The Pentagon is scrambling to minimize the impact of the across the board budget cuts known as sequestration on developmental programs and programs already in production, Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall said yesterday.
Sequestration is “affecting everything,” and right now defense officials and program managers are engaged in a “damage limitation exercise,” Kendall said.
Kendall said in addition to the budget cuts, sequestrations is creating a “secondary effect” that is forcing program managers to defer work on developmental programs, causing them to slow down and leading to increased inefficiencies and higher costs over the long run.
“It stretches them out. So work is deferred and efficiency goes down,” Kendall said during a roundtable with reporters at the Pentagon. “Across the board sequestration is leading to greater inefficiencies, so there is a secondary effect–it is increased penalties to the department.”
“Programs that we planned to be executed at certain levels officially are now going to take longer,” he said. “Time is money.”
Programs already in production will experience declines in quantities, which is also less efficient, he said.
“We will have another secondary effect there as well,” the undersecretary said.
Sequestration kicked in on March 1 after Congress failed to resolve a long standing budgetary stalemate over plans to reduce the federal deficit and spending over the next decade. Sequestration is slated cut $500 billion in defense spending over the next 10 years.
Sequestration subtracted $41 billion from the Pentagon for the remainder of fiscal 2013, which ends Sept. 30. Kendall said that amounted to an eight percent hit across accounts.
Even as Pentagon officials are focused on curtailing the impact this year, it is critical to restore stability to the budgeting process so the military can operate to a plan, he added.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen in (20)14,” Kendall said.