If the Army has to spend at full-sequester levels in fiscal year 2016 instead of the levels it requested–about a $6 billion difference–it would protect all personnel costs and instead take about $3.2 billion out of operations and maintenance and $2.6 billion out of procurement.
Lt. Gen. Karen Dyson, the Army comptroller’s military deputy for budget, said at an Association of the United States Army breakfast Wednesday that those figures were decided on after analyzing lessons learned from the service’s decisions from the FY ’13 budget cycle, when sequestration first hit.
“About 60 percent of that [spending cut] is in near-term readiness and about 40 percent of that is in far-term readiness,” she said. “One of the lessons we learned is that we have to protect our training, planning and our continuing training that builds readiness. And so one of the things that we’ve already decided is that if we have to reduce our spending we’re going to protect our Combat Training Center exercises.”
The $3.2-billion cut to operations and maintenance, therefore, would come from home-station training events, deferred equipment and infrastructure sustainment–beyond what was already deferred in the budget request released earlier this month–and an increased decline in workload at the Army’s depots, arsenals and ammunition plants.
Dyson could not say how the $2.6-billion procurement cut would play out, saying that all programs could be affected and that timelines for development and acquisition would generally be pushed to the right.