Washington: The US Army is planning to ask for more flexible funding for unmanned aircraft systems, capabilities to counter them and electronic warfare tools in its next budget as it takes lessons learned from Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion, according to Christine Wormuth, the service’s secretary.
“I think some of the areas that [Gen. Randy George], the chief [of staff of the Army] and I feel very strongly that we need to invest more in, both from the perspective of the Army… but also the needs of the joint force, is in the areas of unmanned aerial systems, counter-unmanned aerial systems and electronic warfare,” she said.
“I think you’ll see that in the budget that goes up to Congress next spring,” Wormuth said. “That’s an area where I think we also need to have more agility in our funding mechanisms because of the technology in those capability areas is changing so rapidly that we can’t afford to get locked into something and then be only allowed to use that something for the next 10 years.”
Both Wormuth and George have discussed the possibility of budgeting differently in order to get some capability into the hands of soldiers much more quickly. One of those possibilities is asking Congress to fund pots of money dedicated for a specific capability rather than budget across a number of specific line items that tend to be a specific product or program.
But both have also acknowledged that getting congressional appropriators on board might not be so easy. “Historically, they’re generally… very skeptical of what they see as kind of slush funds. They have a lot of scar tissue around [overseas contingency operations], and how the department has used that over the years,” Wormuth said.
