Under a continuing resolution (CR) that lasts the entire fiscal year, the military services will be forced to make cuts to already deficient readiness accounts, ground aircraft and halt new-start development programs, according to senior officers.
Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Daniel Allyn said a one-year CR would force the Army to absorb a one-two combination of blows to its readiness and modernization accounts.
“We’re going to run out of money in mid-July on current spending,” Allyn said at the McAleese/Credit Suisse Defense Programs Conference in Washington, D.C. “And when that happens, all the readiness gains that we’ve been building for the past two-and-a-half years are going to start that tip down the precipice. That’s a significant near-term problem.”
“The longer-term problem … is the hundreds of new-start programs that are delayed,” Allyn added. The Army has prioritized what funding it does have for modernization, but when that money suddenly dries up, “it’s like a double hit. It’s like a punch to the belly and then a roundhouse to the head.”
Allyn said the Army has a plan to modernize its force, but a “critical component of that strategy is predictable funding.”
“Most of our procurement programs are multi-decade programs,” he said. “When you control those programs one year at a time, and you choose not to fund them in some of those years until very late in that year, you create inefficiencies and you create delays and lags that are hard to recover from. We’re struggling with that right now.”
For a certain capability the Army is pursuing to stay ahead of near-peer competitors, Allyn said the Army set aside $30 million in the fiscal 2017 budget but would only have access to $2 million under a yearlong CR.
Forced to live with a CR through October, the Army risks delivering platforms it has begun developing that would remain on schedule with predictable funding, Allyn said. Those include the Stryker lethality upgrade program, upgrading Armored Brigade Combat Teams to new vehicle configurations. Both the ground mobility vehicle and mobile protected firepower also are at risk from a CR, Allyn said.
“It’s pretty tough to run a race without fuel and unfortunately, for those of us in the Department of Defense, part of that fuel is money,” he said. “We’ve got to have it. … It costs a lot of money to field a ready joint force. It costs a lot of money, but it costs a lot more to commit an unready force and fail to accomplish the mission.”
Vice Chief of the Air Force Gen Stephen Wilson’s assessment of his service under a yearlong CR was not rosier than Allyn’s of the Army. Several of its ongoing modernization programs would grind to a halt without a defense authorization bill.
Under a continuing resolution that forces the Air Force to operate with fiscal 2016 funding levels, at least 60 new-start programs would be halted in their tracks, Wilson said.
“With a yearlong CR I have a $1.3 billion math problem to solve,” Wilson said. “I’d stop civilian hiring. I’d shut down depots and I’d have to stop flying to fix a $1.3 billion math problem that started on or about the first of May.”
Half a billion dollars pulled from flying hours would eliminate two months of all Air Force flight hours, he said. The same amount taken from weapon systems support would halt depot production. Around 60 new-start Air Force programs that would be affected.
“It would put us right back to the sequestration-type events that we had in 2013,” Wilson said.
Across town, House Armed Services Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, told defense reporters that he had polled the services regarding the effects of operating under a CR for the remainder of the fiscal year that ends in October.
Thornberry said that Army units already scheduled to deploy to Korea and Europe would cease training on July 15. He also said the Marine Corps would quit flying altogether in July and be forced to shed 2,000 Marines.
At the McAleese Conference, Ranking HASC member Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said that the complete collapse of the budgeting process was a “distinct possibility” in the current political climate.
“Democrats still do not believe that we should zero-out the non-defense discretionary budget in favor of defense and, in fact are still clinging to the agreements that were made over the last five or six years that if we go above the caps, it’s dollar-for-dollar,” Smith said. “The Republicans aren’t going to go for that.”