The Defense Department submitted a “Rapid Response to Emergent Technology Advancement or Threats” proposal to Congress on April 12 that would give the services the ability to begin development of new-start programs up to their preliminary design review level of maturity. The authority is intended to help circumvent delays that often occur during the traditional two-year budget cycles.

The request was announced April 19 by Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, who told reporters during a media roundtable at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs that waiting on Congress to pass a budget each year has delayed kick-starting a number of key programs for the Air and Space Forces.

The proposal would allow the Air Force and other services to get around issues that occur when Congress fails to pass appropriations bills on time, said Bill Greenwalt, a former senior staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial policy.

When this happens, the Defense Department and other federal agencies must operate under continuing resolutions (CR) once the next fiscal year begins Oct. 1. Under a CR, the Pentagon generally cannot begin development of new-start programs that have likely already gone through a lengthy planning, programming, budgeting and execution process.

“What he’s basically saying is, ‘I’ve gone through all this time, I don’t want the Congress to stop me for six months on a CR — or what could be even worse, a full-year CR,’” Greenwalt, who is now a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, told DefenseScoop.

The authority would allocate money from coffers first created by Congress in 2003 to quickly buy and deploy capabilities needed during the post-9/11 wars, Greenwalt explained. The section has been amended since, and the current fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act states that it is reserved for “urgent acquisition and deployment of capabilities needed in response to urgent operational needs for vital national security interests.”

According to the proposal being pushed by Kendall, R&D initiatives initiated under the newly sought authority would not exceed more than $300 million each fiscal year, and efforts that begin under the new authority would transition to an acquisition pathway after preliminary design review.

“What they’re allowing the department to do is to move money around without requiring congressional approval,” Mark Cancian, senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told DefenseScoop.

The Department of the Air Force is requesting $55.4 billion in fiscal 2024 for research, development, test and evaluation efforts, including the creation of 12 new-start programs. The time it takes to stand up these programs can be lengthy and poses a risk for the Air Force as it addresses threats from adversaries, said Cynthia Cook, senior fellow and director of the defense-industrial initiatives group at CSIS.

“This length of time is not a weakness in the system per se — it represents the opportunity for the elected representatives of the United States to review programs and how taxpayer dollars are being spent,” Cook said in an email to DefenseScoop. “However, the threat does not stand still during the necessary bureaucratic funding processes, and by the time services get the funds, their needs may actually change. A two-year delay is a long time.”

Cancian said that Kendall makes a strong argument that the authority could speed up the budgeting process, but that he and the Pentagon will still likely face apprehension from lawmakers.

“The pushback from Congress is going to be concerned that DOD will start a program that will then build momentum so that it cannot be stopped,” he said. “One of the great concerns about programs is that DOD gets them started before really appreciating what the long-term cost is going to be before doing an analysis of alternatives. And then the program gathers momentum, and even if it turns out to not be a promising approach, you’re sort of committed.”

The $300 million cap does limit how much the services could invest in these types of efforts in a fiscal year, mitigating the sudden creation of multi-billion-dollar programs, Cancian noted. Still, there is a risk that down the line the authority could be abused, he added.

“​​With new authorities, the Air Force could move more quickly to counter the threat,” Cook said. “The question is whether the Air Force would be able to offer sufficient communication and transparency to Congress about how they perceive the threat and the nature of their decision-making to rapidly counter the threat, to satisfy Congress in its oversight role.”

At the same time, Greenwalt said that the Air Force may be able to begin the development with existing acquisition tricks that either circumvent CR-related delays or are better suited for the programs it’s concerned about.

In the event of a continuing resolution, the Defense Department can request so-called anomalies attached to the CR that act almost like “mini-appropriations” and grant the department funding for programs like new starts, Greenwalt explained.

The Pentagon could also use a Middle Tier of Acquisition authority to rapidly prototype and test within three to five years, he said. Given the capabilities the Department of the Air Force seems most concerned about being delayed, Greenwalt said this existing authority would be more appropriate to quickly develop these programs.

“They asked for programs that need to mature to [preliminary design review]. Significant data point in the requirement there, because what it states is the department is thinking about traditional defense acquisition … because PDR is a gate that you use to go into engineering and manufacturing and development in that larger 15- to 20-year timeframe,” he said. “If that’s what they’re looking for, six months worrying about the appropriators isn’t going to matter.”

