Braxton Taylor
The services are bracing for a yearlong continuing resolution instead of a budget, which maintains funding at last year’s levels even as the military tries to modernize and improve readiness.
The No. 2 officers from each of the Defense Department’s military branches told lawmakers Wednesday they need provisions that would allow them to move funding around, or hold onto it until next year, to make sure they can spend on things they need now and wait on what they’re not ready to buy.
“We are seeing an enormous amount of threats emerging every single year, and it is very hard to get after those threats when you have to wait two to four years to get the budget to get after those threats,” Gen. Michael Guetlein, vice chief of space operations, told the Senate Armed Service Committee’s readiness and support subcommittee.
“So anything you can do…the ability to move money between programs would be hugely beneficial,” Guetlein said.
The House passed its version of a continuing resolution Tuesday, with some small increases in national-security funding for the Defense Department, putting the ball in the Senate’s court to avoid a Friday-night government shutdown.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, the subcommittee’s chairman, asked each of the vice chiefs what would help them through what would be the Defense Department’s first-ever full year without a new budget.
Army Vice Chief of Staff James Mingus noted that the services submit an anticipated list of needs 18 to 20 months before budgets are normally passed. That gives them little wiggle room when new needs emerge over that nearly two-year period. That’s especially true with unmanned aerial systems, a quickly evolving capability and threat that has many of the services scrambling to keep up.
“Every line of accounting, every piece of equipment, every radio has its own individual line within…our budget line items on the back end of appropriations for high-tech things—UAS, counter-UAS, high-tech command-and-control systems that evolve at a rate faster than our budget cycle,” Mingus said.
He said the Army would like to be able to compress its proposed acquisition timelines when necessary, rather than waiting for new appropriations each year to buy something they hadn’t anticipated needing.
The Navy has had a similar problem, said Vice Chief of Naval Operations James Kilby, who is also serving as the acting chief of naval operations.
“Two years ago, probably a little more than two years ago, we weren’t thinking about counter-UAS,” Kilby said. “We weren’t thinking about counter-UAS from the perspective that we’ve grown to appreciate in the Red Sea.”
With a continuing resolution, he said, it’s hard to allocate money to continue to address that threat the way the Navy has been, by snapping up Anduril’s Roadrunner drone and Raytheon’s Coyote counter-drone system to protect the Ford carrier strike group as it patrolled the Red Sea in early 2024.
To have more flexibility, Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Christopher Mahoney said, the services need “colorless appropriations,” or money that can be moved around from program to program to meet emerging needs.
It would also be nice to be able to take the money allocated for one year and stretch it out over a few years, so services don’t end up in a “use or lose it” position, Mahoney said.
“So that you are not forced into making bad decisions at the end of the year, buying things that you really don’t need, but have a period of availability to where you can make better executive and managerial decisions against that appropriation,” he said.
For the Air Force, its drive to increase aircraft readiness is hamstrung if it tries to do more with last year’s spending limits.
“The lead time required for parts and supply, within that time frame, would require an infusion to help us with our aircraft availability, our mission-capable rates and training our flying force to be ready,” Lt. Gen. Adrian Spain, the service’s deputy chief of staff for operations—standing in after Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Slife was fired last month—told lawmakers.
The Senate is expected to vote on its continuing resolution proposal later this week, SASC Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Ala., said during the hearing. But despite “the anomalies and the tiny plus-ups here and there,” it doesn’t provide adequate funding for the military to stay ahead of China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, he said.
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