Military service members assigned to the 7th Air Support Operations Squadron, Fort Bliss, Texas, and 729th Air Control Squadron, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, conduct warfare operations at the Tactical Operations Center-Light (TOC-L) on Oct. 14, 2022. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Brenda Salgado)
AFA WARFARE SYMPOSIUM — Lawmakers’ failure to pass a fiscal 2024 budget has slowed progress on key initiatives to connect sensors and shooters for the Department of the Air Force (DAF), according to a top official charged with overseeing the effort.
Brig. Gen. Luke Cropsey, the Air Force official tapped to ensure a host of disparate DAF efforts can support Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) capabilities, said in a roundtable with reporters today that he’s been waiting months for funds that were supposed to “double” in fiscal year 2024 so that he can move forward with existing programs and start new ones.
“Not having a budget is quite frankly, it’s killing me, because my budget was supposed to double this year. So my ability to do what we need to do at scale is literally completely hamstrung right now,” he said.
For example, Cropsey said that though the Air Force successfully deployed 16 Tactical Operations Center-Light (TOC-L) kits — portable hardware and software that can enable users to establish comms and integrate data in contested environments — plans to scale that up have been shelved as the service waits for funding. Eventually, Cropsey said, the service would like to deploy somewhere in the hundreds.
“What we slowed down was the follow-on phase two that would have scaled that out and created an actual scaled capability to deploy,” he said. “So my phase two contract is kind of hanging on getting the money in a ‘24 budget. So that piece of it is the piece that could potentially end up getting pushed.”
Throughout the conference here, senior officials continued to raise alarm about the impacts of a prolonged continuing resolution (CR), which threatens to slash FY23 funding levels by 1 percent if lawmakers can’t pass an FY24 budget by the end of April. That cut, which officials have said would reduce buying power by about $13 billion for the Department of the Air Force, would likely fall heavily on accounts like R&D and procurement since troop pay is expected to be largely fenced off.
Among priorities likely to be impacted are loyal wingman drones known as Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), procurement of the B-21 Raider stealth bomber and munitions buys. A total of 89 new starts, or brand new programs, across the Air Force and Space Force are at risk by a CR, officials have previously said.
For Cropsey, another leading casualty of the budget chaos has been efforts to field cloud-based command and control (CBC2). Though CBC2 capabilities were recently rolled out for NORAD’s Canadian and Eastern Air Defense Sectors, funding constraints have slowed plans to build that out — a result Cropsey previously warned could come to pass.
“I will kick everything else to the curb in order to keep CBC2 on schedule, and on delivery, which we have done,” he said. “But it’s been at the expense of being able to expand that software pipeline into other places and in other capabilities.”
With contracting officers wary of taking steps like issuing requests for proposals without funding in place for numerous projects, Cropsey said crucial time is being lost.
“I’m ready to rock and roll on a number of fronts. And I’m getting itchy for being able to move out on this stuff because we’re out of time,” he said.