Greenwalt described the proposed authority as “using a sledgehammer to kill a mosquito,” and said that while some lawmakers will initially consider it, Congress will most likely reject the proposal in the end.

“Believe me, the appropriations committees and staff deserve to be raked over the coals for not supporting speed and agility in acquisition,” he said. “But this provision is not the way to engender the type of reaction that’s necessary.”

DefenseScoop has reached out to the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee for comment on the DOD proposal. This story will be updated when responses are received.

Kendall, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown and Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman are scheduled to testify before the HASC on Thursday, where they may face lawmakers’ questions about the proposal.

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The White House proposes increasing the Defense Department’s total discretionary budget authority to $842 billion, a 3.2% boost from the 2023 enacted level.

The move comes as the military services are looking to augment their existing fleet of remotely piloted unmanned aerial systems with more advanced platforms that have greater autonomy and can be teamed with manned systems, among other roles.

To help build “the Air Forces needed for the 21st century,” the 2024 budget proposal “funds the procurement of a mix of highly capable crewed aircraft while continuing to modernize fielded fighter, bomber, mobility, and training aircraft. The Budget also accelerates the development and procurement of uncrewed combat aircraft and the relevant autonomy to augment crewed aircraft. Investing in this mix of aircraft provides an opportunity to increase the resiliency and flexibility of the fleet to meet future threats, while reducing operating costs,” according to documents released by the White House on Thursday.

Earlier this week at the AFA Warfare Symposium, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said his service is planning for 1,000 drones known as “collaborative combat aircraft” (CCAs) that could serve as robotic wingmen for manned fighter jets or perform other tasks.

He confirmed that his team “will be requesting the resources needed to move these programs forward, along with associated risk-reduction activities that will allow us to explore operational organizational and support concepts as well as reduce technical risk.”

At a media roundtable, he told DefenseScoop that the Air Force is “going to move as fast as possible” to develop and unleash the systems. 

Air Force acquisition executive Andrew Hunter told reporters: “We have been looking at an acquisition strategy and fielding in increments, and as the secretary said, the initial increment being one that we think is very much within grasp, not trying to shoot too far. So that suggests, you know, by the end of the decade we intend to start fielding them.”

Meanwhile, earlier this week a spokesperson for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency told DefenseScoop that DARPA’s LongShot air-launched combat drone program is approaching key milestones, with a critical design review and an award of a phase 3 contract expected in the next few months.

The fiscal 2024 budget documents released on Thursday note that the DOD has been making investments in new applications of emerging tech including artificial intelligence, quantum science and biotechnology, while also boosting resilience in the cyber and space domains.

These investments have the potential to “revolutionize” how U.S. forces operate and give them an edge over advanced adversaries such as China and Russia, the documents say.

They also note the need to partner with the broader innovation ecosystem across the defense industrial base, private sector and academia as the Pentagon pursues cutting-edge capabilities.

The White House budget documents do not provide a detailed breakdown of how much of the $842 billion in proposed defense spending would go toward research, development, test and evaluation — which funds future capabilities that are in the works — or procurement. Nor do they say how much money each of the services and other DOD components would receive or provide details about five-year funding plans for the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP). Much of that information is expected to be released next week.

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The Biden administration on Monday released its fiscal 2023 budget request. The White House is asking for $773 billion for the Pentagon, including $146 billion for procurement, and $130 billion for research, development, test and evaluation.

During a briefing with reporters, Michael McCord, Pentagon comptroller and chief financial officer, said the total DOD budget would see about 4 percent nominal growth and 1.5 percent real growth over what was enacted for 2022, when accounting for projected inflation.

The numbers put out by the administration forecast a little more than 2% cost growth for the goods and services DOD buys, noted Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“That does not seem realistic at all,” he said Friday during a panel discussion hosted by the Center for a New American Security, noting that the consumer price index — a metric for measuring inflation — has risen to nearly 8 percent recently.

The Biden administration’s projections may have been based on rosy assumptions made months ago that the high levels of inflation seen last year would be fleeting, Harrison said.

“You can never predict the future exactly. We don’t yet know what inflation is going to be for 2023, but … we know it’s not going to be 2.2%,” he said.

He continued: “The big story here when they talk about, you know, a real increase in the defense budget, when you assume real inflation on top of that, it’s not actually an increase. It’s a decrease in the defense budget if you apply more realistic assumptions using more current economic data about what things are shaping up for in the coming year.”

Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense budget guru at the American Enterprise Institute, said the $773 billion figure is “masquerading” as a higher topline than what was enacted for 2022.

“The messaging from the services is, ‘We all got an increase.’ Of course, people like us are like, ‘Wait, we actually saw nothing that is an increase. You saw a real negative decline in your purchasing power,’” Eaglen said.

Frederico Bartels, senior policy analyst for defense budgeting at the Heritage Foundation, said at this point it’s impossible to predict exactly how high inflation will be in the next fiscal year given how much prices have been fluctuating.

However, DOD’s projection is “completely unrealistic and it’s very detached from the reality that we are all experiencing on that,” he added.

Rising personnel costs also limit the amount of money available for spending on new capabilities, noted Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security.

The Biden administration’s fiscal proposal for 2023 calls for a 4.6% pay bump for servicemembers and DOD civilians, well above the 2.7% increase seen this year.

“We have the best military personnel in the world. But it is expensive,” Pettyjohn said.

Presidents can make budget requests, but ultimately Congress has the power of the purse. In recent years, lawmakers have appropriated more funding for defense than the White House proposed. Analysts say the same thing could happen when lawmakers take up the 2023 budget.

The issue of inflation will be a “huge” factor in discussions, Harrison said.

“I expect Congress is going to add significant funding to this budget to cover inflation costs, to cover, you know, divestments they want to reverse, to cover new investments they want to make or accelerate,” he said.

The Hill will likely plus-up Pentagon coffers to the tune of $30 billion to $40 billion above what the Biden administration is proposing, Harrison predicted.

Bartels said lawmakers will want to “buy back” DOD’s eroded purchasing power, and they can be expected to try to prevent the divestments of ships and aircraft that were included in the budget proposal.

“I think you’re going to see a lot of gnashing of teeth and a substantially sour mood from the Hill when the senior leaders from the Defense Department come in front of them. And that’s all starting next week” when top Pentagon officials are scheduled to testify at hearings, he noted.

In addition to worrying about inflation and the Pentagon’s purchasing power — a concern that Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have been raising publicly — Congress will also be looking at the Biden administration’s new National Defense Strategy and the resources needed to carry it out, Eaglen said.

A classified version of the strategy was sent to the Hill this week. An unclassified version is expected to be released in the coming months.

An NDS fact sheet released by DOD listed China as the department’s top strategic competitor and “pacing challenge,” and described Russia as posing “acute threats.”

Lawmakers are “going to address the gaps with the defense strategy and the actual [budget] request, and they’re going to use a variety of ways to get there,” Eaglen said. “But it won’t just be like last year, which was mostly a focus on the unfunded requirements lists from the services. I think this year the Hill is going to want to get more in the driver’s seat in terms of guiding defense budgets higher.”

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The White House is asking for $773 billion for the Pentagon in the next fiscal year, $130.1 billion of which would go toward research, development, test and evaluation accounts — the highest-ever level of RDT&E spending in DOD history, according to the Pentagon. That would be a 9.5% boost in RDT&E spending over the amount enacted for 2022.

“This budget reflects our strategy of directing resources to critical investments that allow us to maintain a combat credible force … [and] marshal America’s next generation of technology,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement.

The RDT&E request includes: $17.6 billion for space-based systems; $5.2 for shipbuilding and maritime systems; $10.4 billion for missiles and munitions; $9 billion for missile defense programs; $2.9 billion for ground systems; $5.3 billion for command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (C4I) capabilities; $16.8 billion for aircraft and related systems; $46.4 billion for mission support; and $16.5 billion for science and technology.

The Navy budget would receive $21 billion for research and development, a 9.2% increase over the amount enacted for 2022, while the Marine Corps would receive about $3 billion, a 5.5% boost.

The fiscal plan “supports continued investment in high-value nuclear asset Columbia, and develops new long-range strike, undersea, hypersonic and autonomous capabilities,” Navy budget documents said.

That includes $1.4 billion for hypersonic weapons, $1 billion for cybersecurity, $651 million for satellite communications, $610 million for command and control systems, and $546 million for electronic warfare systems.

That also includes more than $900 million for unmanned systems such as the MQ-4, MQ-25, MQ-9 extended range, large unmanned surface vessel and extra-large unmanned undersea vehicle.

