Defense Budget Alert

A quartet of Army officials thanked lawmakers for the two-year budget deal that established higher funding levels for defense in fiscal year 2018 and FY-19, but repeated the familiar call for long-term fiscal stability.

Increased funding is helping the Army restore readiness and modernize the force, but the return of the spending caps imposed by the Budget Control Act would severely harm this work, according to the service’s top uniformed and civilian officials.

Five Air Force procurement programs saw cost swings of more than $1 billion over the last year, and 24 of the service's systems shrank by $2.5 billion in aggregate, the Defense Department said this week.

The Defense Department could be forced to strip more than $260 billion in planned spending from its fiscal year 2020 and 2021 budgets if discretionary spending caps required by the Budget Control Act for those two years are not adjusted, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office.

The most important piece of the massive, $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill is the $700 billion defense budget contained within it, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-TX) said today ahead of a final vote.

The Missile Defense Agency has provided Congress a $1.2 billion wish list to finance 16 projects that were not included in the agency's $9.9 billion fiscal year 2019 budget request, including bolstering missile defense in South Korea as well as additional investments in new technologies such as speed-of-light weapons, space-based sensors and new warhead development.

The Pentagon's new chief management officer told the Senate Budget Committee this week he is confident the Defense Department will be able to find $46 billion in wasteful spending over the next five fiscal years that can be redirected to higher priorities.

John Gibson, the Pentagon's new CMO, said DOD expects to find approximately $6 billion in efficiencies in FY-19.

“We're very comfortable that we will meet or exceed those numbers,” he said during a March 7 hearing.

The Air Force's $1.8 billion, fiscal year 2019 unfunded requirements list includes boosts for the service's space, nuclear and military construction portfolios, but its largest request is an additional $800 million for a classified program.

The Pentagon has "realigned" $20 billion initially pegged for its fiscal year 2019 Overseas Contingency Operations request and directed it toward the military's base budgets to adhere to a bipartisan congressional spending deal, according to a detailed breakdown provided to Inside Defense.