WASHINGTON — Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall issued a stark warning Nov. 13 in regards to the impact of funding delays and continuing threats of presidency shutdowns.
Current temporary funding runs out Nov. 17. To avert a government shutdown, lawmakers are scrambling to increase funding for some agencies perhaps until January, and others until February. This uncertainty means dozens of Air Force and Space Force programs that ought to be gearing up for production will stall attributable to lack of predictable funding, Kendall said at a Center for a Latest American Security forum.
The Department of the Air Force in its 2024 budget is in search of billions of dollars for next-generation technologies similar to hypersonic weapons, a brand new intercontinental ballistic missile and modern satellite networks. The absence of each a budget agreement and a defense authorization bill “brings programs to a screeching halt,” said Kendall, noting that this comes at a time when the U.S. faces growing strategic competition from China and Russia.
“There are a couple of dozen or more recent starts, things that we’d like congressional authorization to begin,” he said. “So not having an authorization bill yet, not having an appropriations bill, this implies now we have to attend until those things are passed to start.”
The time that the Air Force and the Space Force spend waiting for funding, “is time we’re ceding to China,” Kendall added. “They’re in a race for military technological superiority. There’s absolute confidence about that. They usually’re moving forward in a short time.”
“We’d like to maneuver quickly, and giving freely time that we could use doesn’t make any sense to me,” he said. “Consider it this fashion, if you happen to’re doing a race that’s a mile long, we’re essentially giving freely 1 / 4 mile headstart to the opposite side.”
The brand new normal
During a question-and-answer session, CNAS senior fellow and defense programs director Stacie Pettyjohn noted that short-term funding bills, or continuing resolutions, have develop into the brand new normal, and asked Kendall to clarify why the military services have such a difficult time coping with the disruption.
The fundamental reason is that recent programs can’t be began under CRs, said Kendall, but more importantly is that “it’s a criminal act to spend money you don’t have from the Congress, so we will’t spend money we don’t have yet.”
“The implications are widespread,” Kendall added. CR’s only allow the federal government to spend on the previous 12 months’s levels. Within the case of the Air Force and the Space Force, specific increases were requested for several programs, and under a CR “you principally can’t increase funding on things that you simply would plan to extend money on, and you possibly can’t ramp up production rates,” he added. “In order that has a huge impact. You possibly can’t hire people. You possibly can’t put contracts in place and if you happen to do, you have got a limited scope of labor within the case of production programs. So it just holds us back. It’s like an anchor keeping us from moving forward.”
Kendall said he’s discussed the situation with congressional defense committees, which understand the urgency of the Department of the Air Force’s modernization investments and have been supportive. But the issue with funding bills is on the congressional leadership level, where each side are entrenched and unable to make progress on a budget deal.
He pushed back against claims that the military has large budgets and nevertheless has been slow to adopt cutting-edge technology. “We don’t have an innovation problem. We now have a money problem,” he said. The Air Force and Space Force know what technologies and systems they should move forward, Kendall insisted, but can’t execute on any of it without sufficient, consistent funding.
The Air Force has a track record of starting too many programs it could’t fund, and Kendall has been attempting to rein that in. “We now have an inclination in the previous couple of years at the least, to have began too many projects we will’t afford. We must be more focused and more disciplined about starting things that we actually do intend to take into production.”
“We’re well aware of what’s happening within the business world, and really prepared to reap the benefits of that, particularly in areas like space,” he said. “But what we actually need is the resources to maneuver forward.”