARREN SOTO

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 16, 2025

  Mr. SOTO. Mr. Chair, I want to commend the managers of the House 
Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2026 Appropriations bill for 
including my amendment, No. 269, to provide a $24.1 million increase 
within the RDT&E-Defense Wide Account, to the Industrial Base Analysis 
and Sustainment Program's (IBAS) Fan-Out Wafer level packaging program 
in the en bloc package.
  Semiconductors support nearly all Department of Defense (DoD) 
activities. Ensuring secure access to leading-edge semiconductors, 
however, is a challenge. The pandemic exposed the challenges associated 
with the global supply chain, the changing global semiconductor 
industry, and the sophistication of U.S. adversaries, who might target 
military electronic components.
  IBAS is dedicated to ensuring that the DoD is positioned to 
effectively address industrial base issues and support the National 
Security Innovation Base. This includes strengthening and protecting 
the domestic semiconductor supply chain to provide access to leading-
edge capabilities to accelerate innovation. One of the next generation 
semiconductor technologies that IBAS is focusing on is called Advanced 
Packing.
  Advanced Packaging essentially removes the green circuit board, and 
connects each component chip onto each other, like how individual Lego 
pieces can be stacked on top of each other to form a Lego set. This 
next generation process fully integrates all component chips into a 
single, advanced packaged, chip. Currently, 98 percent of these 
advanced packaging, integrated processes, are done in Asia, where 
foreign entities can insert malicious processes into these integrated 
chips in a way that is not easily identifiable. IBAS is working to 
provide secure, credible, and reliable domestic advanced packaged 
semiconductor manufacturing capability.
  Fanout wafer level packaging technology is a critical leading-edge 
advanced packaging technology, providing a high degree of size, weight, 
and power performance improvements over traditional packaging 
processes. My amendment will allow the DoD to leverage existing public-
private-partnerships to quickly expand domestic U.S. based 
semiconductor manufacturing development platforms for critical advanced 
semiconductor system integration, including fan-out wafer level 
packaging technology.
  U.S. global leadership in semiconductors depends on U.S. owned firms 
operating at the leading-edge of advanced packaging technologies. The 
next generation of electronic devices will require significantly 
greater functional density, in other words, packing chips together even 
more tightly than current technology allows. This requires technical 
leadership in semiconductor advanced packaging

[[Page E687]]

processes, including fanout wafer level packaging.
  I believe Congress should continue to provide the resources necessary 
to update our domestic microelectronics security framework. I am proud 
of the work being undertaken in my district's semiconductor technology 
district, known as NeoCity, to support domestic semiconductor 
manufacturing technology development as we work to address this 
critical supply chain. I look forward to continuing to work with my 
colleagues to support this goal.

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