Defense Budget Alert

A House subcommittee wants to provide the Navy with funding to purchase two Virginia-class fast-attack submarines as well as extra money for several select aircraft programs.

The Pentagon’s chief pricing official has issued new guidance to acquisition program managers on how to assess the costs and impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak on defense contractors, noting that additional funding has not yet been appropriated by Congress to reimburse companies for pandemic-related hardships or delays.

Senior Pentagon officials for months have publicly touted an internal budget review said to have "harvested" $5.7 billion in "savings" that can be reinvested in military modernization and readiness, but the process, along with newly surfaced documents breaking down the cost cutting, is generating heartburn on Capitol Hill.

Pentagon acquisition chief Ellen Lord told lawmakers today the Defense Department will need to spend low, "double-digit" billions reimbursing contractors disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but she asserted DOD does not have the resources to so do without supplemental funding.

Several Senate Democrats are criticizing the Defense Department for spending too little, too slowly to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the Pentagon says it intends to send lawmakers a plan today for  using the $10.6 billion in coronavirus relief funds Congress provided in March.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper has ordered the Pentagon to defer $545 million in overseas military construction, including programs that are part of an effort to deter the Russian military in Europe, so the funds can be used to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Acting Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker wants to know by May 8 where senior military officials most want to transfer money so their proposals can be vetted and possibly included in the Defense Department's annual omnibus reprogramming request to Congress.

Air Force acquisition executive Will Roper said Thursday he is meeting with Congress twice a week to discuss how to support the service's wide-ranging COVID-19 relief efforts -- from transporting personal protective equipment to mitigating industrial base impact to making it easier for officials to work on classified projects from home.

At the beginning of the year, before the acceleration of the COVID-19 pandemic radically altered American society, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said one of his goals for 2020 was to position the Pentagon for the "irreversible implementation" of the National Defense Strategy and its new focus on great power competition with China and Russia.