It also includes $195 million for Project Overmatch — the Navy’s contribution to Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) — $5.3 billion for classified programs, and additional funding for other capabilities.

The Air Force RDT&E budget would reach $33.4 billion, about $4.6 billion more than was requested for 2022.

It “invests in key modernization efforts … across many of the core missions such as air superiority, global strike, command and control, and rapid global mobility,” according to Air Force budget documents.

It includes about $3.3 billion for the B-21 stealth bomber, $1.7 billion for Next-Generation Air Dominance systems, $577 million for hypersonics prototyping, and $231 million for the Advanced Battle Management System – the service’s contribution to JADC2, as well as funding for other capabilities.

The Space Force RDT&E budget would jump to $15.8 billion, up from the $11.3 billion requested for 2022, “to protect and defend current space assets, build more resilient and defendable architectures, and develop offensive capabilities to challenge adversary space capabilities,” according to budget documents.

Funding for major programs includes about $3.5 billion for next-gen OPIR, $1 billion for resilient missile warning and missile tracking, and $566 million for evolved strategic satellite communications, as well as investments in other capabilities.

The Army’s total request for RDT&E is $13.7 billion, about $800 million less than the amount enacted for 2022. However, the non-S&T portion of the research-and-development budget would increase from $10.2 billion to about $11 billion – a 7.5% increase above the amount enacted for 2022.

That would help fund the service’s top modernization priorities, which include long-range fires, next-generation combat vehicles, future vertical lift, the network, air-and-missile defense, and soldier lethality.

“The Army is committed to a sustainable strategic path that develops and fields cutting-edge modernization programs for joint multi-domain operations,” according to Army budget documents.

It would fund prototyping of the long-range hypersonic missile, mid-range capability missile and Precision Strike Missile.

The R&D request also includes $2.7 billion for science and technology projects.

The plan “aligns 82% of S&T funding to the Army’s six modernization priorities to deliver concepts and capabilities at the speed of innovation,” according to budget documents.

A total of $34.4 billion would go toward the U.S. nuclear enterprise and nuclear modernization, which includes a new Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, B-21 bomber, Long-Range Standoff cruise missile, and nuclear command, control and communications.

Other significant investments will be made toward “more mature artificial intelligence” and 5G communications initiatives, noted Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks.

The RDT&E request, combined with the $146 billion requested for procurement, will “deliver the combat credibility today and … into the future that we need across air, sea land, cyber and space,” she said during a briefing with reporters at the Pentagon.

Navy Adm. Christopher Grady, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the funding “will modernize and it will transform the force needed to win [a conflict] in the 2030s and beyond.”

The request was shaped by U.S. government views of China as the “pacing challenge,” Grady said, adding that Russia poses an “acute threat.”

Travis Sharp, director of the defense budget studies program at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments think tank, noted that the proposed growth in the RDT&E budget is significantly smaller than 9.5% once inflation is factored in.

“Because of the effects of inflation, every year’s defense budget has a good chance of being the largest R&D budget in history because of … the change in the purchasing power of dollars. So, you know, you always want to check out the effects of inflation and then see after you take away inflationary growth, what’s really left in terms of real growth,” he told FedScoop.

Michael McCord, Pentagon comptroller and chief financial officer, said under the Biden administration’s proposal the total DOD budget would only see 1.5 percent real growth over what was enacted for 2022. He did not provide figures for the real growth in the proposed RDT&E budget during a briefing with reporters.

Looking ahead, Sharp noted that long-term projections released Monday by the White House Office of Management and Budget has military RDT&E spending decreasing in nominal terms beginning in 2025.

“That’s noteworthy to me because over the last decade there’s been this steady trend of R&D spending receiving a steadily increasing share of the Pentagon’s budgetary pie. So these out-year projections make me wonder, is DoD intending to end that decade-long trend in which it prior prioritizes R&D spending?” he said.

It could be that the Pentagon is preparing to make “some tough decisions about which research programs it really wants to push forward and which ones it’s going to cull from the program in order to free up the necessary resources to fund the winners” that will successfully transition capabilities into production and fielding, he added.

Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense budget expert at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, said Pentagon budgets have been out of balance in recent years, with too high a portion going toward research and development.

“The ratio of procurement to R&D is at historically unhealthy levels for the Defense Department. And they’ve also been that way for the last decade,” she said. “That means the Pentagon continues to take risk in the near term and in [force] capacity for the future.”

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