Vermont Military Department briefs Appropriations on FY26 budget, construction and recruitment challenges

Brigadier General Henry “Hank” Harder, deputy adjutant general, and Kim Fedeli, financial director for the State Military Department, briefed the Vermont House Appropriations Committee on Feb. 21 on the department’s FY26 budget priorities, ongoing deployments and readiness work, major construction projects and persistent recruiting shortfalls.

The presentation emphasized that the department’s budget is largely supported by federal funds while the state pays for specific matching costs and some state‑only programs such as the National Guard tuition benefit and the Joint Enlistment Enhancement Program. “The state of your guard is strong, both army and air,” Harder said, while Fedeli told the committee that about “88 percent of our spending is federal.”

Why it matters: the department manages both overseas military commitments and domestic emergency response, maintains armories and training areas that serve communities statewide, supports veterans’ services and administers recruitment and tuition benefits that affect retention and force size.

Most visible operations and deployments Harder said about 333 Vermont airmen were deployed across the globe, with the largest contingent forming part of an F‑35 aviation package based at Kadena Air Base in Japan. That aviation package completed a multinational exercise and operated for several weeks from Andersen (Anderson) Air Force Base on Guam before repositioning to Kadena, Harder said. He also described smaller Air Guard deployments to Central…