A yearlong continuing resolution (CR) would push the Air Force to delay planned maintenance and testing and inhibit the service from moving forward on new programs of record, a top official warned on Tuesday.
A CR typically holds funding at the same budgetary levels as the previous fiscal year (FY). For the Defense Department, that would mean a smaller budget in FY 2016 than in 2015, even when taking into account spending limits set by the Budget Control Act of 2011, said Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, commander of Air Force Materiel Command.
The new fiscal year starts on Oct. 1, and with no budget deal in sight, Congress will likely have to pass a CR to avoid a government shutdown. With the clock ticking down, government and military officials have cautioned that a longterm CR would have its own negative consequences.
For Air Force Material Command, the effects would be wide-ranging, Pawlikowski said during a speech at the Air Force Association’s Air and Space Conference.
For instance, the Air Force Sustainment Center—which provides depot maintenance for aircraft, engines and other systems—needs stable funding so that program managers can ensure they have the supplies and maintainers necessary to execute planned sustainment work, she said.
If the budget doesn’t allow planes to come in for maintenance as planned, “I have to balance that workforce,” she said. “Secondly, it’s going to back up those weapons systems. They’re not going to get through the depot when they were supposed to, and that’s just going to make [FY] ’17 that much harder.”
Planes that are not able to go through regular maintenance will not be cleared to fly, which in turn creates a readiness problem, Pawlikowski added.
A yearlong CR would not only delay as many as 50 new-start programs, it could also slow down upgrades to key weapons systems, she said. That, in turn, would increase the cost of doing that modernization work.
Additionally, the Air Force Test Center, which conducts developmental testing for the service’s new weapon systems, would not have the funding necessary to evaluate all of the weapon systems scheduled to undergo tests that year, she said.
Pawlikowski said she believes lawmakers are aware that a longterm CR would negatively impact the military services, but “it’s just a matter of how do those implications weigh against some of the other things that are important to our legislative branch as they go forward?” she said. “There are so many elements that go into the debate when it comes to the Department of Defense budget and the budget at large.”
Pawlikowski was just one of the speakers during the conference who described the ill effects that would arise if a yearlong CR was passed. On Tuesday afternoon, Air Force Brig. Gen. Duke Richardson, program executive officer for tankers, said the funding levels established by a CR would likely push the service to break its contract with Boeing [BA] for a new aerial refueling tanker (Defense Daily, Sept. 15).
Top officials from five defense associations—the National Defense Industrial Association, Air Force Association, Navy League, Aerospace Industries Association and National Guard Association of the United States—penned a letter to House and Senate leaders on Sept. 14, urging them to avoid enacting an “extended continuing resolution.”
“Avoiding a government shutdown with a CR is not enough,” the letter stated. “In certain respects, a yearlong CR is worse than a short government shutdown because the latter almost always produces a satisfactory budget compromise, while the former produces only more determined intransigence. CRs lead to more and longer CRs, not budget stability and bipartisan compromise.”